Cai Xiaoxi and Two never encounter Fan Shuangxi in the next two years to come though they know she sleeps somewhere beneath the island.
The day after her disappearance, Cai Xiaoxi finds out how generous Fan Shuangxi can be. Inside the medium-sized box she has left behind is the money they need to jumpstart their plans. Within the box are also manuals with valuable instructions on the creation of unique items, the most precious of the group is called the Mind Conveying Jade.
Cai Xiaoxi’s lips twitch and a helpless look befalls her. “You really are far too precious to be here.” She closes the box and seals it using a chain enchanted with a rune only Cai Xiaoxi and Two’s signature qi can unlock. “Don’t worry, sweet girl. We are going to survive this together.”
On the other edge of the island, in an elevated area where the survivors are finding shelter, Two surveys the calm sea. “Go back to Wolf Howl.”
Lang Yi trembles. “Master…” He doesn’t want to leave.
“Gather five people you trust, those whose loyalty to me has been proven time and again.” Two’s face is shadowed by a passing cloud. “I need a team to be my eyes and ears on the continent. My hands and feet while I recover here.” Cai Xiaoxi and Two have goals to meet and people to lead.
It will take considerable time to be strong both in might and network. Two and Cai Xiaoxi do not desire to be easy prey. To be given a chance to hide and heal is an opportunity few can ever grasp, a cowardly act from a fool's perspective but any war veteran knows only as a form of strategic retreat. In a world of ruled by strength, to be weak is to mean death, and they who've come here without any rhyme or reason, without even a memory of their own demise, to die a second time is simply idiotic.
Two turns her back and starts her journey down the cliffs. “Let the traitor sit on my throne for now. After all, it was this lord who’ve built Wolf Howl from nothing. Its glory and its fall are also mine to dictate.”
Revenge, as they say, is better served cold.
The crunch of his boots fade as deep underneath, many feet below ground is Fan Shuangxi lying on a wide, hard bench. A drape covers her resting form, her even breathing the only disturbance to the hushed alcove she is entombed. Golden gossamer-thin curtains hang above and around her in a circle seemingly isolating her. Not far from her is Shen Qian in a concentrated vigil, his body facing a deep well on the ground filled with the clearest unmoving water. The light from the circular liquid the only source of illumination in the whole dark space.
Tun Qiu.
At the silent call, glittering particles elongate into a diamond cloud and hovers right beside Shen Qian.
???
Where is she?
Tun Qiu floats toward the circular well, its lowest tip lands on the calm surface and triggers a gentle ripple flowing outward. The surging waves remain within the circle and not even a drop spills outside its border. The clear surface wavers for a few seconds and gradually resumes to its former calm.
Can’t see. Can’t see.
Shen Qian gracefully stands and approaches Fan Shuangxi’s marble bed. He pauses inches away from the hazy golden cloth. His nightsky eyes that can only be seen in daylight are staring unblinking on the wispy strands. The woven threads in the thin fabric pulse with unmistakable life, an intelligence barely awake but lucid enough to act on its long-buried duty. It will stand guard while its master sleeps and until then, it will shred those who dare take a step further.
For a moment, the time of youth washes over him. He blinks and the present resumes.
Nowhere. Nowhere.
A vision of three planets pops in Shen Qian’s head. The formation of the three spheres is triangular, the middle globe situated away from the two. The vision’s point of view is from the outlier, its lonely existence dwarf by the two enormous worlds and the faint line connecting them while it stays unconnected from its brethren.
Somewhere in those two worlds is a misplaced soul. Far from Tun Qiu’s protection and Shen Qian’s guide.
Fan Shuangxi hears the ruffling leaves swaying from the gentle wind, senses the muted heat of the sun below her feet, and the rough ground from which she is lying upon. She blinks her eyes open and quietly gasps when she finds something quite remarkable past the leaves that shield her. She raises her upper body and moves the distracting branch away from her.
“Woah,” she breathes out, mouth parting in a loose O.
Streaks of pastel pink, purple, and orange fill the boundless sky and behind opaque clouds is a shadow of a moon.
No, Fan Shuangxi shakes her head. It is not a moon for it is far too big to be the natural satellite of an equally gargantuan land.
A planet. A different world. Her inner self whispers in unshakeable conviction, the truth an instinctual echo rather than based on fact or knowledge. It is the first instance of a truly alien ground with a sky and its planet-like backdrop the two glaring evidence of the foreign world. Even the grass from which she is nested holds a softness of cotton rather than the thin flatness she is used to, their color a deep, deep blue, a color rarely found in nature…in Earth.
Perhaps if Fan Shuangxi began to travel under these conditions, she won’t forget how distant she is from the nation she grew up in. Perhaps her desire won’t be buried by the newfound routine she has established and the companions she’d met. Perhaps the thought of home won’t be as farfetched as it is now.
Fan Shuangxi slaps her cheeks. “Be strong and hold on!” She nods at the grass, the set of her brows evidence of her forced raveryy.
“Yosh. Where are you Shen Qian? Time for some training.” She stretches and looks from side to side.
Before she's been put to sleep, Shen Qian has given her a briefing on what to expect within her slumber for despite her body going under a static state, her mind, however, will undergo what Shen Qian calls an active dreaming. It is a type of unconsciousness where her body and mind are disconnected. This is the only way to guarantee safety for the others while at the same time aiding Fan Shuangxi to control the conflagration that is her power.
“Aish, you are such a troublesome thing,” she pats her chest. This body of hers dishes her problems left and right. The vivid imagination of her walking on a tightrope with red-hot lava below causes her to shudder.
Everything is a mishmash of events and growth that she simply can’t catch up with the craziness. Perhaps this sleep, this break from her journey won’t be so bad now that she has time to think about it. Perhaps the breather she’s been looking for to just pause and peruse the rollercoaster ride she’s been saddled in the past months has finally come.
Perhaps, her inner self adds, the anxiety she has suppressed won’t smother her with its terrifying depth.
Somewhere in the deep. Shuixian Palace.
Granny Fan tucks her lady’s body beneath the softest quilt. The convulsions that once racked her body every other hour has lessened to only a few times every week, her delicate skin beginning to flush with the glow of health, her thin limbs regaining the mass she lost. Soon, the shallowest of scars will heal as her body finally repaired the most alarming of her wounds and moves on to mend those of lesser importance.
As her cultivation grows so too will the balance restore and then, her lady’s real mission shall begin. For the Fan clan is more than just a clan, its continued existence is tied to the fate of the Earthen Realm itself.
In the two years Fan Shuangxi slept, the unrest ever present amidst glorious nations begins to simmer within the Earthen Realm and its ten continents. Powers quietly rise and fall, kingdoms merge to become empires, lone soldiers band to become almighty clans and lastly, in an inconspicuous part of the ocean is the birth of an unconventional sect whose destiny remains unwritten.
