A sharp jolt of pain dragged Qin Feng out of unconsciousness.
His ribs ached. His skin stung. And every muscle in his body screamed as if his bones had been shattered and his flesh scalded by fire.
Dust clung to his lips. The taste of blood, metallic and bitter, lingered on his tongue. With great effort, he parted his chapped lips and inhaled. The air here was different — colder, drier, scented faintly with pine, old earth, and the distant fragrance of wild herbs.
Not the Qin Clan.
Not the training grounds.
He was somewhere else.
The memories came flooding back like a tide: the challenge, the beating, the ridicule, and finally the order to be dragged away like garbage.
His fingers curled into the dirt. The humiliation still burned hotter than his wounds.
He tried to move.
Pain lanced through his side, and he collapsed with a muffled groan. His ribs were bruised, maybe cracked, but not broken. That much he could tell from the way they ached. Still, moving felt like crawling through broken glass.
Slowly, painstakingly, he shifted onto his back, then rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto trembling arms. The effort left him panting, sweat pooling beneath his collar.
The sun hung overhead. He could feel it against his skin, warm and harsh.
But his world remained shrouded in darkness.
Blind.
Still blind.
He tilted his head, trying to listen. The faint clatter of hooves had long since faded. The cart was gone.
They hadn't even spared the effort to kill him outright.
No… they wanted the world to do that for them.
He was alone now.
Truly alone.
After a long moment, he sat upright. Every movement strained his injuries, but he endured. His body was weak, yes. But not broken.
Not yet.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the distant rustle of trees and the howls of far-off spirit beasts. It was quiet here, not the ordered silence of a city courtyard, but the breathing, living quiet of the wild.
"I should still be in North Ember City," He thought.
North Ember itself was one of the five great cultivation hubs of the Western Provinces, famous for its alchemical markets, forging halls, and martial sects. A city where power spoke louder than law, and legacy was carved by strength alone.
Qin Feng had known little of that world.
The Qin Clan, once one of the city's respected families, had become his entire universe. Its narrow courtyards, cold stone halls, and whispered mockery were all he had ever known.
But they had rejected him.
Disowned him.
For fifteen years, he had walked its halls as a ghost.
And now, even that ghost had been cast out.
He reached out blindly, his fingers brushing a stone half-buried in the earth. Smooth, flat, almost like a roof tile.
Something stirred in him.
He dragged the tile toward him, and with his other hand, felt for another. Then another. He arranged them in front of him, kneeling in the dirt as if at a shrine. One by one, he placed them carefully: the Training Ground, his small sleeping quarters, the elder hall, the courtyard where they laughed at him, the garden where he overheard whispers about his mother, the room where they told him she was dead, and finally — the Clan Gate.
Each tile, a memory.
Each tile, a scar.
He sat there for a long time, his breath shallow, the wind whispering through the tall grass.
Then, with trembling hands, he lifted the first tile.
"To the pain of being born blind."
Crack.
He smashed it into the ground.
The second tile.
"To the hatred they held for my mother."
Crack.
The third.
"To their laughter every time I fell."
Crack.
He continued one after another, until the final tile, the one representing the gate, lay in his palm.
He held it for a long moment.
Then slowly, he stood.
And threw it as far as he could.
It disappeared into the wild grass, gone.
"I sever my ties," he whispered, voice hoarse. "I remain the son of Qin Jei but am no longer of the Qin."
He stood there, trembling.
There was still a question left unspoken. It echoed in his chest, louder than any wound, more haunting than the silence they'd left him in.
He turned his head toward the wind toward the world beyond.
And asked softly:
"What now?"