The morning sunlight crept slowly through the gaps in the wooden curtains, casting long, thin shadows across the floor. Mo Xuan lifted her eyes, brushing her small hands over the damp ground with her fingertips. The scent of herbs lingered in the air, mingling with the smell of wet earth outside, as if the world continued its quiet life while she woke to discover it for the first time.
She stepped cautiously toward the door, feeling the weight of her tiny body in every movement. Each creak of the floorboards beneath her feet echoed through the silent house, as if the walls themselves were watching, observing every step, every breath.
Outside, the world was calm. Mist clung to the trees, turning the forest into a sea of gray shadows. Raindrops hung from the leaves like suspended crystals, and the soil sank beneath her small feet. Everything seemed ordinary… yet everything was strange, alien, fragile.
Mo Xuan took a deep breath, tasting the damp air. She did not feel fear. Instead, curiosity and cold calm coursed through her veins, filling her with a strange sense of power and mastery, as if everything around her were raw material to be analyzed and understood.
She had already learned some information: she was in a prestigious clan called the Ming Lan Clan. As she cautiously moved forward, strands of her hair swaying in the breeze, she suddenly stopped at the entrance of a large hall, crowded with people.
By her estimation, these could be the clan elders.
"No. I must not attract anyone's attention. I have to stay in the shadows… no matter how ridiculous it seems."
She whispered to herself with a sarcastic smile, as if mocking the absurdity of the world around her.
Mo Xuan recalled something from her previous life. It was not nostalgia, but a firmly ingrained memory in her cold mind. Her intellect was like a dry scalpel, merciless, cutting open thoughts as one would open corpses—not to heal, but to see what lay inside. She looked at humans not as they looked at themselves. To her, all they saw were fragile stories, weak intentions, pitiful excuses, and shallow dreams, while she perceived only repetitive, meaningless patterns.
She saw fear behind courage, self-interest behind love, and vanity behind virtue. She perceived them far too clearly, more than anyone should. Her mind sought no comfort, no belonging, and not even truth in the way philosophers romanticized it. It sought only one thing: understanding.
Cold, harsh, and stripped of illusions, understanding that stripped humans of their stories, leaving them nothing but instincts walking on two legs.
To her, morality was often nothing but decoration the weak draped over their actions to make them appear less repulsive. That was why she sometimes seemed to walk outside the herd—not because she was rebellious, but simply because she did not see the herd as anything worth joining
"Ugh… damn all of them."
She muttered with scorn, as if the entire world were a ridiculous joke displayed before her without her consent.
Then, as she paused her thoughts, a group of children appeared before her. She whispered sarcastically:
"It seems children love making friends with strangers."
They looked at her with strange, curious, and wary expressions, as if she were a creature from the shadows. One girl stepped forward, standing at the center of the group while the others formed a protective circle around her.
"Looks like…"
the girl whispered lightly, as if revealing a secret not yet formed in words.
"I'm Shui Lan. Why haven't I seen you before? My father is Chang Xing Lan, one of the clan elders,"
she said proudly, her emerald-green eyes sharp and bright, her skin pale as snow, cheeks tinged with pink, and her luxurious clothes shimmering in vivid colors, like she carried a fragment of sunlight itself.
Mo Xuan smiled inwardly with cold sarcasm. Laughing silently in her mind, she thought:
"Hmm… so this is the first person I meet here. Just a girl, yet what an arrogant display. Hahaha."
She cast her a brief glance, then turned and walked away effortlessly. She had no interest in friendships, social ties, or anyone else's motives. From Mo Xuan's perspective, Shui Lan's reaction was shocking only because she was the beloved girl of everyone—yet Mo Xuan could not care less.
"Looks like I've shattered her pride."
She whispered with a sneer, continuing her path without looking back.
The Lan family was renowned, one of the most prominent and wealthy in the Ming Lan Clan, with great resources and influence. But for Mo Xuan, wealth, status, or power were meaningless. All that mattered was that she refused to be part of a stage unworthy of watching.
Humans chased acceptance, believing that merely befriending someone of high status would grant them privileges, but she saw them as nothing more than masks, shadows to be passed by easily, forgotten without a trace.
She observed the children from afar, noting every small detail: the expressions on their faces, how they stood, the awe in their eyes. Everything was material to analyze, not to emotionally attach. Even the love everyone flaunted was, to her, a cold calculation—desire, self-interest, or a veil over weak fear.
And yet, she did not prevent herself from noticing the subtle differences in each child, how they reacted under pressure, how they celebrated or hid, how social motives entangled them from an early age, nothing worth valuing except understanding the masks behind which they hid.