The morning sun never quite reached the eastern wing of the Ji Clan estate. It was hidden behind looming walls and stone pavilions—built not for elegance but separation. It was where the servant girls slept, where worn robes dried on bamboo poles, and where old incense ash fell without prayer.
Shen Liuyin stepped quietly over the jade-tiled threshold of the courtyard, a bundle of rags in her arms. Her eyes swept across the still-sleeping corridor with mechanical calm. She had woken before the others again.
Some would say she was diligent.
The truth? She simply hadn't slept.
The nights were colder since the mourning. Her sister's voice—small, bright, naïve—still echoed too clearly in her mind. The apricot tree hadn't bloomed. Not once. And Shen Liuyin wasn't foolish enough to believe it ever would again.
But today, a task was assigned. One she hadn't done before.
Clean the western archive.
It was a forgotten wing of the estate, seldom used since the last elder passed away. Dust had claimed every shelf. Cobwebs draped over ancient records, like funeral veils left uncollected. And she, the girl with the quiet eyes, was deemed least likely to break anything important.
She stepped inside, and the door groaned shut behind her like a whispering tomb.
Liuyin knelt with her brush and bucket, sweeping away years of filth without a word. Hours passed. The scent of old bamboo scrolls, faded ink, and mildew filled the air. She coughed once, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and returned to work.
And then—she found it.
Half-buried beneath a fallen wooden plank, curled like a dried leaf, was a fragment of a scroll. Not one of the Ji Clan's glossy, jade-bound manuals. This was older. Cracked. Burnt at the edges. Marked with a sigil she didn't recognize.
Her fingers hovered, then touched the parchment.
The moment her skin met it, her chest pulsed. Hot. Then cold. Then hot again.
Her blood stirred, and her vision flickered—
Wings. Feathers. Fire.
Gone.
She blinked.
The sensation had vanished, but her hands were trembling.
She unrolled the fragment slowly, breath caught in her throat. The text was barely legible—scrawled in a script she didn't recognize but somehow… understood.
A cultivation method. Incomplete. Fractured. Dangerous.
Perfect.
---
That night, she didn't return to her shared room.
Instead, she slipped into the courtyard behind the east wing, where a dry koi pond lay abandoned and the moon hung crookedly in the sky.
She sat cross-legged, the scroll fragment clutched in her lap, her bare feet touching the frost-touched ground. The cold bit into her bones. But she didn't shiver.
She read the technique. Once. Twice. Thrice.
She didn't need to master it. Just survive it.
Closing her eyes, she focused inward.
Qi… gather.
She tried to follow the breathing pattern—inhale from the dantian, circulate through the limbs, push against the meridians.
Her chest spasmed.
Pain seared down her spine, sharp as glass.
She coughed violently, a trickle of blood slipping from her lips.
Still, she didn't stop.
Again.
Qi… gather.
The technique wasn't designed for her. Not in its original form. But there was something familiar—something that responded when she didn't force it.
She calmed her breath. Let the rhythm slow. Instead of mastering the scroll, she listened to it. Listened to her blood.
A flicker of warmth stirred beneath her ribcage.
The faint scent of smoke rose from her palm.
She opened her eyes.
A tiny flame, no larger than a firefly, hovered over her hand—its edges feathered, golden-red, alive.
And it didn't burn her.
Shen Liuyin stared at it.
Then she smiled.
It was the first thing she'd created that was hers alone.
Not given. Not begged. Not borrowed.
She let the flame vanish. Her body swayed, exhausted. Her vision blurred. But she stayed seated until the stars began to fade into morning.
She had reached the first step of Body Tempering.
Without a sect. Without a teacher. Without a voice raised in triumph.
Just a spark.
---
At dawn, she returned to the servant quarters.
No one noticed the faint soot on her fingers.
No one noticed her half-limp.
But she noticed everything.
The weight of her breath. The pulse of energy behind her heart. The fire waiting for a name.
And when she passed the courtyard where her sister used to sweep, she whispered softly,
"I will not need their approval. I only need time."
Her fingers brushed against the scroll hidden beneath her robes.
The first lesson was complete.
The girl they thought would serve quietly forever had begun to kindle.
___
Three days passed.
The courtyard behind the east wing became her haven.
While other servant girls murmured in their sleep or whispered about young masters, Shen Liuyin returned to the dried koi pond each night—bones aching, muscles sore, and a flame nestled deep inside her that refused to go out.
She'd memorized the scroll's fragment. Every burn mark. Every broken stroke. She recited it in her mind like prayer, each breath following its rhythm more easily than the last.
And each night, the flame grew.
First a spark. Then a flicker.
Tonight—it danced.
The flame hovered an inch above her palm, swaying with the wind. Not ordinary fire. Its edges shimmered like gold-threaded silk, and its warmth settled in her bones instead of burning them.
But it wasn't just flame anymore.
It had shape now.
Wings.
Just for a second.
Then it vanished again.
Liuyin opened her eyes slowly. The night sky spun above her. Her body dripped with sweat, and her robe clung like soaked parchment. But her breathing was steady.
I reached the third layer of Body Tempering.
No teacher. No pill. No applause.
Only silence.
And yet her soul had never felt louder.
---
Back in the servant quarters, whispers followed her now.
"Why does her hair look different? Darker."
"She doesn't limp anymore… did you notice that?"
"She's been skipping meals."
They didn't dare speak louder. But fear crept into their voices. The kind born not from cruelty—but from witnessing change you don't understand.
Shen Liuyin ignored them.
Her body was changing. Faster than any technique should allow.
Her vision sharpened. She could read the numbers carved into stones from across the courtyard. Her hearing caught insects behind paper walls. Her dreams… burned.
She stopped coughing. The old ache in her spine disappeared.
And every night she meditated, the heat within her grew more familiar.
Not hostile.
Not even foreign.
Just… hidden.
Like it had always been there, waiting.
---
But power wasn't the only thing awakening.
Memories were, too.
It happened while scrubbing the jade path outside the training ground. She'd crouched down, sleeves rolled up, knuckles white with cold water and effort.
A figure passed by.
Robes trailing. Hair bound in obsidian thread. The faint scent of lotus and sandalwood.
Ji Yuanheng.
Her hands stilled. She didn't look up.
But her body remembered.
The chill in her chest. The way her legs had given out as she knelt in front of him that day.
The day Yueyin died.
The day he had looked down at her, lips curling in disgust, and said—
"You are not important enough to be remembered."
A sound cracked in her ears.
It took her a second to realize it was her brush.
She had crushed it in her hand.
Water spilled over her knees, but she didn't move.
Not yet. Not yet. Not until I can make him remember.
---
That night, when she meditated, the fire responded to her fury.
It flared to life the moment her mind brushed against that memory.
The flame in her palm didn't stay still.
It grew taller. Brighter. And then it shrieked.
A sound—not quite bird, not quite beast—echoed from within the fire. Her skin trembled. The air shimmered around her. It wasn't loud, but it was alive.
Her eyes snapped open.
And for a second—just a second—she saw a shadow behind her reflected in the waterless pond.
Feathers. Not wings of ash—but of blood and gold.
She gasped. The vision vanished.
A thin line of smoke curled upward from the stone.
And from somewhere in her chest, something stirred.
Demon Phoenix Bloodline.
The name rose unbidden in her thoughts. She didn't know how she knew. But she knew.
The blood in her veins wasn't just human. It never had been.
It was ancient.
It was angry.
And it wanted out.
---
She stood up, breathing hard.
The moonlight reflected on her fingers—now etched with a faint reddish-gold hue under the skin, like flame trying to break free.
She held her palm out again, calling the flame.
It obeyed.
But this time, she didn't try to control it.
She let it show her what it wanted.
And it shifted. From flame to claw.
Then claw to feather.
Then back to flame.
Not complete.
Not stable.
But growing.
---
The next morning, Liuyin didn't rise when the bells rang.
She stayed in meditation longer.
When a senior maid entered to scold her, she opened her eyes and said nothing.
Her stare alone was enough to make the woman hesitate before leaving.
That night, her dreams burned again.
But this time, her sister stood in them—barefoot, smiling, holding out her hand from across a field of fire.
Wait for me, Liuyin whispered.
Just a little longer.