In the deepest part of the Eternal Spirit Forest, where maps grew legs and ran away and compasses simply spun in despair, a pair of white wolves were arguing.
Not growling. Not snarling.
Arguing.
And not just in wolf howls or tail wags either—but full, fluent, perfectly enunciated human words.
"I said wrap him in the moss blanket!"
"Your moss blanket smells like squirrel piss, Po."
"It's nature-scented!"
"It's squirrel piss-scented!"
The argument halted as the "him" in question—a plump-cheeked baby wrapped in leaf-twine, blinking slowly and chewing on air—sneezed. A single puff. Delicate. Adorable. Very very adorable.
Boom.
The sky cracked open with thunder so loud it caused a parrot three trees over to fall mid-flight, screaming, "HE'S A BO—!" before vanishing in a puff of divine smoke. The air smelled faintly of fried feathers.
Baby Po whimpered. "Why does the sky keep doing that?"
Uncle Hei growled and glared upwards. "Because the Heavenly Emperor is a bored old goat who wrote one gender law too many!"
They stared at the baby. The baby stared back. Then drooled.
"…Well," Baby Po finally said, adjusting the moss (not piss-scented, he insisted) around the child's tiny feet. "He's clearly a girl."
"She has something dangling," Hei pointed out with the calm of someone whose soul had long since made peace with reality. He even looked at the blue sky with nos igns of thunder anymore.
"She has a yin core. A higher concentration than any immortal born in the last ten thousand years."
"And she-this has a penis, Po."
Baby Po sniffed and tucked the baby tighter against his furred side. "That's just… an accessory."
Yeah, a genital that helps identify gender is an accessory.
They both nodded solemnly. Some truths were better left unchallenged—particularly when divine lightning strikes waited to smite grammatically correct pronouns. What in the grammar nazi is that?
By the time Xiulan—named for the mist flowers that bloomed under moonlight—was three years old, he'd already learned three important things:
Snakes make great babysitters. Especially the venomous ones. They're clingy, affectionate, and if you don't squirm too much, their hugs only cut off half your breath.
Bears can't sing. But they'll do it anyway. Loudly. Every full moon. He always danced. And their dance is practically making pits in the ground. They usually fall in one the next day.
If someone whispers, "Isn't that a boy?" anywhere within a twenty-meter radius—
Boom.
Sometimes it was a tree that got hit. Once, it was an unfortunate squirrel that never questioned anyone's gender again. Once, it was Uncle Hei's entire hut. After that, they didn't have huts anymore. Huts were too gender-ambiguous.
Xiulan, for his part, didn't mind. He was loved. Fed. Played with. Taught how to dig for spiritual mushrooms (they always hummed if you tickled them just right), and once drank venom straight from Auntie Viper's tail just because she dared him.
He giggled until he fainted. They called that a win (they had to revive him with the most expensive of herbs taken from the most dangerous area of the forest, earning him immunity to poisons).
At age five, Xiulan healed his first creature: a raven with a snapped wing.
He didn't chant, or light incense, or recite profound lines of ancient text—nothing. He just pressed a muddy hand against the wound, hummed a song the crickets taught him, and poured something—something yin and glowing—out of his palm. The high-concentration yin physique can not naturally heal, but his, a body of no yang, yet a boy, probably can.
The raven took flight again. Called him "Mother." And left a shiny rock behind as tribute.
Baby Po cried for three hours.
"I'm not crying," he barked. "It's just… it's the pollen."
Xiulan patted his head.
"It's winter, Po."
Uncle Hei whispered into his ear, "Don't correct him, you'll make him worse."
By age seven, Xiulan was writing runes with animal blood on river stones. He can do a lot of other things, like calling birds by their names, writing protection runes on their wings, creating pigs that fly, boars that jump like rabbits, and turtles that race...
He didn't know why. It just felt right.
The runes pulsed with warmth, and when he placed one under a squirrel's tail, the squirrel learned how to recite the weather forecast. Incorrectly, but still. If it said, "It will rain," it causes droughts...
Everything was peaceful.
Everything was good.
Except…
One morning, a visitor arrived.
A human cultivator. Lost. Dirty. Loud. Probably hadn't bathed since the last cosmic cycle.
A shivering mess and probably not right in his head.
He stumbled into the clearing, saw Xiulan spinning in the air with flower petals trailing him, and muttered, confused:
"Wait… isn't that a boy?"
BOOM.
When the smoke cleared, only a single sandal remained.
Xiulan blinked, tilted his head, and sighed. "Why does everyone keep asking that?"
The sky gave a gentle rumble, like a thundercloud clearing its throat.
Uncle Hei, materializing beside him with a clawful of charred sandal leather, patted his head. "It's alright, daughter. You're perfect just the way you are."
"I'm not your daughter," Xiulan muttered.
"You are," said Baby Po, appearing with a basket of spirit berries.
"You really are," nodded a monkey in the tree.
"We support you!" hissed Auntie Viper.
"I'm… me," Xiulan grumbled and chomped a berry in defiance. He remembered how everything arond him was zapped when he called out his gender.
Somewhere in the heavens, a celestial secretary updated the records under "Miss Xiulan (High-Yin Female, no edits allowed)" and sighed.
And so, Xiulan grew up.
Surrounded by wild beasts with gentle hearts, raised by wolves with strong opinions, loved deeply, and smited regularly (mostly on behalf of others).
He would go on to write his own cultivation style. He would leave the forest. He would change the heavens.
But that was later.
For now?
He danced with bear cubs under moonlight and taught ducks how to swear.
It was a good life.
Even if the sky still occasionally exploded whenever someone said, "boy."