Crimson Cloud Sect was built like a blooming flower — petal-shaped pavilions surrounding the central trial grounds, each one veiled in silk curtains and winding bridges suspended over clouds. Her walk to the guest hall was long and exposed.
Disciples stopped what they were doing as she passed.
Some whispered. Some glared. One girl laughed quietly behind a fan.
"She thinks he favors her."
"Poor thing's still alive? Huh."
"She must've sold something more precious than her pride."
Liuyin said nothing. Their scorn was loud, but not sharper than memory.
She arrived at the main guest hall, carved from bloodstone and spirit jade, its gates open like a mouth waiting to swallow her.
Inside, the scent of incense. Cold, expensive, and cloying.
And Ji Yuanheng.
He sat alone at the head of the room, still dressed in light robes of gold and black, like shadow gilded in pride. No guards. No aides. No movement.
A single tea cup before him. Untouched.
His gaze was fixed somewhere over her shoulder.
Liuyin bowed perfectly. "This servant greets the Ji Clan's heir."
Silence stretched.
She remained bowed. One breath. Two. Five.
Still, he said nothing.
At last, his voice, low and clear:
"Raise your head."
She did.
For a long moment, he simply looked at her.
Liuyin did not meet his eyes. Not out of fear, but out of will. He would not read anything in her today. No shame. No plea.
Ji Yuanheng tilted his head slightly, as though examining a painting that refused to reveal its meaning.
"Why haven't you broken yet?"
His tone was cool. Detached. But the words were not. They were… curious. Not mocking.
Liuyin's lips parted. The silence she had wrapped around herself wavered—but only for a moment.
Then, softly, she answered:
"Because I remember what you forgot."
Ji Yuanheng's eyes narrowed.
She stood tall now, no longer bowing. The brazier's smoke twisted between them.
He did not reply.
He didn't need to.
A heartbeat passed.
Two.
She bowed again, this time lower. "If there is nothing else, this servant will return."
He said nothing.
She turned.
She took three steps before she felt it—his gaze following her. Like frost on her back.
It stayed with her all the way down the corridor.
—
Outside the guest hall, the woman in crimson robes was waiting by the railing, overlooking the clouds below.
She did not smile.
"You spoke with him," she said, voice like silk spun over thorns.
Liuyin bowed again. "Only briefly."
The elder's eyes narrowed faintly. "Did he ask anything of you?"
Liuyin hesitated.
"No, Sect Elder."
That wasn't a lie. Not exactly.
The woman tilted her head, as though listening to wind. "He sends letters with ink that burns away after reading. But his eyes… those are harder to erase."
Liuyin did not respond.
"You have no value, little vassal girl," the elder said softly. "But perhaps, if you keep surviving… you may become entertaining."
And then she walked away, robes whispering across the polished jade.
—
Back in her quarters, Shen Liuyin sat down slowly. The tea pot was cold. The room quiet.
She didn't light a lantern.
She didn't need to see to know she was trembling.
Not with fear.
With fury.
With exhaustion.
With the memory of that voice—the one that asked why she hadn't broken, when he had been the one to shatter her in the first place.
And still, he looked at her like she was a riddle.
Not a person.
Not someone with a name.
She leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
His words echoed in her ears.
"Why haven't you broken yet?"
She smiled. Just barely.
Then whispered, "Because you never really saw me at all."
____
The servant girl was new—young, trembling, her hair still uneven from the Crimson Cloud sect's rough "initiation" shearing. She approached Shen Liuyin's quarters cautiously, cradling a small lacquered box like it was a live ember.
"S-senior Shen… this was delivered for you."
Liuyin didn't look up from the stone basin where she was scrubbing blood from her robes. The color never quite came out. Maybe because it wasn't just blood, but shame.
"By whom?"
"I… I don't know. It was left at the Hall of Silent Orders."
Only then did Liuyin glance at the box. The lacquer was scratched, old, probably handled carelessly by too many hands. But the silk ribbon tying it was new. Crimson, of course.
Crimson like the robes of the sect.
Crimson like the light in his eyes.
"Leave it."
The girl did. With a bow so low her forehead nearly touched the floor, she scurried off like a mouse with a tail of fire.
Only when Liuyin was alone did she dry her hands and lift the box.
It wasn't locked.
Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay a single hairpin.
Delicate. Silver. The head shaped like a blooming magnolia.
Time seemed to still.
Her breath caught.
Her vision blurred. The basin. The stone. The bloodstained robe. All smeared together.
She didn't cry.
She had cried then.
Now, there was no room left for tears.
Only purpose.
She placed the hairpin carefully back into the box, then took the black velvet from beneath it and folded it into a pouch hidden in her robes.
When she stepped out of the room moments later, her face was calm.
But something behind her eyes had sharpened.
She walked toward the inner courtyard, where the day's cultivation trials were to be held. The disciples there wouldn't notice the difference.
But those who looked close—those who truly knew the difference between vengeance and discipline—might have seen it.
A shift.
A silence too poised to be passive.
The kind of silence just before the phoenix opens its eyes in the ashes.
___