Chapter 8: A Visitor from the Sky
It started with a bell.
Not one they owned.
No one in the village had a bell that big, or that deep. The sound was like thunder hummin through metal—low, long, and echoin across the hills.
Alex froze in the field, halfway through plantin red bamboo sprouts.
"System," he muttered, "that you?"
"Negative. External spiritual object entering local atmosphere."
Jun peeked out from the shed, straw hat askew. "Did someone drop a cow from heaven or what?"
Alex didn't answer. He was already lookin up.
High, high above the clouds—something was fallin.
It wasn't fire. Not a meteor.
It was... smooth. Like a giant pearl carved into an egg shape, wrapped in silver light and blue script that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Alex blinked.
Meilin ran up beside him. "That's a flying treasure."
"No," he said slowly, "that's a sky coffin."
Jun choked on his tea.
"Excuse me?"
Sky coffins weren't coffins, not really. They were stasis pods used by ancient cultivator clans—emergency escape things when their sects got exploded or invaded or whatnot.
Most of them never landed.
But this one?
It did.
With a boom that made the chickens lay scrambled eggs.
The pearl-thing slammed into a field near the orchard. Dirt flew. Spirit insects exploded into glitter. The shockwave knocked over four goats and one fence.
Alex sighed. "...I just painted that fence."
The system beeped in his head.
"Foreign object identified. Code signature: Celestial Grade. Origin: Skybound Sect (extinct)."
"Extinct, huh?" Alex dusted off his sleeves. "That's promising."
They walked toward the crater.
The pod hissed. Steam poured from cracks.
Jun had his hoe ready. Meilin held her blade low. Alex tapped the pod with his staff.
It opened.
Inside... was a girl.
Maybe 16, maybe 200 (cultivation made ages weird).
She had long silver hair tied in a braid, robes of white and pale green, and a mark on her forehead shaped like a falling star.
She was snorin like a cat.
Jun blinked. "...She dead?"
The girl suddenly snorted, turned over, and mumbled, "...five more centuries…"
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Nope. Just lazy."
They got her out and brought her to the porch.
She woke up three hours later with a massive yawn, rubbed her eyes, then looked around.
"This... isn't the Jade Pavilion..." she murmured.
"Nope," Alex said, pourin tea. "Welcome to Still Wind Farm."
She blinked at him, looked at Meilin, then at Jun, then at the goat that was tryin to eat her braid.
"I think I crashed."
"Technically," Jun said, "you landed violently."
She sat up and smiled. "I'm Yun'er. Last disciple of the Skybound Sect."
Alex nodded. "I'm Alex. Farmer."
Her eyes narrowed. "...Farmer?"
He pointed behind him. "That's cabbage. Over there's rice. And under the hill is an ancient evil we're ignorin for now."
Yun'er blinked. "...Cool."
That evening, she told her story.
Her sect had sealed her in the sky pod centuries ago to escape the fall of their world. She had no idea the war ended... or that her people were all gone.
She smiled through it. But it was the quiet kind of smile people wear when their heart's cracked.
Alex handed her a bowl of soup.
"Stay as long as you want," he said.
She looked around. "You sure?"
"Lady, you fell into my cabbage patch. You're already part of the soil now."
That night, the memory tree hummed again.
Not a warning.
A welcome.
And below the hill... the sleeper listened.
Because it remembered that voice.