Dynasty.
Since the earliest surviving records, lineages have risen and vanished from this world in an unbroken rhythm. Some left traces — names carved into stone, monuments that outlasted their builders, histories that passed from one generation to the next until they became legend. Others were swallowed by time without leaving so much as a rumor.
Each had its own story. Some were respected. Some were feared. Some were remembered long after they deserved to be forgotten. Some were forgotten long before they deserved to be.
In the records of the Luo Kingdom, many Dynasties rose and fell across the ages. But if one follows those records back to their earliest entries — past the cleaner histories, past the gaps and the missing pages — what emerges is something older and stranger than what came after.
The current territory of the Luo Kingdom was once occupied by a coalition of several Dynasties. Among them, three stood at the forefront: the Lunare Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, and the Solare Dynasty.
Luna Lunare of the Lunare Dynasty. Tellus Tang of the Tang Dynasty. Helios Solare of the Solare Dynasty.
Three individuals. Three powers. Combined, they were near invincible in that age.
Then an unprecedented calamity struck.
The Solare Dynasty was annihilated. The Tang Dynasty vanished. The Lunare Dynasty was brought to the edge of extinction.
A Divine Envoy came to their aid, and through that intervention, what remained was slowly rebuilt. But the scars of that calamity did not fade. They persisted — woven into the foundations of the Luo Kingdom, quietly haunting its peace from beneath.
Through the sweat and blood of generations, public order was restored. The kingdom entered what appeared to be a peaceful era.
Appeared.
These records were passed down and became the historical backdrop against which the present moved.
★ — ★ — ★
"Hmm…"
Feng Han sat with a thoughtful expression, turning the history over in his mind.
A few days had passed since the Secret Realm. He had come out of it safely — and with considerably more than he had gone in with. An inheritance from a cultivator who had been dead for a thousand years. A vague obligation to a Dynasty that had supposedly vanished from history. And a new acquaintance named Wan, who had arrived with a polite manner and a very clear expectation.
The question was what to do about it.
Should I go to the Tang Dynasty and help them? If I refuse, Wan may make things difficult… But he didn't seem unreasonable. Maybe if I explain myself, he'd let it go?
He was still turning it over when he realized he had been walking without paying attention — and that his feet were wet.
Except they weren't.
He looked down. He was standing on the surface of the lake at the edge of the courtyard. Each step he had taken had produced only a faint ripple. Not a drop of water on his clothes.
He walked the rest of the way across and stepped off the other side.
He smiled — small and private — and let the memory of that first night after the Secret Realm come back to him.
★ — ★ — ★
He had been so eager that he had slipped out of his room in the middle of the night and gone to the back courtyard to test everything.
First: cultivation. Standard attempt.
Nothing.
Second: techniques, spells, talismans. Each in turn.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Third — and this one he was slightly embarrassed about in retrospect — he had punched a rock as hard as he could.
His hand bled. The rock was fine.
He stared at his system panel in the dark.
Talent: Awakened (Active). Dao(s): Nature Dao.
Active. And yet nothing had changed. He couldn't cultivate. He couldn't cast techniques. He couldn't even hurt a rock.
What is this supposed to mean? Is this a joke?
He sat under a tree and did his breathing exercises until the frustration settled. Then he looked at the panel again, more carefully this time.
Nature Dao.
Nature.
An idea surfaced. He stood up.
After a few hours, laughter rang through the courtyard under the moonlit sky.
"Finally!"
A small tornado of leaves swirled around him. He watched it with bright eyes — and then let it go. The leaves drifted down and scattered across the ground.
He ran several more tests. By the time he stopped, he had a clear picture of what he was working with.
The ability allowed him to make requests of the nature around him. If the request wasn't sincere — if he was distracted, uncertain, or simply going through the motions — it didn't respond. And the control itself had limits. Against a truly powerful cultivator, it wouldn't be enough on its own.
But against a Foundation Establishment cultivator, under the right circumstances? He estimated he could defend himself. Possibly more than that.
Theory only, for now. He had never been in a real fight. He would find out eventually.
Be steady. No rush.
He had gone to sleep with that thought, and woken up the next morning feeling, for the first time in nine years, like something had genuinely shifted.
★ — ★ — ★
Back in the present, Feng Han came out of his thoughts and looked at the lake behind him.
His decision had quietly made itself while he wasn't paying attention.
I'll hear Wan out first. If what he's asking is too dangerous, I'll negotiate. If negotiation fails… I'd rather not give up this inheritance. But I'll cross that bridge when I reach it.
"Young Master. A guest has arrived and is requesting to meet you."
A servant appeared at his side.
"Did they give a name?"
"Yes. They said — Wan."
Feng Han nodded.
"See that they're treated with full courtesy. Fulfill whatever they need. Tell them I'll be there shortly."
"As you say."
The servant withdrew.
So he's here.
Feng Han looked at the lake once more, then turned and walked back toward the manor.
★ — ★ — ★
In the Royal Capital of the Luo Kingdom. Castorice.
The throne room of the Royal Palace.
Mia and Ark knelt before a tall figure radiating an aura that filled the entire hall without effort — the kind of presence that didn't need to announce itself, because the room simply rearranged itself around it.
Brilliant golden hair reaching his shoulders. Deep red pupils. A face carved by decades of war and governance into something beyond merely handsome. A body that bore the memory of countless battles, draped now in the golden silk of royal robes.
The Lunare King. Father of Mia and Ark.
"You have done well." There was a note of genuine acknowledgement in his voice — sparse, but present. "You succeeded in retrieving the core of the Secret Realm that appeared in Mist City."
Mia and Ark bowed without responding. They received his words. The bond between them and this man was complicated in ways that didn't lend themselves to easy expression.
A small golden statue floated above his open palm — cracked across its entire surface, its luster entirely gone.
"However. Someone reached the inheritance before you. It's already been claimed."
Ark's shoulders shifted slightly. Mia didn't move.
He closed his hand. The statue dissolved into golden light and disappeared.
"Hmm… This Dao… it's Nature-aligned… Could it be from that dynasty?"
He was thinking aloud — not really asking.
Mia's attention sharpened instantly. She said nothing.
Ark processed it for a moment — and then, before he could stop himself:
"Tang Dynasty?"
The word had barely left his mouth.
Slap.
A crisp sound rang across the hall. Ark had a swollen cheek.
"Ark." Mia's voice was flat and immediate. "Don't ever say that again. Apologize."
She turned to her father and bowed.
"Your Majesty. I apologize for his lack of restraint. I'll ensure it doesn't happen again."
The Lunare King raised an eyebrow. He watched the two of them for a moment with something that might, in a different context, have been amusement.
"I'll pardon him this once."
"We are grateful for your mercy."
They spoke it in unison — Ark slightly behind, and slightly strangled by the pain in his cheek.
"You both acquired what you came for?"
"Yes."
"Then I won't keep you. You're dismissed. I wish you both a smooth breakthrough."
They bowed and left.
The great doors of the throne room closed behind them.
The Lunare King's gaze stayed on the doors for a long moment.
Then he sighed — quietly, not for anyone's benefit but his own.
"Alas… This is the fate I brought on myself. My own children… and still they can't bring themselves to call me Father."
He looked at the ring on his left hand.
"If you were still here… perhaps this family wouldn't have fractured the way it did."
He laughed at himself, low and without humor.
"Perhaps the cracks were already there long before. And I simply chose not to look."
The silence of the throne room answered him.
He let it sit. Then his thoughts moved on, as they always did, to the things that still required his attention.
"Tang Dynasty… What are they planning? The Moonlit Duke has been undercover for some time now — but it seems he'll need longer still."
The Lunare King sat with a thousand unresolved thoughts in an empty room.
★ — ★ — ★
East Courtyard. Mia's residence.
"Repent. Write 'I am sorry' one thousand times."
"Sister — it was just a slip of the—"
"No buts. If you keep this up, you'll end up in a situation even I can't pull you out of."
Ark sat down obediently and picked up a brush.
"Don't worry! If something like that happens, I'll figure it out."
"That confidence is exactly what worries me."
Mia exhaled and sat across from him. The urgency she'd been carrying since the Secret Realm had shifted into something quieter — still present, but no longer pressing on the surface.
"We need to move quickly. Whatever peace exists right now won't hold much longer. We need to break through before the situation changes."
"Father didn't look well." Ark said, brush moving steadily. "He must be weighing how to handle whatever the Tang Dynasty is doing."
"Yes. And the Crown Prince won't stay idle either. He's been watching Father's position for years — and a disruption like this is exactly the kind of opening he looks for."
Ark's brush stopped.
"That bastard." The words came out quietly, which made them hit differently than if he'd shouted them. "If I ever get in front of him… I want to make him suffer the way he made me suffer."
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. Mia knew the memory — the childhood incident, the public humiliation, the crush who had watched it happen. Ark never talked about it with the weight it actually carried. He framed it as revenge, as a score to settle, as something almost comedic in its specificity.
It wasn't comedic.
"Then work harder than you've ever worked." Mia said simply. "He was already Nascent Soul years ago. He may be pushing further by now."
"I will." Ark said. And when he said it like that — quietly, without the usual bravado — she believed him.
She watched him write for a moment.
"I acquired Heavenly Demon Blood Fruit from the Secret Realm. I'll begin my breakthrough soon. You should too — we've consolidated our Foundation Establishment long enough. There's little left to gain from waiting."
"Agreed." He paused his writing and looked at her. "And when we break through — when we're strong enough — we go after him together."
Mia smiled.
Small. Genuine.
"Together." She confirmed.
Ark grinned and went back to his writing.
She shook her head and let the moment be what it was — one of those rare stretches where she wasn't a princess or a warrior or a variable in someone's calculations. Just a sister, sitting with her brother, while the world waited outside.
★ — ★ — ★
Scarlet Moon District. Mist City.
Feng Manor. The main hall.
Feng Qian sat at the head of the table. Feng Han at her right. Wan at her left. Hong Jun, as always, positioned quietly in the corner — present without being part of the scene.
"Greetings, Madam Feng." Wan inclined his head with practiced courtesy. "As I discussed with Feng Han beforehand — I require his assistance."
"He can't cultivate." Feng Qian's voice was measured. Not hostile, not pleading. The tone of someone who had already thought through every angle and arrived at the part where she stated facts.
"I'm aware, Madam Feng. My clan's elder chose Feng Han to receive his inheritance. I don't know his full reasoning, but I trust his judgment."
Feng Qian received that without expression.
She had known this was coming. The day Feng Han came home and said, casually, that he had received an inheritance from a senior inside the Secret Realm — she had known. She simply hadn't been ready for it to arrive so quickly.
Why him? Why my son?
First her husband. Now her son. Why does this family keep being pulled into the current?
She had tried to persuade Feng Han to release the inheritance. He had refused her. Gently, apologetically, with great care for her feelings — and completely, without a single crack in his resolve.
It was the first time he had ever refused her.
She had stood there afterward and felt, underneath the worry and the grief, something she hadn't expected.
He's grown up.
She had wiped her tears after that thought and did not cry again. Not where he could see.
"Han'er." She had asked him later, tentatively. "Are you certain? Mother only wants what's best for you."
"I am." He hadn't hesitated. "I don't know yet whether this inheritance will bring fortune or misfortune. But in this world — to protect myself and the people I care about — I have to keep moving forward."
She had pulled him into an embrace and held on for a long moment.
"Remember — your mother, your sister, everyone here — we'll always be waiting. You can come back anytime."
"I know. I won't forget."
He had meant every word. So had she.
★ — ★ — ★
Now, across the table from Wan, Feng Qian set her hands flat on the surface and spoke with the same calm she brought to everything that mattered.
"We have conditions."
"I'm listening."
"First — Feng Han's safety and wellbeing are non-negotiable. Second — he will not be coerced into anything he refuses. Third — a trustworthy escort will accompany him at all times. Fourth — he returns safely."
Wan listened to all of it with an attentive expression and a smile that said nothing at all.
"I understand your concerns, Madam Feng. I promise to do everything within my power to ensure Feng Han returns unharmed."
Not a yes. Not a no. A promise shaped to fit the space between them.
Feng Qian saw it clearly. She also knew there was nothing to be done about it — no guarantee in the world of cultivation was absolute, and demanding one was simply asking to be lied to more convincingly.
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Blood Pact."
Wan's expression didn't break. But something behind it shifted — a fractional widening of the eyes, quickly contained.
From across the table, Feng Han's voice cut in immediately.
"No."
He had not known his mother intended this. The word came out before he could think.
"Han'er." Feng Qian's voice was steady. "I've seen your determination. I can't stop you from the path you've chosen. But let me offer you this much protection."
"I can't accept this—"
"If you refuse, you give up the inheritance. I will not change my decision."
Silence.
Wan was quiet throughout, watching the Feng family with an expression that had moved past calculation into something more like genuine respect. Bonds like this were rare in cultivation families — where power and self-preservation tended to erode everything softer. This was something different.
"I accept your offer, Madam Feng." He said finally. "With the understanding that I will not betray my clan or sacrifice myself."
Feng Qian held his gaze. Then nodded.
★ — ★ — ★
In the corner of the hall, Hong Jun stood very still.
He watched Young Master Feng's face across the room — the conflict moving through it, the distress he was trying to contain, the effort not to show how much this was costing him.
Young Master…
He is suffering so much. And I can do nothing but stand here.
I am not worthy of the Feng family.
Then — just as Madam Feng and Wan moved to begin the pact seal — Feng Han's voice broke across the room.
"Stop. I… I will give up—"
His voice cracked. The resolve in it was absolute. He was going to surrender the inheritance to protect his mother from the pact.
Hong Jun's hands, at his sides, curled slowly.
And then — Feng Han stopped. His hand went to his chest. Something crossed his face — a sharp, sudden recognition — and then what came out of his mouth was:
"…Forget it."
He straightened. He turned to face both his mother and Wan.
"I'll enter the Blood Pact myself. My family doesn't risk themselves for my sake — that's not something I can allow."
Hong Jun stared at him.
Such greed.
He wants the inheritance and his family's safety both.
He will not compromise on either.
Hong Jun felt something loosen in his chest — something that had been wound tight for a long time — and without entirely meaning to, renewed the oath he had made years ago, silently, in the privacy of his own heart.
I will follow this Young Master. Until the end.
★ — ★ — ★
The room went still when Feng Han spoke.
"Han'er—" Feng Qian's voice broke before she could finish the sentence.
She had watched her son grow up in fragments — glimpses between the daily routine of raising him, too close to see clearly until a moment like this made it undeniable.
"Mom." He took a breath. "I'm the one who wants to hold this inheritance. I'm the one who wants to protect this family. That means I'm the one who enters the pact."
He turned to her fully.
"So please — accept this selfish request of mine."
Feng Qian crossed the distance between them and cupped his face in both hands. Not embracing — just holding him there, looking at him.
"Don't ever think your family would be glad to see you suffer for them. You are not the only one who wants to protect. Mei'er, myself, your father, Hong Jun — we all want to stand by each other. So promise me." Her voice was quiet but absolute. "You'll rely on us. You won't carry this alone."
Feng Han felt it land somewhere deep — not just the words, but the weight behind them. The years of it.
He had always known his family loved him. But there was a part of him — the part that remembered another life, that had always felt slightly outside of things — that had wondered, quietly, whether he really belonged to this warmth or was simply adjacent to it.
Standing here, he stopped wondering.
"I promise." He said. And then, simply: "I love you all."
He leaned into her hands and she pulled him close.
For a moment, everything else waited.
Wan said nothing. Hong Jun said nothing. The hall was quiet in the way that quiet sometimes is — not empty, but full of something that doesn't need words.
Feng Qian wished, with the particular helplessness of a parent, that time would stop here.
It didn't.
. . .
After a while.
Feng Qian returned to her seat. Hong Jun had at some point produced a cloth and was using it — though his expression remained composed enough that if anyone asked, he would deny everything.
Wan waited with the patient expression of someone who had seen family moments before and understood their value.
"Ready?" he asked, when the silence had settled into something workable.
"I am."
"Then let's begin."
Feng Qian had walked Feng Han through the seal movements beforehand. There were several dozen of them — precise, sequential, not forgiving of error. He learned them with a speed that surprised even him. Perhaps the inheritance had sharpened something.
They ran through a practice session first, without blood essence or dao involved — which meant the movements produced nothing except the mild absurdity of two people making elaborate gestures at each other in a formal hall.
He missed the twenty-third movement.
They ran it again. And again.
By the fourth session, they were in sync.
"I think we have it."
"Then we begin for real."
Feng Han made a small cut on his finger. Wan did the same. They began the seal simultaneously — and this time, blood essence answered.
It surged from somewhere inside him that he hadn't known was there, flowing outward into a spherical formation between them. The seal darkened as the movements completed, rotating in silence, deepening from red to something closer to crimson. Then — a pulse, felt rather than heard, rolling through the entire manor like a breath drawn by the building itself.
The seal disappeared.
Something settled around him. Invisible, intangible — but present. Like the closing of a door.
"It's done."
He relaxed, degree by degree.
"Feng Han." Wan's manner shifted — still composed, but carrying a new directness. "If you're ready, we should leave soon. We've already taken more time than I'd have liked."
"Understood. Give me a moment."
He turned to his mother.
"Mom. I'll be back. That's a promise."
Feng Qian looked at him — memorizing the silhouette of him, the way he stood, the particular quality of this moment.
"Be safe." She said. "And don't try to be a hero."
"I won't."
Feng Han and Wan left Feng Manor together, stepping out into the morning.
Behind them, the gates closed.
★ — ★ — ★
Mist City, for all its reputation as one of the most sought-after locations in the Luo Kingdom, was not without its shadows.
Every city had them — the parts that didn't appear on the maps that visitors carried, the alleys that ran behind the bright storefronts and the wide merchant streets, where a different kind of life operated on its own rules.
In one such alley lived a young man.
Average in every visible way. Black hair. Black eyes. Dark brown skin. Nothing about his appearance that would cause anyone to look twice.
Except his eyes. His eyes burned — a low, constant fire of ambition that his circumstances had never quite managed to extinguish.
He had no home. No stable place to sleep. He ate by finding work each day — whatever was available, whatever paid — and went to sleep wherever he landed. He was not bitter about this. Or rather, he had made a choice not to be.
He believed, with the kind of conviction that is either admirable or delusional depending on whether it turns out to be right, that one day something would change.
One day, his life would catch up to what he felt he was supposed to be.
Then — on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon — he passed an old man in an alley.
The old man was selling things. Strange, miscellaneous, improbable things. His pitch was delivered with the energy of someone who has given it many times and stopped caring whether it was believed: ancient items from the ruins of great cultivators. World-shaking powers. The chance to ascend to immortality.
Obviously a scam.
He kept walking.
Then his eye caught the corner of a book — worn, torn at the spine, barely holding together — and he slowed for just a fraction of a second.
That was enough.
The old man launched into his pitch with the precision of someone who has learned to read that particular hesitation.
"Young man — I can see you have a great destiny. This book was recovered from the ruins of a powerful cultivator. Many factions fought over it across the ages, and none could claim it. It is said that only someone truly destined could even read it." He leaned forward. "Perhaps it was always meant for you. I'll let it go for just ten Bronze Coins."
He looked at the old man. He looked at the book.
He knew it was a scam. He was not a fool.
But he also had nothing. And the thing about having nothing is that even a scam looks like a door — because what exactly are you protecting by not opening it?
He hesitated.
The old man, reading his audience, revised downward.
"Seven coins. For someone with your obvious potential."
Still nothing.
"Three."
His hand moved slightly. Then stopped.
The old man stared at him. Then, with the theatrical melancholy of someone performing for no audience:
"One coin. Final offer. Even destiny doesn't come free."
His hand reached toward the book and stopped again.
"I don't have it now." He said quietly. "But I'll have it by evening. Will you hold it?"
The old man looked at him for a long moment.
"For you — I'll wait."
★ — ★ — ★
That evening, in a corner of the back alleys, he sat with the book across his knees.
He had spent everything he'd earned that day on it.
He read it slowly, by what light was available. Then he read it again. The book contained breathing exercises — simple, unimpressive at first glance. But there was something in them that was different from the standard methods he'd encountered. Something he couldn't name.
He tried them. Nothing happened.
He tried again the next day. And the next.
After several weeks, he noticed something. He was less tired. He could do more work, stay out longer, recover faster. His daily earnings went up. He ate a little more each day.
Slow. Barely perceptible. But real.
A year passed. Then — without announcement, without drama — he felt it.
Qi.
He sat with that feeling for a long time, not trusting it. Then it was still there. He was elated in a way he had no words for.
Two more years and he broke through into the First Layer of Qi Refining. He was a cultivator.
He left the alley. Rented a small room. It was expensive for what it was, but he had a status to maintain now. Small as it was, it was his.
Then he hit the wall.
The breathing exercises in the book could no longer draw in enough Qi to support further cultivation. He had reached whatever ceiling they could take him to.
He spent money on other old books from other old men in other alleys. None of them worked. He was properly scammed several times. He looked for the original old man — to thank him, to ask where the book had come from — and couldn't find him.
If the old man had known what his throwaway scam had actually done, the news might well have stopped his heart.
Time passed.
Three more years. He found his way into contact with an underground organization. They had resources. They had cultivators. They offered what he needed in exchange for work.
He agreed without much deliberation.
The work started simple. Gathering information. Moving packages. Small things. But as his cultivation rose and his usefulness increased, the work changed. More dangerous. More morally complicated. He stopped asking certain questions.
Years passed. He accumulated power. He accumulated things he couldn't undo.
The young man with the burning eyes and the unshakeable belief in his own destiny was still in there somewhere — but further back now, behind everything else that had piled up on top of him.
He retained just enough of himself to know what he had traded away. He was not sure, on most days, whether that awareness made things better or worse.
Then came the day he could see the threshold of Foundation Establishment — and couldn't reach it.
His body, ground down by years of criminal work and insufficient resources, didn't have enough left. The organization offered him a solution: a special compound that would force the breakthrough. The cost was his remaining life energy and any future cultivation potential.
He took it without sleeping on the decision.
He broke through. He stood in Foundation Establishment for the first time and felt the cold water of it immediately — the side effects settling in, his body confirming what he had already known it would confirm. He could not cultivate further. Ever.
He stood in the street outside and let that land.
Then he found himself thinking, for the first time in a very long time, of the young man he had been — hungry, ambitious, absolutely certain that one day the world would recognize what he was.
He left the organization that night.
He had no plan. He owed debts he couldn't repay and had done things he couldn't take back. He walked.
In one of the streets he passed through, a transaction was taking place. A young woman — delicate, clearly terrified, tears running quietly down her face — was being handed over to a wealthy man who was counting coins with the detached air of someone completing a minor errand.
He stopped.
He looked at her face.
He felt something move in him that he'd assumed had died years ago.
A tear fell from his eye.
Then another. Then he was crying — openly, in the middle of the street, in a way he had not done since before he could remember. Years of it, all arriving at once.
The transaction halted. People on the street stopped. The wealthy man stared. Even the young woman looked up, startled out of her own grief by the sight of a grown man coming apart in public.
"Stop." He said, somewhere in the middle of it, voice unsteady. "I'll buy her."
"Who are you?" The nobleman's eyes swept over him with immediate disdain. "She's going for a thousand Gold Coins."
He produced the bag from a storage ring. Set it down. Picked up the woman gently — she was too stunned to resist — and was gone before the nobleman had finished processing what had just happened.
The guards gave chase. They came back empty-handed.
The nobleman stood in the street with a full bag of coins and a mood that had completely soured.
"He knows better than to make an enemy of me." He said, to no one in particular, and left.
The crowd dispersed. The story stayed.
A cultivator — moved by a stranger's tears — had bought a slave on the street and wept doing it. That was the version that spread through the drinking houses of Mist City. People embellished it, debated it, forgot it, and moved on.
A few days later, another story followed the first: that the cultivator had married the woman and they were living quietly in a small house somewhere on the outskirts.
Most people found this amusing and improbable and forgot about it quickly.
The ones who had actually seen his face — the look in his eyes when he saw her tears — did not forget quite as quickly.
Some things, once seen, are harder to look away from than others.
★ — ★ — ★
The roads of the Luo Kingdom stretched outward in every direction from Mist City — toward the capital, toward the border districts, toward places that hadn't yet entered any story.
Two figures moved along one of those roads, unhurried.
One wore a hood and sunglasses and carried himself with the quiet confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going.
The other was a nine-year-old boy in golden-white robes with a locket against his chest, already thinking three steps ahead and pretending not to.
The morning was clear. The road was long.
Feng Han looked ahead and felt, underneath the uncertainty and the weight of everything he was walking toward, something simpler.
Anticipation.
He had spent nine years waiting for something to begin.
It had.