Some truths do not arrive like thunder.
They arrive like a tremor—small, steady, and undeniable—until the earth itself tilts beneath your feet.
That night, Shen Qiyao had heard more than music. He had brushed against a secret that had waited in the silence of the grove for years, perhaps decades, patient as stone.
And though he whispered only a handful of words, though his lips barely shaped the question, the forest had answered.
From this moment on, the path ahead would no longer be one of mere wandering. He had stepped into a dialogue, fragile and unfinished, between the living and the dead, between silence and sound.
And if one listens closely—closer than breath, closer than heartbeat—
the first reply has already begun.