Age 16 — After
He didn't cry.
That was what people noticed later, when they bothered to notice at all. The boy whose girlfriend left him—whose first love left him—and he didn't cry. Didn't break. Didn't do any of the things teenagers were supposed to do.
He just… stopped.
Stopped talking. Stopped eating unless reminded. Stopped going to the courtyard where they used to sit. Stopped hoping.
The foster family—the current one, a middle-aged couple who'd taken him in six months before Lin Yue—didn't know what to do. They tried talking. He didn't answer. They tried leaving him alone. He preferred that.
After a week, they gave up.
"You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped," the husband said.
The wife nodded. She'd seen foster kids like this before. The ones who'd been broken so many times they stopped feeling the breaks.
They left him alone.
He preferred that.
Age 17
School became mechanical.
He attended. He sat in the back. He did the work. He handed it in. His grades were average—not because he couldn't do better, but because doing better required caring. And he didn't care.
But at night, in his room, he researched.
The computer was old, slow, borrowed from the public library. It didn't matter. He typed the same words into search engines, night after night, until they felt like prayers.
Kunlun Mountains.
Cultivation.
Immortals.
Xianxia.
The Eight Clans.
Most of what he found was fiction. Stories. Novels written by people who'd never been there, never seen what he somehow knew was real.
But buried in forums, in obscure blogs, in comments on videos no one watched—he found fragments.
"The gate is real. I've seen it. Half-hidden in snow. Ancient carvings. You can't enter unless you're called."
"My grandfather said the immortals left Earth long ago. But some stayed. Watching. Waiting."
"The Eight Clans control everything. Cultivation, reincarnation, even death itself. They are the laws."
He read them all.
The Soldier's voice, when it spoke, was approving. Good. Seek power. Power is the only answer.
The Beggar laughed. Power won't bring her back.
It will make sure no one else leaves.
The Orphan said nothing. The Orphan had been quiet since Lin Yue walked away.
Age 18
He aged out of foster care.
There was no ceremony. No celebration. One day, he was a ward of the state. The next, he was alone in the world with a bag of clothes, a few hundred yuan in savings, and no one to answer to.
He found a job.
Restaurant work. Washing dishes, sweeping floors, taking out trash. Minimum wage, cash under the table. The owner was a tired woman named Auntie Chen who'd seen hard times herself.
She didn't ask questions.
He rented a room. Small. Cheap. A bed, a desk, a window that looked out at a brick wall. It was enough.
At night, he researched.
Kunlun Mountains. Location. Access. Best time to travel.
He saved every yuan he didn't spend on rice and eggs.
Age 19
He had enough.
Not much—a bus ticket west, a few weeks of food, money for emergencies. But enough.
He quit the restaurant. Auntie Chen frowned but didn't argue. "You're chasing something," she said.
"Yes."
"Hope you find it."
He didn't answer. He didn't believe in hope anymore. But he believed in answers.
The bus left at dawn.
The station
He stood on the platform, bag slung over one shoulder, ticket in his hand. The bus would arrive in ten minutes. Behind him, the city woke—lights flickering on, traffic starting, people beginning their routines.
He didn't look back.
Across the platform, half-hidden behind a pillar, a woman in white watched him.
Su Wan.
Her hand pressed against the cold metal. It dented under her fingers.
"Three down," she whispered.
"Six to go."
He didn't see her. Didn't turn. The bus arrived, and he boarded, and she watched until the vehicle disappeared into the morning light.
She did not move for a long time.
Age 20 — Kunlun Mountains
The bus stopped at a village called Xidatan.
It was nothing—a few houses, a shop, a sign pointing toward the mountains. The other passengers got off for other reasons. Hikers. Tourists. People with gear and maps and plans.
Gu Chen had none of those.
He walked.
The first day was easy.
A path, well-worn, leading into the foothills. He followed it until the sun began to set, then found shelter behind a rock and ate the dry bread in his pack.
The second day was harder.
The path faded. The air thinned. His lungs burned, and his legs ached, and the cracked core in his chest pulsed with every heartbeat.
He kept walking.
The third day, the snow began.
Day four
He should have died.
Anyone else would have. No gear. No experience. No sense of where he was going. Just a boy and a feeling and a core that wouldn't stop pulsing.
But he didn't die.
The snow parted around him. The wind seemed to veer, just slightly, just enough. And when he stumbled, half-frozen, nearly blind, he saw it.
An archway.
Half-hidden in snow. Ancient carvings covering every surface. It stood alone in the white expanse, waiting.
He approached.
The carvings shifted as he drew near—not moving, but changing. Telling a story. Eight figures descending from the sky. A woman in white. A deal. A child, abandoned, abandoned, abandoned.
He reached out to touch it—
"You have no cultivation. You cannot enter."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Gu Chen turned.
A man stood behind him. Old, but not frail. Robes that seemed to absorb light. Eyes that had seen eternity.
"You have no cultivation," the man repeated. "You cannot enter."
Gu Chen looked at him. Said nothing.
The man's gaze flickered. Something in the boy's chest—the cracked core—pulsed. Once. Twice.
The man's eyes widened.
"Impossible. A mortal with a golden core?"
Gu Chen didn't explain. He didn't know how.
"What are you?" the man breathed.
Gu Chen thought about the question. Thought about the orphanage. The Wangs. The foster homes. Lin Yue. The voices. The woman in white.
"Someone who's been abandoned three times," he said.
The man stared at him.
"And I need to make sure it stops."
A long silence.
Then the man stepped aside.
"Enter," he said. "And may whatever gods you have watch over you."
Gu Chen walked forward.
The archway swallowed him.
The world twisted.
He fell—or rose—through light and darkness and pain that wasn't pain. His body stretched. His core screamed. The voices roared—Orphan, Beggar, Soldier—all of them, all at once.
Then silence.
He opened his eyes.
The sky was wrong.
Too many stars. Wrong colors. A sun that was too large, too close, too warm.
He was no longer on Earth.
He was somewhere else.
Somewhere that had been waiting for him.