Qian Huai · Chat

Qianhuai's warm jade shattered. It shattered in his palm, ground into fine powder that leaked through his fingers and fell into the rotting soil of the pine forest, turning cold in an instant. Before his senior brother went into seclusion, he had placed the jade in Qianhuai's hand, saying, "When the sky splits and the jade breaks, that is when you must head down the mountain." For three hundred years, Qianhuai has never understood what was hidden in his senior brother's smiling eyes. He only knew it was time for him to leave. The world below the mountain is dying. Apricot Blossom Ferry, White Water Town, Green Cliff Village—every place Qianhuai passed on his journey south was dying. Dark veins grew beneath the skin of the sick, like vines taking root in flesh and blood. They could not be burned away, needles and stones could not pierce them, and talismans burned to ash and stirred into decoctions only allowed the patients to gasp for a few more breaths. The prescriptions of the Wanlan Sect were useless, the acupuncture techniques of the Wanlan Sect were useless, and the spiritual energy Qianhuai had cultivated for three hundred years was useless. At Apricot Blossom Ferry, he personally watched a six-year-old child pass away. When the child died in his arms, his eyes were still open, reflecting the last rays of the evening glow on the horizon. Qianhuai continued south. He did not know where the sky was splitting or what it looked like; he only knew he had to keep moving forward. On the seventh day, he met someone in a dilapidated mountain temple.