Xīng Hé smoothed her robes—fresh ones the maids had provided, silk the color of morning clouds—and tried to quiet the pounding of her heart. It didn't work. Her pulse hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
You can do this, she told herself.
She stepped out into the corridor.
Yao Xian was waiting.
The healer leaned against the wall with the casual indifference of someone who had been waiting for forever and would wait more. Her beautiful face was arranged in its usual expression of profound boredom, her eyes flickering briefly to Xīng Hé before returning to some middle distance.
"Finally," Yao Xian said, pushing off the wall. "I was beginning to think you'd fallen back asleep."
"I was preparing myself."
"Preparing." Yao Xian's lips twitched—not quite a smile, not quite a smirk. "How industrious."
They walked together through the manor, their footsteps echoing in the vast, empty halls. Xīng Hé tried to memorize the route—left at the jade fountain, right past the painting of mountains, straight through the courtyard with the silver trees—but the layout seemed to shift when she wasn't looking, corridors appearing where there had been walls, doors leading to rooms that hadn't existed moments before.
Before long they stood at the main door of her manor.
Yao Xian pointed toward a cluster of buildings in the distance, their crystalline surfaces catching the morning light. "That's my quarters over there," she said.
Xīng Hé followed her gesture, taking in the scale of the space surrounding them. The manor grounds stretched in every direction—courtyards and gardens and structures she couldn't identify, all connected by pathways that seemed to go on forever.
How do they walk through this every day?
As they approached the main gate, Xīng Hé spotted a guard standing at attention—a young woman in dark robes, her posture rigid, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
"Wait," Xīng Hé said, stopping.
Yao Xian paused, one eyebrow raised.
Xīng Hé turned to the guard. "When my friend comes to visit today—Qin Hongyu, the girl with red hair—treat her as you would treat me. And tell her she may wait in the guest quarters if she wishes."
She didn't ask. Didn't request. Simply stated it as fact—an order delivered with the casual authority of someone who expected obedience.
Then she turned back to Yao Xian as if she hadn't just commanded a divine existence while being the lowest-ranked person present.
The healer's expression flickered—surprise, quickly masked behind a smile that revealed nothing of her true thoughts. The guard stood frozen for a moment, uncertain how to respond to an order from someone who, by all rights, should have no authority to give one.
But neither of them refused.
Yao Xian produced a small stone from her sleeve—grey, unremarkable, the size of a thumbnail. She crushed it between her fingers, and the world dissolved.
The teleportation was smoother than Xīng Hé had expected. One moment she was standing in her courtyard; the next, she was somewhere else entirely
The new space was grander than anything Xīng Hé had seen so far.
A different building. Grander. The walls were dark wood polished to a mirror shine, the floors covered in carpets so thick her feet sank into them. Guards in formal attire greeted her immediately, their bows deep and respectful. They welcomed her with words that bordered on reverence, then handed her off to a waiting maid who led them toward the inner chambers.
Xīng Hé followed, Yao Xian at her side, taking in every detail. The architecture here was different—more imposing, more deliberate. High ceilings. Vast corridors. Artwork and ornamentation that radiated power and wealth.
The maid stopped before a set of massive doors —black lacquered wood inlaid with silver dragons, their eyes set with rubies that seemed to glow with inner fire.
"This is where I leave you," Yao Xian said.
Xīng Hé turned to her, surprised. "You're not coming?"
The healer's expression was carefully neutral. "I am not welcome in there," she said. "Unless I make a request that is approved, or I am summoned directly, I cannot see the Eminence." She gestured toward the doors. "You, on the other hand, have been summoned. So in you go."
"Wait for me," she told Yao Xian.
The healer's face went still. Something flickered in her eyes—shock, perhaps, or anger carefully contained. The maid beside her looked equally stunned, her composure cracking at the edges.
Neither of them spoke.
Xīng Hé stood still before the silver dragons, their ruby eyes staring down at her like drops of frozen blood.
She took a breath. Let it out. Took another.
Then she pushed open the doors.
Then she pushed open the doors.
The dining hall was vast.
A table stretched the length of the room, long enough to seat a hundred, though only two places were set—one at the head, one beside it. Chandeliers of crystal hung from a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadow. The walls were lined with paintings of landscapes that moved when she looked at them—rivers flowing, leaves rustling, clouds drifting across painted skies.
A single figure sat at the head of a long table, eating with the unhurried grace of someone who had all the time in the world.
He was impossibly beautiful. Long brown hair fell past his shoulders like a waterfall of silk, catching the light with every subtle movement. His features were perfect—too perfect, the kind of beauty that existed only in paintings and dreams. He appeared no older than twenty, though Xīng Hé knew he had lived for millennia.
The kind of face that made you want to look away and keep staring at the same time.
Xīng Hé felt heat rise to her cheeks and quickly suppressed it.
Does advancing cause this?
She knew it did—had read about it in her family's texts. As divine existences evolved, their physical forms refined themselves, shedding imperfections, moving toward an idealized state. By the time someone reached the upper stages, they would look like this: ageless, flawless, untouched by the decay that claimed ordinary mortals.
Which meant this man was old. Very old. A thousand years, at least—possibly more.
She did the calculations quickly. If he'd been at the Domain stage during the last ascension, five centuries ago, he could have been taken along by an ascending transcendent. The fact that he was still here meant he'd either been at Ascendant already, making him too powerful to need assistance... or he'd reached Transcendence on his own in the centuries since.
Either way, she was looking at one of the most powerful beings in the world.
And she had to pretend she didn't know that.
"I am here to see His Eminence, sir," she said, keeping her voice respectful, her posture humble.
The man looked up from his meal.
His eyes met hers—dark, ancient, carrying the weight of centuries behind a youthful face. He studied her for a moment, and she felt the attention like a physical pressure, a scrutiny that seemed to see through skin and bone to whatever lay beneath.
Then he nodded.
She doesn't know much about divine existences yet, Heiyun Jue thought. Same as the others.
But he couldn't be entirely sure.
"Sit down," he said.
Xīng Hé remained standing.
"I have been told by the healer," she said carefully, "that I should only relax when His Eminence says I should."
A lie. Yao Xian had said no such thing. But it was the kind of lie that demonstrated obedience—showed that she understood hierarchy, respected authority, followed instructions without question.
Heiyun Jue's expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted slightly.
Good, he thought. They're drilling obedience into her. Little by little.
Then, without warning, the world moved.
Pain.
Pure, absolute, overwhelming pain.
One moment she was standing beside the table. The next, something hit her—not a hand, not a weapon, just force—and she was flying. She slammed into the wall hard enough to feel her skull bounce against stone, hard enough to taste blood in her mouth, hard enough to hear something crack.
Pain exploded through her—white-hot, blinding, consuming.
But she didn't have time to process it.
Space twisted.
The ground beneath her wasn't ground anymore. Up became down. The floor she should have fallen toward instead pushed her away, and suddenly she was rising—falling upward, her body inverting, her stomach lurching with impossible vertigo.
She hit the ceiling.
Her skull cracked against the crystalline surface, her vision bursting into stars and darkness. Blood filled her mouth—from a bitten tongue, from a split lip, from somewhere inside that had broken.
Then space righted itself, and she was falling again.
Properly this time. Downward.
The floor didn't want for her instead it rushed up to meet her. She had just enough time to twist, to get her hands in front of her face—
Her leg hit first.
The crack was loud in the silent hall. Louder than her scream, which came a heartbeat later—involuntary, animal, ripped from her throat by sheer agony.
She lay on the floor, her vision swimming, her leg twisted at an angle that legs weren't meant to bend. The pain was a living thing, a beast with claws and teeth, tearing through her body in waves.
Through the haze of agony, she was aware of Heiyun Jue.
He hadn't moved from his chair.
He was still eating.
"Interesting," he said, as if commenting on the weather. He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. "Most children would have passed out by now."
Xīng Hé couldn't respond. She could barely breathe. The pain was eating her alive, consuming her thoughts, drowning her in—
Something shifted.
Deep inside her, in a place she couldn't name, something moved.
The pain began to recede.
Not fade—recede. Like a tide pulling back from shore.
Xīng Hé watched, distantly, as if from outside her own body, as her broken leg began to twitch. The bone—shattered, she could see the white of it through her torn robes—started to shift. To move. The fragments grinding back together with a sound like gravel under boots.
The blood that had pooled on the floor trembled, then lifted. Droplets rose into the air, defying gravity, defying reason. They flowed backward—not spreading, but returning—soaking back into her wounds, which were closing, the torn flesh knitting together like fabric being rewoven.
She felt it happening. Felt her body undoing the damage, reversing the destruction moment by moment, as if someone had grabbed time itself and pulled it backward.
Restoration.
The insight bloomed in her mind like a flower opening to sunlight. She understood something—felt a truth pressing against her consciousness, demanding acknowledgment, demanding action.
But she couldn't act on it. Not here. Not now. Not with Heiyun Jue watching.
She kept her head bowed, her face pressed toward the floor, enduring the agony and the ecstasy of her concept working through her body. The fatigue of unconscious use pressed down on her like a physical weight, dragging at her consciousness, demanding sleep.
She bit her tongue again.
Don't fall asleep. If you sleep, you'll act on it without meaning to. And he'll see.
The pain kept her awake. Barely.
By the time her body finished healing, she was pale and trembling, her robes stained with blood that was slowly being absorbed back into her skin.
Within seconds—though it felt like hours—she was whole again.
The pain lingered, a phantom ache in bones that were no longer broken. But the wounds were gone. The blood was gone. Even her robes, somehow, were pristine.
She lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling, her heart hammering so hard she thought it might burst.
What was that?
"Remarkable."
Heiyun Jue's voice floated down to her, calm and curious.
She turned her head—slowly, carefully—and saw him standing over her now. When had he moved? She hadn't seen him leave his chair. "That's exactly what I wanted to see."
But more than that—the nature of what he'd witnessed intrigued him. The injuries had reversed themselves. The damage had undone itself. Blood had flowed backward, bone had reformed, wounds had sealed in an order that was the exact inverse of how they'd been inflicted.
Time, he concluded. Her concept is related to time.
It made sense. Only temporal manipulation could produce that kind of reversal—that rewinding of cause and effect, that undoing of what had already occurred. A powerful concept. A dangerous one. Especially in the hands of a child who had no idea how to control it.
Like giving a sword to an infant.
But that was what training was for. And with proper guidance, an infant could become a warrior.
Time?
The word echoed in her mind. He thought her concept was Time. He thought—
He doesn't know.
The realization cut through the fog of shock and lingering pain. Heiyun Jue, one of the most powerful beings in existence, was standing over her and drawing the wrong conclusion.
He thought she could reverse time.
He didn't know about Balance. About Restoration. About Preservation.
He didn't know she had three concepts.
"Your Eminence," she managed, her voice hoarse. "I... I don't understand. What just happened?"
She made herself sound confused. Frightened. A child who had experienced something beyond her comprehension.
It wasn't entirely an act.
Heiyun Jue studied her for a moment, then extended a hand.
She stared at it—those perfect fingers, that flawless skin—and felt her stomach clench with revulsion. But she took it anyway. Let him pull her to her feet.
"What is your concept?" he asked. Direct. Casual. As if he hadn't just broken her body for the crime of existing.
"I don't know, Your Eminence." The lie came easily now. "I haven't... I haven't been told anything. I don't even know what stage I'm at."
Because I haven't received any lectures, she thought, praying he would accept the explanation. Because I've been unconscious since the awakening.
Heiyun Jue tilted his head, considering.
Then he smiled.
It was a warm smile. A paternal smile. The smile of a kind mentor pleased with his student's progress.
It was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.
"Well then," he said, releasing her hand and gesturing toward the table. "We have much to discuss. But first—eat. You must be hungry."
He returned to his seat as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't just shattered her leg and watched her body rebuild itself from the inside out.
End of Chapter 13