Granny Cheng moved with the slow certainty of someone who has seen life bend and straighten for decades. She crossed the village with a little wooden box cradled as if it contained a child, because to her it did. When she approached the willow the leaves bowed as if in welcome; Liu Shen peeled back a branch and the air around them smelled of fresh rain.
"This belonged to you before we knew what you were," Granny Cheng said, setting the box in the crook of Liu Shen's root. The box creaked open to reveal a pendant carved like a tiny, imperfect leaf. The pendant's grain was old as soil and warm as a sleeping animal.
Qingmu reached toward it with sticky fingers and the pendant flickered to life — a soft green reminder that it had been waiting a very long time.
Shi Hao took it and turned it in his palm. "What did you say you found it on, Granny?"
"Right where you two are sitting now," she said. "The day of the storm that rattled the eastern pines. I was placing offerings for a safe night when the earth pushed it forward."
Liu Shen's voice was a slow river: "Charms like these are seldom lost by chance. They are misplaced by fate to find their proper hands."
When Granny Cheng tied the pendant onto a vine and placed it gently at Qingmu's tiny throat, the system's reaction was immediate and deep.
[Dao Seed Resonance: Detected. Heart-of-Renewal Pendant Bound. Passive Effect: Stabilizes Dao Seed growth cycle; increases Blessing receptivity by 8%.]
Qingmu chuckled and tried to gnaw the pendant; his gums made the wooden charm thrum like a small drum. The charm did not break. Instead, it warmed, and a trail of faint green lights traced the pendant's grain into the child's aura as if drawing a map onto his skin.
The villagers watched, eyes wet with a mixture of awe and something like relief. They had watched many things: births, weddings, harvests that fed bellies but starved the heart. Seeing something set into a child by the old midwife was a balm.
It was not only a token. The pendant carried memory. Later that night, when the village slept and the moon hung slender as a promise, Qingmu rolled over and the pendant's glow spilled like a page opening in his dream. He saw—brief as a thought—the image of a woman shaped from branches and wind, hands spread over a field, singing a song without words. It faded before he understood it, leaving only the lingering warmth.
Granny Cheng stayed and wept quietly into her sleeves, not from sorrow but from a long-sunken gratitude. "He will need this," she said. "Not because it is powerful—although perhaps it is—but because he will need reminders that roots and crafts are younger than patience."
Liu Shen accepted the gift with a leaf brushed like a benediction. In the hush that followed, Bai'e issued a soft, contented whuff. The wolf nosed the pendant as if to acknowledge the joining of past and future.
The pendant's binding was a small thing in the scheme of the heavens, but for the village it was a public sealing: the Willow Child was not an accident, nor a burden to be bartered. He carried a whisper of history in his chest, and with that whisper came attention—both the kind that heals and the kind that prowls.
---