The morning breeze passed through the forests of Qingqiu with a faint chill, rustling the bamboo leaves outside the wooden house and carrying a few birdsongs into the room.
Yu Jin slowly opened her eyes.
She lay still for a moment, not quite awake, with an uncomfortable tightness in her chest.
Her breathing felt heavier than usual, and there was a strange warmth lingering somewhere inside her body.
She frowned and raised a hand to her forehead.
Her skin was cool.
Nothing seemed wrong.
But the warmth was still there, faint and buried deep, like a flame that had been pressed down without being completely extinguished.
Yu Jin stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.
“What kind of ridiculous dream was that…?”
She closed her eyes again.
The moment she did, the scenes from the night before returned with uncomfortable clarity.
The dark corridor.
The doors exploding behind them.
The feeling of something chasing them through the darkness.
And finally, the black vortex that had opened just as she jumped.
Yu Jin’s thoughts paused.
Wait.
That thing had spoken, hadn’t it?
Her eyes opened again.
“…No way.”
She sat there thinking for a while, her expression becoming increasingly suspicious.
She hadn’t offended anyone recently.
At least, she didn’t think she had.
So why would she suddenly have a dream like that?
Unless someone had done something to her without her knowing.
The thought had barely crossed her mind when another image surfaced.
Long golden hair.
Three pairs of golden wings.
And a man standing in the middle of all that light, looking at her as though everything happening around them was perfectly normal.
Then he had asked her—
Are you ready?
Yu Jin stared at the wall.
“What even was that?”
A Golden Crow?
No.
Golden Crows didn’t look like that.
“A mutated giant eagle?”
She thought about it for a moment and found that explanation equally ridiculous.
“And then he asks me if I’m ready…”
Her brows twitched.
“Ready for what?”
At least tell her what she was supposed to be ready for first.
Yu Jin rubbed her forehead.
“Nonsense.”
She threw back the blanket and sat on the edge of the bed.
The dream itself was strange enough, but what annoyed her most was that she hadn’t understood a single thing from beginning to end.
First, she had been chased through a corridor for no apparent reason.
Then something had nearly dragged her into a black vortex.
Before she could figure out what it was, she had been pulled into another place, caught by a six-winged man, shown a series of strange scenes, and asked a question she wasn’t even allowed to answer.
Then there was the man in white.
And finally, that silver-robed man who had appeared out of nowhere, said one word, and shattered the entire place with his palm.
Not one of them had explained anything.
Yu Jin clicked her tongue.
“What a mess.”
She stepped barefoot onto the floor.
The cool wooden boards beneath her feet finally cleared away the last of her drowsiness.
Yu Jin walked over to the window and pushed it open.
Morning light spilled into the room.
The forests of Qingqiu stretched across the mountains before her, covered in a thin layer of mist.
Sunlight filtered through the trees and fell across the grass and stone steps outside.
In the distance, a spiritual spring wound its way down the mountainside.
The sound of running water mixed with birdsong, and somewhere farther up the mountain, the morning bell rang.
Yu Jin rested one hand against the window frame.
Everything looked exactly the same as yesterday.
Quiet and peaceful.
She had lived here for five years.
Her master had brought her to Qingqiu when she was thirteen, and she had stayed on the mountain ever since.
In five years, she hadn’t left once.
At first, she hadn’t minded.
Qingqiu was peaceful, and there was little trouble here.
Compared with the chaos of the outside world, there were certainly worse places to live.
But five years was a long time.
No matter how beautiful the mountains were, she had already seen them countless times.
The same forests, the same paths, the same morning bells.
People called this secluded cultivation.
Yu Jin sometimes thought it was simply another way of saying there was nowhere to go.
Still, she had grown used to it.
She had thought she would continue living like this for some time.
But this morning, something felt different.
Yu Jin lowered her eyes and opened her hand.
Her palm looked perfectly normal.
No mark.
No flame.
Nothing.
She curled her fingers, then opened them again.
The warmth from earlier hadn’t disappeared.
It was faint, but she could still feel it somewhere inside her, quietly lingering beneath the surface.
Yu Jin frowned.
Was it really just a dream?
Before she could think any further, a familiar voice suddenly came from outside.
“Sister Jin—!”