Night had settled quietly over the mountains.
A pale moon hung above the Zhen Clan estate, its silver light spilling across tiled rooftops and silent courtyards. The wind drifted through the bamboo groves, making the leaves rustle softly like whispers in the dark.
Most of the clan slept.
But inside a small residence near the edge of the estate, the lights still burned.
The air inside the room was heavy with the scent of blood and incense.
A midwife stood beside a wooden bed, her hands trembling slightly.
Moments earlier, two children had been born.
Twins.
But the woman lying on the bed no longer moved.
Her breathing had stopped.
The midwife slowly lowered her head and covered the woman's face with a cloth.
"May the ancestors guide your spirit…"
The room fell silent.
Two new lives had entered the world.
Their mother had left it.
One of the infants stirred.
His tiny eyelids trembled before slowly opening.
The world was nothing but blurred shapes and dim light.
Sounds echoed faintly in the distance.
The crying of another baby.
Footsteps.
Soft voices.
Everything felt distant and unfamiliar.
Somewhere deep within the infant's mind, fragments of something strange flickered briefly.
Broken images.
A crowded city.
Voices arguing in a room.
A sudden flash of fear.
Then darkness.
The memories faded almost immediately, like mist dissolving under sunlight.
The infant's eyes slowly closed again.
The mind within that fragile body was not yet strong enough to hold such things.
Time passed.
Seasons quietly turned beneath the vast sky of the southern mountains.
Nestled between steep green peaks stood the Zhen Clan estate, a settlement built along the slope of a wide valley. Tall stone walls surrounded the outer perimeter, protecting the clan from wandering beasts and bandits that roamed the forests beyond.
Inside the walls, rows of wooden residences stretched along paved stone paths that climbed gradually up the hillside. Lantern posts stood at the intersections of these paths, their warm light glowing softly during the night.
At the center of the estate stood the most important structures of the clan.
The Ancestral Hall, where generations of the Zhen Clan honored their ancestors.
The training grounds, a wide courtyard paved with worn stone where young disciples practiced martial techniques beneath the watchful eyes of elders.
And further up the slope, overlooking the entire settlement, stood the Clan Pavilion, a multi-storied building where the clan leader and elders gathered to discuss matters of power, trade, and survival.
Beyond the estate walls stretched dense forests of towering bamboo and ancient pine trees. Mountain mist often rolled down from the peaks at dawn, wrapping the valley in pale white fog.
It was in this quiet mountain settlement that the boy grew.
The Zhen Clan eventually gave him a name.
Zhen Luo.
As the years passed, servants and clan members gradually began to notice something unusual about him.
The boy learned quickly.
Too quickly.
He began walking earlier than most children.
He spoke clearly while others his age still struggled to form words.
Some clan members praised him as a gifted child.
Others simply watched with curiosity.
But no one realized that deep inside the boy's mind, those strange fragments of memory were slowly becoming clearer.
One afternoon, when Zhen Luo was two years old, he stood quietly in the courtyard.
The bamboo trees swayed gently in the wind.
Sunlight filtered through the leaves, scattering shifting patterns of light across the stone ground.
Suddenly, a shadow passed overhead.
Zhen Luo looked up.
And froze.
High above the Zhen Clan estate, a figure moved across the sky.
A man flew through the air as though the sky itself were a road.
His long robes fluttered behind him like drifting clouds before the figure disappeared beyond the distant mountains.
For a long moment, the child simply stared upward.
Something deep inside his mind stirred.
This world… was not ordinary.
That night, the young boy stood near the wooden window of his small room.
Moonlight spilled across the courtyard outside, illuminating the quiet stone paths and swaying bamboo shadows.
The wind brushed softly against his face.
His eyes were calm.
Silent.
Watching.
Somewhere deep within his mind, the fragments of another life continued to slowly awaken.
And with them…
a dangerous ambition.