The river was still.
Tian Qiren had been under for ten breaths. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. No one was counting anymore.
Nothing happened.
No shimmer. No echo. No resonance.
Just silence — thick, suffocating, complete.
The Ritual Hall didn't hum with awe this time. It held its breath like a body about to flinch. All those faces — veiled, sharp, indifferent — watched the water. Watched the boy.
And what came out.
He rose slowly.
Not like a hero. Not like someone reborn. Just… wet. Heavy. Human.
Water dripped from his sleeves and pooled at his feet. The sealing cuffs around his wrists, once glowing faintly, now flickered weakly and died. Their meaning was clear. So was the silence.
No one stepped forward to meet him. No ritual elder. No attending scribe. The judgment had already passed — quietly, coldly, and with all the weight of tradition behind it.
He looked up.
Lady Yueyin sat still in the third tier of seats. Her hands folded neatly, face unreadable — except for her jaw, clenched tight. She didn't cry. She didn't even blink.
Tian Renshu, his father, stood farther back. Stiff as a statue. The kind that gets prayed to, but never answers.
Yuling wasn't there.
Qingyue dropped her gaze the moment he looked toward her.
And Shun — poor, wide-eyed Shun — looked like someone had punched the air out of him. His lips parted slightly, but no sound came. Not even a name.
Qiren said nothing.
No apology. No plea. No anger.
He just bowed. Barely.
And left.
The doors opened for him, not out of ceremony, but because no one stopped them. No one stopped him either. Why would they?
Outside, wind tugged gently at the soaked hem of his robe. The sky was still the color of mourning silk.
Lanterns swung overhead, but no bell chimed.
He didn't look back.
He didn't need to.His name was already gone.And whatever part of him had hoped to stay behind... hadn't survived the river.
At the edge of the sect's grounds, past the last wardstone, beyond where disciples trained or whispered, sat the Mirror Grove.
It wasn't part of the House of Flow.
Not anymore.
The trees here grew older than most memories, bark smooth and pale like forgotten bone. The light barely touched the ground. Wind moved in strange, circular ways.
And beneath a crooked willow, an old man sat — still as a statue, back pressed against a tree root shaped like a crescent moon.
His eyes opened the moment Qiren stepped into the clearing.
"I didn't call for you," the old man said.
Qiren stopped a few paces away. His voice was hoarse, quieter than he expected.
"No one else did either."
The man laughed softly. Not cruelly. Just like someone who already knew the answer to every question you were about to ask.
"The river didn't take you," he said.
Qiren nodded once.
"But something gave you back."
Qiren looked at his hands. Pale. Trembling. Empty.
"I don't feel anything," he whispered.
"Good," said the man. "That means it's real."
He stood then, slow and deliberate. His robe hung loose, frayed at the edges. His left hand was scarred — deep and old.
"I'm Mo Xuan," he said. "That's not my name. Just what's left of it."
He turned, gesturing toward the broken stone path that wound into the deeper woods.
"You'll come with me now."
Qiren hesitated. "Why?"
Mo Xuan didn't look back.
"Because your family will try to erase you. Your sect already has. But something older than them remembers."
They walked.
No guards followed. No eyes watched. Just mist — thick and strange — curling around their ankles like it had been waiting.
When they passed the last gate, the air shifted.
It didn't feel sacred. It felt real. Like stepping out of a story someone else wrote, and into a truth no one wanted told.
Qiren didn't know what waited ahead.
But for the first time in his life…
He wasn't walking someone else's path.