PROLOGUE: A Dream That Never Faded
For seven years, Xie Yan dreamed of the same woman every night.
He could never see her face clearly.
Only a slender figure standing beside a river shimmering with golden light.
Her hair swayed gently in the wind.
And before the dream dissolved, one thing always remained.
Linghua.
The eternal flower.
Xie Yan knew that scent intimately, because something deep within him always stirred whenever its faint trace appeared.
There was a time when he tried to understand these dreams.
He paid dream analysts, mapped his sleep patterns, tested theories of suggestion and trauma.
He even sought out an old Taoist priest, only to hear the same answer repeated in different ways.
“Dreams are only dreams,” the old priest had said.
“You’re thinking too much.”
At twenty-seven, Xie Yan stopped searching for answers.
He let the dreams come and go like rain he could never stop.
By day, he remained the heir of the Xie Clan, the youngest CEO, respected and feared.
By night, he bore another name, moving through the shadows of the underground world.
And between those two lives… there was a hollow space he could never fill.
“Only a woman with a soul from the First Heaven can open the Immortal Gate,” his grandmother once said, as if she understood something far deeper.
“You won’t recognize her by her face, but by her scent.
And the moment you breathe it in… you’ll know.
Your life will never be the same again.”
Xie Yan had never forgotten those words.
He had never truly believed them either.
And yet, for seven years, he had never stopped searching.
***
CHAPTER 1
The tiled floor of the storage room was cold enough to pierce through bone even though winter had not yet arrived.
Lin Qingyu trembled violently on the ground.
Fever burned beneath her skin while the icy chill from the stone floor crept upward without mercy, as if trying to strip away the last trace of warmth left inside her body.
Outside the door, Lady Su’s voice could be heard faintly.
“Leave her there.
I don’t want the illness spreading if it’s contagious.”
Her tone was light and indifferent, as though she were discussing a broken object no longer worth keeping.
One of the servants hesitated before speaking.
“But Madam… the storage room is freezing.
I’m worried Miss Qingyu’s condition—”
“She’s still alive.”
Lady Su cut her off smoothly.
“And if the illness truly is contagious, separating her from the main house is for everyone’s safety.”
The servants immediately fell silent.
No one dared to argue further.
When they carried her here earlier, they thought she had already fainted.
In truth, she had remained barely conscious, just aware enough to feel every jolt as her frail body was lifted and moved.
She could feel herself being placed directly onto the freezing stone floor.
One of the maids had draped a thin blanket over her before leaving.
The motion had been hurried, because she was fearful whether this small act of kindness might be discovered.
Then came the sound of retreating footsteps.
Followed by the door closed and silence.
Lady Su would never take her to the hospital.
There would always be a reasonable explanation for everything that woman did.
The servants could do nothing about it.
Qingyu had always been sickly since childhood.
Fevers, dizziness, weakness—those things had become normal in this house long ago.
They thought tonight was no different.
But Lin Qingyu knew her body had finally reached its limit.
The tightness in her chest had grown worse over the past few months.
At first, it happened sometimes, then more and more often, especially after she began drinking the Snow Blossom tea Lady Su had been preparing for her every night.
The tea that was supposedly meant to strengthen her body.
At least, that was what Lady Su always said with her gentle smile.
“You’ve been weak since you were little, Qingyu,” she had said one evening with a soft sigh.
“This tea is expensive.
I had it specially prepared for your condition.”
Back then, Qingyu believed her.
Or perhaps she had simply wanted to believe.
After her birth mother died, she spent years trying to accept Lady Su as family.
Even though the warmth she longed for never truly reached her, she kept convincing herself that affection simply needed time to grow.
But her body had been warning her for a long time.
Bruises appeared too easily on her skin.
The exhaustion never truly faded, and the dizziness followed her constantly.
Her body growing lighter and emptier with each passing day.
The pain in her chest became part of her life.
Three months ago, she finally began to suspect the truth.
Quietly, she stopped drinking the tea for several days, and her condition improved almost immediately.
It was not enough to recover, but enough to awaken the fear she had avoided for so long.
When she carefully tried to bring it up, Lady Su merely smiled.
“You’re overthinking things, Qingyu,” she said gently while adjusting the blanket over her lap.
“Your body has always been fragile.”
That same night, Lady Su personally handed her another cup of Snow Blossom tea.
Yet, Qingyu still drank it.
Because she had no proof and she had no one to rely on.
And somewhere deep in her heart, she still wanted to believe her suspicions were wrong.
Now, lying on the freezing floor of the storage room, Qingyu finally understood how foolish that hope had been.
Tonight’s fever felt different.
Her body had finally begun to break down.
Her father was away on a business trip and would not return for several weeks.
Whenever he left, the Lin family estate transformed into a suffocating little prison.
Lady Su was extraordinarily skilled at maintaining appearances.
In front of her father, the woman looked gentle and caring.
She personally prepared medicinal soup, reminded Qingyu to rest, even spoke with endless patience.
But the moment her father left for work or business, every trace of gentleness vanished.
She felt the vast mansion became smaller and smaller, until her world consisted of nothing more than her bedroom, silent hallways, and a loneliness that never truly ended.
At this moment, her breathing weakened, like the final flicker of a candle before it died.
“Father…”
Her lips moved faintly, but no sound came out.
Her eyes finally shut.
At that exact moment, a thin streak of light crossed the night sky without a sound.
It was so vague that anyone who noticed it would have mistaken it for a shooting star.
But the light did not fall with gravity.
It changed direction, descending straight toward the Lin residence.
The roof of the small eastern storage room trembled softly as the light slipped through the gaps between the tiles, descending like a thread of glowing silk.
The light was not blinding, yet it felt…
alive.
At the same moment, Lin Qingyu’s final breath disappeared.
And within the emptiness that followed death, she saw a woman standing before her.
The figure was shrouded in soft misty light.
Her face remained indistinct, impossible to see clearly.
Her posture was calm and steady, carrying the aura of someone who had traveled a very long road.
Qingyu wanted to speak.
But no voice could leave her lips.
Instead, the woman lowered herself into a deep bow.
It was a sincere bow.
Something Qingyu had never once received in that household.
For the first time in her life, her heart felt strangely light.
Her lips moved softly.
“Keep living.”
She said only those two words, without asking for revenge or demand justice.
Nor did she question why this soul had appeared before her.
Somehow, she just knew someone worthy had come to continue the path she could not finish herself, a new fate.
The unfamiliar soul stepped forward and embraced her gently.
The warmth lingered long after the brief touch ended.
And strangely enough… that brief embrace made Qingyu feel cared for for the very first time in her life.
Tears slid from the corners of her eyes.
But this time, she smiled.
Her figure gradually dissolved into the dim light around them, then disappeared completely.
The foreign soul descended into Qingyu’s empty body, as if fate had led her there from the start.
The body lying on the stone floor trembled faintly.
Her fingers twitched, and her eyelids quivered.
Then her eyes opened.
A moment later, the pale hand tightened, sensing the poison coiled near the heart.
Without saying a word, she guided a thin strand of qi through her meridians.
The faint current carefully separated the poison from the heart muscle before sealing it temporarily within a nearby meridian.
She did not cleanse the poison completely, as a reminder of what had been done to this body.
She drew in a slow breath.
Her chest still ached, but for the first time in what felt like an eternity… the breath felt truly hers.
A trace of warmth returned to her eyes.
Fate had brought her into this body.
She had returned not as Lin Qingyu, but as Ning Zhen, a soul that did not belong to this world.
Ning Zhen lowered her eyes toward her pale hands.
The poison in her veins still there, but that was hardly a problem.
To her, poison was merely medicine placed in the wrong hands.
And sooner or later, everything would return to its rightful owner.
Her eyelids grew heavy again.
This body was far too weak.
It needed time to recover.
So Ning Zhen closed her eyes once more.
Meanwhile, in the center of the city, a man suddenly paused in the middle of reviewing a financial report.
Xie Yan frowned.
For reasons he could not explain, his chest tightened for a brief instant.
Something had brushed against his instincts before vanishing again.
He rose from his chair and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling window behind his desk.
The city lights still blazed brightly below.
Traffic continued flowing through the streets.
Nothing appeared unusual.
Yet the instincts that had guided him for years were rarely wrong.
Something had just happened; something important.
Without realising it, his gaze drifted toward the southern district.
And as always, the shadow of the woman in his dream surfaced once more in his mind.
His fingers clenched shortly before relaxing again.
A few moments later, he returned to his desk and closed the report before him.
Perhaps he was overthinking it.
But for the first time in a very long while, the night felt different.
This is my first novel.
I originally wrote it in Indonesian, my native language, and translate it into English for international readers.
This is a slow-burn cultivation fantasy with romance, mystery, and hidden truths that will slowly unfold over time.
The first arc moves more quietly because I want to build a strong foundation for the world and characters before the bigger conflicts begin.
I truly hope you’ll enjoy the journey.
Thank you for reading and supporting a new author.