Han Suyin carried Yue Rin farther from the frozen ground before lowering her with care. She brushed away the snow and fine ice that had settled on Yue Rin's hair and clothes, then paused when Yue Rin shivered at her touch.
She placed a hand over Yue Rin's lower abdomen, sending a thin stream of Qi in to check her body.
The instant their Qi met, Han Suyin's face went pale.
She yanked her hand back as if burned and immediately gathered her own Qi, forcing it outward, pushing away the invading turbulence that tried to cling to her palm meridians and worm its way along her hand routes.
"What the…"
For a split second, she thought Yue Rin had instinctively used her Qi to strike back, before realizing she was still unconscious.
Yue Rin's Qi was unbelievably turbulent, crashing through her channels in jagged surges with no rhythm or restraint. Han Suyin's expression turned grave. If this continued, it would keep gnawing at Yue Rin's meridians until they were ruined.
Crippled, at best.
Dead, at worst.
The easiest solution for a conscious cultivator would be to expel it, or open a channel and let the turbulent Qi rush out. Circulating it was also possible, but that was slow, painful, and risky. It could fail, and it would still strain the meridians during the process.
Han Suyin looked down at Yue Rin's slack face.
There was only one option she could trust.
She would use herself as a conduit.
If she placed one hand on Yue Rin's dantian and opened a narrow channel between them, she could draw the turbulent Qi into her own body, guide it along one prepared path, and expel it out through her other hand.
Dangerous.
Stupidly dangerous.
The turbulent Qi would damage anything it passed through, and if it slipped into her core meridians, it could harm her as well.
Han Suyin exhaled and forced her fear down.
Then she began.
She manipulated her own Qi with meticulous control, clearing the meridian route from one arm across her body to the other arm, smoothing it as much as possible. She reinforced the surrounding pathways like barricades, sealing off side branches so the turbulence couldn't leak inward and wreak havoc.
Only when she was certain the route was as safe as she could make it did she move again.
Han Suyin set her left palm over Yue Rin's lower abdomen, and her right hand extended outward, fingers slightly spread.
She opened the channel.
A thin strand of that chaotic Qi immediately surged toward her like a starving thing.
Han Suyin's body jerked.
Pain snapped through her arm, sharp and biting, like needles being dragged through flesh. She gritted her teeth and forced her own Qi to hold the route steady.
Slowly, carefully, she drew only a thread at a time.
Even that thread made her vision blur at the edges.
She swallowed the sound that wanted to come out of her throat and kept going. At least Yue Rin was unconscious and wouldn't have to feel this part.
The turbulent Qi scraped along her meridians as it traveled, harsh and abrasive, like grit being forced through a narrow vein.
When it reached her other hand, Han Suyin forced it out.
It escaped in a thin, pale mist that hissed into the air, hot enough to raise a wavering heat-haze above the grass. The mist lingered for a heartbeat, then scattered into faint white motes that sank into the soil as if the earth itself drank them.
She closed her eyes and focused, drawing out another thread, then another, keeping her breathing even while her arms trembled from pain.
A burst of birds suddenly scattered from deeper in the forest, wings beating hard as they fled.
* * * *
Wei Zhen was cursing his luck as he walked.
His family had spent a considerable sum to send him into this secret realm, expecting him to return with precious treasures. Yet since entering, he'd found nothing but a handful of mortal herbs, and even those had been a rare sight.
Just as he was about to change direction, the smell of blood reached his nose.
Wei Zhen's first instinct was to turn away. Violence had never suited him, which was ironic for someone who had awakened as a cultivator at all.
But blood meant conflict.
And conflict sometimes meant leftovers.
He moved carefully toward the scent, keeping his steps light. The forest here felt wrong. Not cold, not quiet, but tense, as if even the insects had decided to hide.
Soon he began seeing signs of a fight. Sword gouges cut through bark. Stones were chipped. A tree trunk had been split by something heavy, and the ground was churned up like people had been dragged through it.
His mouth went dry.
Then he stepped closer where the marks were numerous and nearly choked.
Corpses were sprawled in unnatural angles everywhere, and every one of them had the same wound.
A hollow where the heart should be.
Blood pooled beneath them, thick and dark in places, soaking into the soil until the earth looked bruised. The copper smell was strong enough to make Wei Zhen's stomach roll.
What made him shiver wasn't just the gore.
It was their faces.
Pure, stunned horror, like they'd seen something they couldn't understand before it reached into them and took what it wanted.
Wei Zhen forced himself to swallow and scanned the treeline, searching every stone and branch.
Nothing moved.
No monster.
No cultivator.
Only wind through leaves.
That should have comforted him.
Instead, it felt like a warning.
Still… none of these bodies looked looted.
Wei Zhen's heartbeat sped up, greed crawling up his throat like a second breath.
Just a quick sweep. Then I'm gone!
He rushed in, trying not to look at their faces. He flipped one corpse over, tore open a belt pouch, and his eyes lit up.
Pills.
A few talismans.
Spirit stones.
He stuffed them into his bag and moved to the next, hands shaking as he worked faster, faster, telling himself it was fine, that the killer was long gone.
Wei Zhen kept rummaging through the corpses, oblivious to the twitch in his shadow.
* * * *
Yue Rin drifted through a nightmare she couldn't name.
She didn't know where she was. She didn't know who she was. All she knew was pain, endless pain, and darkness thick enough to swallow thought.
She tried to make a sound.
She tried to cry out.
The darkness swallowed it all.
Then, slowly, something began to pull that darkness away, like a curtain being peeled back.
Light seeped in.
The pain eased by a fraction, then another, until she could finally breathe without feeling like her chest would split.
Shapes formed.
Two figures stood ahead, blurred by brightness.
Her parents.
The ones she'd missed so much her chest ached even in sleep.
Without thinking, she ran.
"Mom! Dad!"
They turned as if they'd heard her, arms opening wide.
Yue Rin threw herself into them.
Warmth.
Familiar warmth.
Her throat tightened, and sobs spilled out of her before she could stop them.
Her mother's hand patted her back. "What's wrong, Rin?"
Yue Rin tried to speak. She tried to tell them everything. How much she missed them. How lonely she'd been. How scared.
But the moment she opened her mouth, her parents burst into blinding light.
Yue Rin flinched, eyes squeezing shut.
When she blinked again, the world had changed.
Grass.
A river reflecting moonlight.
Cool air brushing her cheeks.
Then she heard a soft voice near her ear.
"Finally awake?"
Yue Rin, still half-trapped in the dream, clung tighter, thinking it was her mother again.
"Too tight, too tight, I can't breathe." the voice wheezed.
Yue Rin froze.
That wasn't her mother.
She shoved the person away on instinct.
Han Suyin fell back and let out a pained hiss, landing hard on the grass.
Yue Rin's mind was still muddy, but then a headache stabbed through her skull, making her grab her head in pain with both hands and let out a raw scream.
Han Suyin, still wincing from the shove, saw her reaction and immediately leaned forward again. "What's wrong?"
Yue Rin didn't answer right away.
Fragments of last night rushed back, jagged and out of order. The feather. The siphoning. The cold pulse. The pain. After that, only darkness.
Her breathing turned shaky. She forced her eyes to focus on Han Suyin and asked. "What happened?"
Han Suyin studied her tear-streaked face, then chose not to mention how Yue Rin had woken up crying and hugging her like a lifeline. Instead, she explained everything that had happened.
When she finished, she added quietly, "I went around afterward and recovered some of your belongings before putting them back in your backpack. The rest… was too broken, or already taken."
Yue Rin barely registered the words.
She was already scanning herself from the inside, and the result made her stomach drop.
Her meridians weren't destroyed, not completely, but they were badly damaged, swollen and uneven, like channels that had been fractured and misaligned, forced back into place without ever truly stabilizing.
Her dantian was worse. it felt like a bucket dented inward, riddled with small leaks.
She drew in a cautious breath and tried to absorb Qi.
The instant the Qi touched her meridians, pain flared so hard her vision blurred white.
Han Suyin grabbed her shoulders immediately, steadying her. "Don't cultivate. Your internals are injured. You'll tear yourself further."
But Yue Rin barely heard her.
Her thoughts were a storm.
Maybe… maybe the feather was a powerful item.
Maybe I unlocked something. A system. A bloodline. An ability.
She tried calling out in her mind.
System?
Nothing.
She tried again, even whispering it out loud.
"System?"
Han Suyin stared at her, baffled.
No panel appeared. No strength surged through her limbs. No hidden power awakened.
Only soreness, and pain that snapped every time she tried to move Qi.
A cold thought slid into Yue Rin's chest and settled there.
I'm not a protagonist.
Nothing is going to happen.
And even if she wasn't fully crippled… right now she was no different from a mortal.
Han Suyin watched her expression collapse and felt her own chest tighten. She wanted to say something hopeful. She wanted to tell her there was a way, that she'd been lucky to survive with her meridians still intact.
But the truth was cruel.
With damage this severe, she would need an incredible opportunity to recover. And even then… it might only barely help.
Han Suyin's fingers curled into her palm.
Blame rose, bitter and familiar.
If she hadn't let Pei Jinglan drag her back. If she'd acted sooner. If she'd reached Yue Rin before the cultivators piled on and the chaos forced desperate choices…
Maybe Yue Rin wouldn't be lying here like this.