The first thing Ye Qingxiao registered was the scent of drying fish and boiled herbs.
His eyelids felt weighted with lead. Through the haze of pain, he heard the rhythmic scrape of a knife against wood—someone was whittling nearby. When he finally forced his eyes open, sunlight lanced through a thatched roof, illuminating dust motes dancing above his chest. Or rather, above the thick poultice of crushed seaweed and mugwort plastered across his ribs.
"Awake at last," a girl's voice chimed. "Three days unconscious—I'd started wondering if you meant to hibernate through winter."
Ye Qingxiao turned his head—too quickly. The hut spun as his vision focused on a blindfolded girl perched on a stool, her fingers guiding a carving knife along a block of fragrant sandalwood. Shavings curled around bare feet that barely touched the floor. Despite the cloth covering her eyes, her head tilted with uncanny precision toward his slightest movement.
"Where—" His voice emerged as a croak.
"Fisherman's Bend, two li downstream from your broken mountain." The knife never paused as it shaped what was becoming a miniature sword rack. "I'm A'Qing. My father found you tangled in flood debris like a half-drowned catfish."
Ye Qingxiao's hand flew to his forehead. The bronze shard—
"Safe," A'Qing said, though he hadn't spoken aloud. She nudged a clay bowl on the floor with her toe. Within it, the star-etched fragment floated in brine, strands of his own black hair knotted around it in complex loops. "Had to bind its screaming."
"Screaming?" Ye Qingxiao pushed upright, ignoring the protest of his ribs.
A'Qing tapped her temple. "You don't hear it? That thing shrieks like a butchered pig every sunset." She suddenly turned toward the door. "Father's back."
No footsteps had sounded. Yet three breaths later, the bamboo curtain parted to admit a hulking man with salt-crusted beard, his arms laden with netted crabs. The fisherman froze when he saw Ye Qingxiao upright, beady eyes flicking between the youth and the bowl containing the shard.
"Should've tossed that cursed thing back to the river," the man grunted in thick coastal dialect. "Brought nothing but ill winds since it came."
Ye Qingxiao's fingers instinctively curled toward a sword hilt that wasn't there. "My gratitude for your aid. I'll trouble you no further—"
"Can you walk?" A'Qing interrupted. When he shifted his legs and winced, she snorted. "Thought so. The mountain broke you worse than you think." She held up the half-carved wood. "Your sword energy leaves traces like ink in water. Right now, it's all frayed threads."
The fisherman dumped his catch into a barrel with unnecessary force. "Girl's been like this since the storm—babbling about sword lights and ghost whispers." He shot Ye Qingxiao a look brimming with suspicion. "You one of those wandering cultivators?"
Before he could answer, A'Qing hopped down and pressed her palm against Ye Qingxiao's sternum. "His heartbeat makes the same sound as the fragment." She cocked her head. "Two swords dueling in a bronze cage."
A chill crawled down Ye Qingxiao's spine. He'd heard of rare individuals born with spiritual sight—but to perceive sword resonance as sound?
The fisherman made a warding gesture. "Enough foolishness. If you're well enough to talk, you're well enough to explain why imperial scouts have been poking around the riverbanks since yesterday."
Ye Qingxiao's stomach dropped. If the mortal government had noticed the sect's destruction...
A'Qing suddenly went rigid. Her blindfolded face snapped toward the window. "They're here."
"What—"
The fisherman never finished. With a thunderous crash, the hut's door exploded inward.
Three Hours Earlier: The Seventh Watchtower
Magistrate Liu adjusted his crane-embroidered sleeves as the scout kowtowed in the dust.
"Certain it was sword glow, Excellency! Not lightning nor firework!" The scout's trembling finger pointed northeast. "From the direction of that reclusive sect in the mountains."
Behind his feathered judge's hat, Liu's pulse quickened. The Azure Mist Sword Sect had ignored three consecutive tax summons—an irritation the imperial bureaucracy wouldn't normally bother pursuing. But a pillar of light that split the clouds? That warranted investigation.
He gestured to the armored figure standing motionless beside his sedan chair. "Captain Yue, take twenty men. If the sect pleads poverty again..." He let the unspoken threat hang.
The captain's face remained impassive beneath her horned helmet. Unlike the magistrate's silk-clad bulk, her lean frame seemed carved from the same iron as her lamellar armor. She touched the twin dao swords at her waist—standard issue for imperial officers, though rumor claimed hers had tasted demon blood in the northern campaigns.
"Excellency misunderstands," Captain Yue said tonelessly. "That was no ordinary light. My second sight recognizes sword intent strong enough to scar the sky."
Magistrate Liu's jowls quivered. He'd forgotten this particular captain hailed from one of those minor cultivation clans. "You're saying—"
"The Azure Mist Sect is gone. What we saw was either their death throes..." Her hand tightened on the sword hilt. "...or something waking up."
Present: The Fishing Hut
Ye Qingxiao rolled off the bed just as a crossbow bolt embedded itself where his head had been. Through the settling dust, he saw six imperial soldiers crowding the doorway, their captain—a woman with twin dao swords—scanning the room with predator's focus.
"Bind the cultivator," she ordered. "The girl too if she resists."
Ye Qingxiao's fingers closed around the nearest weapon—A'Qing's whittling knife. It was pitiful compared to a real sword, but the moment his skin touched the wood-grain handle, something extraordinary happened.
The Taiyi Sword Treasury in his mind stirred.
Suddenly, the knife's entire history unfolded before him—the sandalwood tree's hundred-year growth, the blade's forging in a blacksmith's moonlit furnace, even A'Qing's fingerprints worn into the handle. More astonishingly, he understood its weaknesses, its resonant frequencies, the precise angle at which it would shatter against armor.
All this flashed through his mind in the time it took a leaf to fall.
Captain Yue's eyes narrowed. "You feel it too, don't you?" She took a deliberate step forward. "That presence coiled in your dantian like a sleeping dragon."
Ye Qingxiao had no idea what she meant—until he noticed the soldiers weren't advancing. Their eyes darted nervously between him and their captain. Then he saw it: faint golden light outlining his fingers where they gripped the knife.
The captain unsheathed her left dao. "Last chance. Come quietly and His Excellency might—"
A'Qing's bowl of brine shattered on the floor.
Everyone turned. The bronze fragment now floated midair, rotating slowly as seawater dripped from its star-carved grooves. The knotted hair binding it had turned the color of rust.
"Father," A'Qing whispered, "you should've listened to me about the ill winds."
The fragment hummed.
Captain Yue's sword came up just in time to intercept the projectile—or so she thought. Instead of deflecting, the bronze shard melted through her blade like hot wax through paper, continuing unimpeded into her chest.
No blood spilled. The woman simply froze, her mouth opening in silent shock as fractal patterns of gold spread across her skin. The remaining soldiers barely had time to scream before the fragment zigzagged between them, leaving identical gilded markings.
Five heartbeats. That's how long it took to transform six armed warriors into statues of shimmering metallic lace.
The fragment returned to hover before Ye Qingxiao, its surface now bearing seven new marks—tiny sword glyphs matching those in his mind.
A'Qing ripped off her blindfold, revealing pupils like quicksilver. "You really don't hear it, do you?" She pointed at the frozen captain. "She was right about the dragon."
Ye Qingxiao followed her finger. Through Captain Yue's translucent golden skin, something moved within her chest cavity—a coiled shape with too many joints, its tail twitching as it gnawed on what looked like a miniature sword.
The Taiyi Sword Treasury in his mind pulsed in recognition:
Second Realm: Dragon Binding Bone
Outside, Magistrate Liu's scream shattered the morning calm.