State of Chen, Yugu Mountain.
The early spring wind still carried winter’s lingering chill. A column of cavalry made its way up the mountain path, mist drifting around them as the rapid beat of hooves broke the forest’s silence.
Silver-white armor rang like metal striking stone. At the front rode a young man in a fur cloak, his expression solemn. Behind him, the royal banner snapped in the wind, lending the column a grim, martial air.
Just as the cavalry pressed toward the summit, a faint glimmer of light flickered to life above. The young man seemed to sense it, lifting his head almost in the same instant.
The blaze surging skyward reflected in his eyes, and it also illuminated the sudden change in his expression.
“Young Lord, a fire?!” A cavalryman blurted out in shock, unable to hide his astonishment.
Clearly, the newcomers had not expected a fire.
The young man’s expression darkened visibly.
Yugu Mountain was reinforced with restriction spells. Even with his cultivation, he would be unable to use so much as a trace of spiritual power once inside the mountain. No matter how anxious the young man was now, it was impossible for him to reach the summit in an instant.
He took a deep breath, said nothing more, and only issued a cold order: “Speed up the march.”
What exactly had caused this sudden blaze?
At the summit of Yugu Mountain, a bamboo hut tottered in the flames. Firelight revealed a trace of nonchalance on the young woman’s face.
She dropped the torch and disappeared into the forest.
Behind her, someone stood leaning on his sword, his eyes tightly shut.
Even though he had already stopped breathing, his spine remained straight, like a sword that never bends.
The sound of hoofbeats drew nearer. The young man who led the cavalry to the summit first caught sight of the sword-propped figure, then all his attention was seized by the fire, his expression one of shock and fury.
Who had set fire to the bamboo hut?!
Without a second thought, the young man and his company charged into the sea of flames, as if searching for something, utterly without time to spare for anything else.
Two days later.
Gu Congshan struggled through the tangled, overgrown dead trees, his robe hem snagged by branches in several places, looking rather disheveled and dusty.
He should still be on the outskirts of Wuyin Forest, right? The birdsong gradually faded, and as the only sound left in his ears became the crisp crunch of stepping on dead branches and fallen leaves, a hint of unease crept into the young man’s expression.
Rumors said that deep within Wuyin Forest roamed mountain spirits and demons. If he were to wander in by mistake, with his meager cultivation, he would likely become a demon’s meal. He would have no chance of surviving.
At that thought, Gu Congshan couldn’t help but shake his head, trying to dispel the notion that had just risen in his mind.
He had only lived for a little over ten years. Though his life had hardly been smooth sailing, he had no desire to die.
But even if he wanted to leave now, he’d first have to find the right direction.
Gu Congshan looked up, observing the angle of the shifting sunlight, hoping to deduce the direction he had come from.
His gaze inadvertently swept past the ancient trees’ branches that shaded the sky, and he caught sight of a corner of plain-colored skirt. A flicker of hesitation crossed his expression—this is…
Gu Congshan’s gaze moved upward inch by inch, and he saw a young woman sitting sideways on a high branch, holding a slender jade slip in her hand, her eyes slightly lowered as if lost in thought.
The soft afternoon light of spring filtered through the branches and leaves, casting a hazy glow around her. Her plain skirt and raven-black hair made her seem utterly unlike a mortal.
In the mist that spread through the forest, as if sensing Gu Congshan’s gaze, the young woman lowered her eyes and looked toward him.
Their eyes met, and Gu Congshan stood frozen in place, his mind a complete blank, entirely forgetting what he was supposed to say.
With a face like that, she could not be human—she must be a mountain spirit born of the very essence of heaven and earth…
Gu Congshan drew in a sharp breath and finally snapped back to his senses. He retreated two steps as if facing a formidable enemy, adopting a defensive posture, and stammered nervously, “D-d-don’t come any closer, or I won’t be polite!”
To intimidate the mountain spirit he believed stood before him, the youth channeled the spiritual breath within his body. As his Life Star flickered, several clusters of blazing flames rose up around him.
Gu Congshan had dared to venture alone into the Wuyin Forest precisely because he had something to rely on—he was a cultivator who had already ignited his Life Star.
That said, his entire sequence of actions carried an unmistakable air of bravado masking his inner fear.
Ming Zhu, seated high in the tree, looked down at the dancing flames around Gu Congshan without the slightest trace of fear. These little sparks were nothing compared to the fire she had set on Yugu Mountain a few days prior.
Still, flames appearing out of thin air were indeed somewhat intriguing.
She had never witnessed such a technique of conjuring fire from nothing during her time in the mountains—likely because Yugu Mountain held only tigers and wolves, not people like Gu Congshan.
Gu Congshan had no idea what Ming Zhu was thinking. Seeing that she made no move, he assumed his display had successfully cowed the mountain spirit before him, and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Keeping his eyes fixed on Ming Zhu, he crept backward step by step, attempting to slip smoothly out of her line of sight.
But as it turned out, since one’s eyes were not mounted on the back of one’s head, humans were simply not suited to walking backward.
Gu Congshan, lacking that extra pair of eyes, retreated two steps and planted his foot squarely into a pit hidden beneath the fallen leaves and branches on the ground.
As he tumbled onto his back with limbs flailing, the flames around him flickered and dissipated into nothing. From the cloth pouch at his waist rolled out a scroll of bamboo slips. The hemp cord binding them was worn nearly through, suggesting considerable age.
Watching this scene from above, Ming Zhu came to a rough understanding: this youth who called himself a cultivator was no more difficult to deal with than the foolish roe deer scampering through the forest.
She tucked away the jade slip in her hand, and with a flicker of movement, she appeared behind Gu Congshan in the blink of an eye.
Without any intention of lending him a hand, Ming Zhu’s toe flicked out, and the bamboo scroll on the ground landed in her grasp.
Looking down at the scroll in her hands, the expressionless mask of Ming Zhu’s face finally showed the slightest shift.
This scroll was different from the ones she had seen on the mountain, Ming Zhu thought.
Not because it was excessively worn, but because the characters carved into it with knife and stylus seemed to carry an ineffable breath, one that invisibly tugged at her thoughts.
Even though the writing on the bamboo slips was heavily worn, with many broken lines and incomplete sentences, it did not hinder Ming Zhu from easily grasping its meaning. It was at this moment that the breath within her body was drawn by something unseen, circulating through her entire being.
What is this?
Gu Congshan, having scrambled back to his feet, let out a startled “Ah!” when he saw his bamboo scroll in Ming Zhu’s hands. The most valuable thing he owned was this scroll describing a cultivation method.
Staring longingly at the scroll in Ming Zhu’s hands, Gu Congshan desperately wanted his possession back, yet he dared not approach, wary of Ming Zhu’s identity.
Just as he was torn between fleeing and staying, a hazy radiance suddenly enveloped the young woman before him.
In the unknowable depths, the dark chaos dispersed. As the silvery glow, tangible as substance, swirled and flowed, stars gradually flickered to life in the darkness.
The drifting mist in the mountain forest seemed to pause at this sight. Wind from some unknown origin filled the sleeves of her robes. Ming Zhu tilted her head slightly, and at that very moment, the light of the sky fell into her eyes. Within her pupils, light and shadow flickered and shifted, transforming into intricate restriction spells.
Gu Congshan stared with his mouth agape, utterly dumbfounded.
It took several full breaths before he finally found his voice: “Igniting the Life Star?!”
His tone was filled with utter disbelief.
Gu Congshan considered himself shallow in cultivation and hardly broad in his knowledge of the Dao, but what had just happened to Ming Zhu was not unfamiliar to him in the slightest.
This was unmistakably the extraordinary phenomenon that appeared only when someone ignited their Life Star and entered the Dao!
Just as he was thinking this, Gu Congshan’s thoughts came to a strange halt. Wait—if she could ignite her Life Star to enter the Dao, didn’t that prove she was human, not a mountain spirit?
Even so, his gaze wandered, still not daring to look directly at Ming Zhu.
It was Ming Zhu who turned to look at him instead, asking the first question since they had met: “What is igniting the Life Star?”
“You don’t know?” Gu Congshan didn’t answer, but reflexively asked in return.
That shouldn’t be…
If she didn’t know anything, how had she managed to ignite her Life Star?
The Life Star was the foundation of cultivation. Only by igniting their Life Star could any human in the world illuminate the star chart within their body and harbor spiritual breath within.
By drawing upon the turning of the constellations to channel spiritual breath, one could cast techniques, even move mountains and fill seas, overturn day and night.
But just as some are born noble, casually tossing aside gold and jade, while others are born lowly, unable even to eat their fill—whether one possessed a Life Star within was also a matter determined at birth.
Among all the humans in the world, only a minority were born with Life Stars. And among that extremely small minority, without family standing or having revealed enough talent to catch the eye of a benefactor, igniting one’s Life Star to enter the Dao was even more difficult than difficult.
Gu Congshan’s luck was probably not too bad. He came from humble origins, and in his early teens had followed idle street ruffians to scrape together a meal. Later, as he grew older, he roamed and traveled with the wandering knights of his village, and through a stroke of fortune came into possession of this bamboo scroll recording the ways of cultivation.
For those without a Life Star, this scroll was utterly useless—no wonder it had been used to prop up a table corner.
What was written on the scroll had all been inscribed with spiritual power, capable of invisibly guiding the breath of the reader to seek out the location of the Life Star within their body.
As it happened, Gu Congshan was one of the rare few in the world who possessed a Life Star. Sensing something unusual about the scroll, he had talked until his lips were worn thin, finally buying it from its original owner for a single copper coin, and from then on stumbled onto the path of cultivation.
From the chance acquisition of the scroll to the igniting of his Life Star, Gu Congshan had taken over three years in total. This was nothing compared with the prodigies of the great noble houses, but for a humble rogue cultivator without any inheritance, it was already quite impressive.
Based on his own experience, Gu Congshan naturally assumed that Ming Zhu had already learned about cultivation before this, which was why she could ignite her Life Star right in front of him.
If she didn’t even know what igniting the Life Star was… could she have done it just by looking at his bamboo scroll?
How was that possible!
She had only glanced at it for a few moments—
Even a genius from the Nine Provinces’ immortal sects or the noble families of the feudal lords couldn’t easily accomplish such a feat, could they? Gu Congshan thought so, though he had never actually met such a person.
He had assumed it was just a casual joke Ming Zhu had made offhandedly, but after a few moments of silence, his expression finally froze under her gaze that showed no sign of jest. No way?
He wore a look of utter disbelief in his own life.