The wind changed on the first night.
Redleaf Town was too loud during the day to notice it—too full of the clatter of carts, the bark of merchants, and the steady drone of cultivators from The Chasing Clouds Sect striding like kings through muddy streets. But when the lamps dimmed and the town fell into uneasy sleep, Li Yao sat by the window of his inn room and listened.
It was colder than summer should be. The air still carried the scent of pine and scorched wood from distant wilds, but beneath it all, there was something sour. Something wet. Like the breath of a cave that had never seen light.
He didn't light a candle. Just listened, one hand on his wrapped blade.
No sound outside. No footsteps. Only that thick pressure, heavy like damp cloth against the walls. He didn't need to look to know something was wrong. He felt it in the marrow of his bones.
The same way he'd felt it in the village—when the beast tide hit, and afterward, when it came.
The half-man, half-beast. That thing.
It had seen him. Not with eyes, not even with spirit sense. It had marked him some other way, deeper than blood or qi. And even now, so far away, in a town bustling with cultivators, nobles, and spirit-detecting talismans, he knew it was still reaching for him.
Whatever it was, it hadn't let go.
But it wasn't watching with hatred. Or hunger.
It was worse than that.
It was watching with recognition.
**
By morning, the fog had rolled off the river in thick bands. Redleaf Town looked like a dream half-swallowed by smoke.
Li Yao moved through the streets with his hood up and blade hidden, just another refugee from another burned-out village. He bought stale mantou and strips of preserved meat with what little coin he had left. Some he kept. Some he packed in oiled cloth and buried behind the inn.
Auntie Mu's pouch—stitched from a wolf's gut and still bearing her faint clove scent—held the rest. She had given it to him after he returned from the hunt with the lynx corpse. "Good boys deserve strong bags," she'd said, thumping his shoulder. "Even better if they're filled with food."
It held more than just food now.
Dried herbs. Binding cloths. Bone needles. Two small vials of powdered beast core, scraped from the lynx's shattered center. She'd told him it could be used in a strengthening decoction or flung at a wound to stave off rot. He didn't know which would come first.
He spent the afternoon wandering the market, watching the sect disciples strut.
One performed sword forms blindfolded on a stage while flames danced from his sleeves. Another floated six feet above the ground, drawing gasps from villagers and snorts from rival disciples. A few crouched in the alleyways, gambling with painted bone dice and sniffing from thin silver tubes.
They moved like predators in a cage of rabbits.
Even the weakest among them was already in the third or fourth stage of Qi Refining, and the strongest? It was hard to tell. They didn't even bother hiding their cultivation. Their steps rang like bells. Their breath shimmered with subtle rhythm.
Li Yao watched them. Quietly.
He didn't hate them. Not really.
But he did wonder.
In the months since he'd started training, since he'd touched the Stone Root Method and begun hardening his body from the ground up, how far had they gone?
Qi Refining, even for the common disciple, was swift in the beginning. It wasn't rare for a promising recruit to reach the seventh or even eighth stage in under a season. That was the standard.
He, on the other hand, had reached only the second stage of Body Refining.
A path no sect taught. A path few even walked.
Not because it was hidden. But because it was hard.
Li Yao didn't know how far behind he truly was.
He only knew he could no longer afford to stop.
**
The second night brought dreams.
Or something like dreams.
He sat by the window again, but this time he let the candle burn. He told himself it was for his eyes. He told himself it was to see the street better in case of trouble.
But when he closed his eyes—
—the air shifted.
He was standing again in Green Pine Village. But the houses were ruined, roofless, caved in like broken skulls. Blood soaked the earth. Not red. Black. Thicker than it should have been.
He saw shapes in the fog. Beasts, crawling and writhing, gnawing on the dead. His dead. Auntie Mu. Uncle Wei. The girl who sold plums.
Then the fog parted.
And it was there again.
That thing. The half-man. The beast-walked skin. The twisted, wrong creature that had once maybe been human.
Its eyes were soulless. But they knew him.
This time, when it looked at him, the blade on his back screamed.
Li Yao woke up with the sword halfway drawn, the candle sputtered out, and a single line of blood dripping down from his nose.
**
The next day, Redleaf Town felt different.
The cultivators no longer played to the crowds. They stood in clusters now, speaking in low tones and watching each other more than the townsfolk. Even the refugee children ran quieter, sensing the shift.
Li Yao made one final trip to the east woods and buried his second cache of supplies.
He didn't know why.
Just that it was better to have a place to fall back to. A place to hide if something went wrong.
When he returned, the main square was already crowded.
A temporary stage had been erected, lined with blue silk and cloud-painted lanterns. A white banner fluttered overhead, inked with four calligraphed characters:
"Trial of Falling Skies."
A woman stepped forward in storm-colored robes.
She was older than the others, though not by much. Her voice carried without needing to shout.
"The Chasing Clouds Sect will begin its open examination tomorrow morning at dawn. All who seek to participate must register here before sundown today."
A few cheers. A few groans. The usual panic of last-minute preparations rippled through the square like heat off stone.
"Know this," she said, raising her hand. "No talismans. No pills. No outside weapons. Only that which your spirit, body, and mind can command. The trials are not meant to test your cleverness, but your worth."
There was a pause.
"Those who pass will ascend."
Another pause.
"Those who fail may not walk away."
This time, there was no laughter.
**
Li Yao turned and moved into the alley behind the tea shop.
He didn't register.
Not yet.
But he would.
And if anyone had been watching, they might have seen how his blade twitched ever so slightly when he heard the word fail.
Just as it had twitched two nights ago, when his thoughts turned toward the beast that had no soul.
It was as if the steel itself remembered.
And perhaps it did.