Blossoming Path
Chapter 201: A Serpentine Dream

Windy drifted in the void of unconsciousness.

At first, he did not realize anything was wrong. He did not know what wrong was. He was simply here; floating, weightless, his long body coiled in on itself without effort or tension. There was no sky, no ground, no up or down. Just the endless, empty white stretching in all directions.

Then—something moved in front of him.

A snake. White, just like him. But it had no features, no distinct markings, nothing that set it apart. A shape, a presence, but utterly devoid of identity.

Windy hissed lowly, his tongue flicking out as instinct demanded.

“Where?” he rasped. “Where is Tianyi?”

He remembered. She had lifted him, her hands careful but firm. There had been pain—sharp, blinding pain—the stench of blood, and warmth. She had told him they were going home. But she wasn't here anymore.

The memory came in flickering fragments, disjointed and strange. The fight. The shadow. Then this. He doesn't know what led him here.

The ground beneath him was solid, but the longer he thought about it, the more unnatural it felt. Cold. Too cold. Ice and snow stretched endlessly in all directions, smooth and reflective, as though he were trapped within an infinite frozen lake. Wind howled through the emptiness, keening and thin, but it touched nothing. No scent. No warmth. No world.

The sky above was a dull, oppressive gray. No sun. No moon.

His unease sharpened.

And then the serpent lunged.

It moved impossibly fast, sleek and fluid, its body blurring into motion before Windy could react. Fangs sank deep into his flesh. Pain. Raw, searing, violent. It spread through his body like fire and ice twined together, flooding every nerve, every muscle. His own blood tasted sharp and metallic in the air.

Then—darkness.

Windy woke up.

The cold. The ice. The endless gray sky. The wind howling through the nothingness. And in front of him... the white serpent, waiting.

He stiffened, his coils tensing instinctively.

The serpent lunged.

Windy lashed out, fangs bared, striking blindly. His teeth met nothing. Air, empty and cold. The other snake shifted at the last possible moment, its movements eerily smooth, tilting its head just enough to evade. He barely had time to register it before pain exploded through him again. Fangs tore through his scales, severing muscle, slicing deep into the vital place where his body coiled in on itself.

Darkness.

Windy woke up.

He had felt it. Felt the fangs tear through him. Felt the agony, the fear, the life leaving him.

But he was whole again.

The ice beneath him hadn’t changed. The sky, the wind, the empty wasteland—unchanged. And in front of him, the serpent.

Waiting.

Wind struck first this time. He lunged, twisting his body in a coil, using momentum to add weight to his attack. He aimed for the throat—

The white serpent slipped around him like mist. Too fast. Wind barely had time to correct before it coiled tight around him, forcing him into a suffocating grip. He thrashed, instincts screaming, fangs bared and snapping wildly—

Pain.

Darkness.

Again.

He moved without thinking, bolting backward as soon as his vision cleared. The serpent was already moving, its sleek body flowing across the ice, closing the distance effortlessly. Windy coiled back defensively, mimicking Tianyi’s light-footed shifts, trying to glide instead of brute-forcing his way through. He twisted, feinted left, then right—

Fangs drove into his throat.

Darkness.

Windy woke up.

Again.

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Again.

And again.

He fought. He bit, coiled, lashed out with everything he had. He tried to mimic Tianyi’s graceful evasion, tried to remember the way Kai's technique of redirecting an opponent's attack, the careful timing in his stance. But he was too slow, too predictable, too untrained.

The white serpent was always a step ahead. Always faster.

Again. And again.

Windy tried to flee once.

For a moment, he thought he might succeed. He slithered across the ice, body whipping through the frozen wasteland. The wind howled past him, and he moved, moved, moved—

A shadow.

The white serpent appeared ahead of him.

Windy barely had time to register the impossible speed before his world shattered.

The cycle of death blurred into an eternity.

Windy didn’t know how long he had been here. Days? Weeks? Longer? Time lost meaning when it only stretched from one brutal death to the next.

Each time he fought, he died. Each time he died, he woke. The pain was real. The wounds were real. But his body remained untouched, whole, as though none of it had ever happened. He did not understand. He could not escape. The only constant was the ice beneath him, the dull sky above, and the waiting serpent that killed him over and over again.

Despair crept in. Nowhere to hide. Impossible to escape. His fangs dulled with hesitation. His strikes grew sluggish, weighed down by exhaustion that was more in his mind than his body.

What was the point?

He could not win. He could not flee. He could not even scream into the endless cold.

Then—

Something shifted.

A flicker, a blur, a pattern.

Windy had spent so long reacting, throwing himself into the fight blindly, that he had not watched. The serpent was fast—unbelievably fast—but it was not without rhythm. It moved in patterns. The faintest twitch of its head before a strike. The way its coils tightened just a fraction before lunging.

His eyes regained some of its lost light.

Windy coiled in on himself, still as the ice beneath him, and focused.

The movement wasn’t just speed, it was misdirection. A flicker here, a blur there. A calculated illusion to bait him into striking where nothing existed. His instincts had been lying to him. He had been attacking shadows, not substance.

For the first time, Windy didn’t just see the serpent move, he saw where it would move next.

The air shifted before its lunge, the subtle pressure of its body curling in the same way each time, creating an unseen thread connecting past, present, and future motion. It was a sequence; a chain reaction of movements leading to an inevitable result. Not where it was, not even where it would be in a blink, but where the kill could be made.

A direct path. No wasted motion. A perfect strike.

He waited.

The serpent lunged.

Windy struck before it completed the motion.

His fangs met flesh.

The white serpent reared back, hissing, a streak of red painting the ice. But for once, it wasn't his own.

It was shallow. Not enough to kill. But for the first time, it was he who had drawn blood.

The air shifted.

A chime rang through the void, unseen but felt deep in his bones. A sensation he knew well. A welcome reprieve from the unending cycle he'd been met with.

You can now utilize the skill, Predator’s Insight.

Windy coiled tighter, his forked tongue flickering out, testing the air. He could feel it now. The subtle, almost imperceptible details of the serpent’s motion. The way the weight of its body shifted before a feint. The minor tensing of muscle before a strike. It was all clear.

The battle lasted longer.

Windy evaded. Countered. For the first time, he lasted.

The serpent’s speed had not changed. But now, he could see.

And the longer he fought, the clearer the patterns became.

This wasn’t just instinct. This was something learned.

Windy observed. The serpent never wasted movement. Every feint, every flick of its tail had a purpose. When it struck, it committed fully, a perfect balance of power and efficiency. It knew the most efficient way to kill. It had no hesitation, no wasted energy.

So Windy learned.

He copied the peculiar way it moved. The efficiency of its motions. The precise shifts of weight that allowed it to feint and redirect effortlessly. But he did not just mimic, he refined it. Adapted it for himself.

Windy focused not just on speed, but on reading his opponent’s tempo. The way it shifted between offense and defense. The way it controlled the flow of battle with each flick of its body.

His attacks became sharper. More deliberate. He learned to see openings before they existed, understanding the most efficient path to the kill.

For the first time, Windy wasn’t just reacting. He was dictating the flow of battle.

The white serpent’s movements had always seemed unpredictable, but now he understood; there was an invisible rhythm to it, a song that it had been singing all along. The flick of its tail before retreating, the twitch of its tongue before feinting, the curve of its body just before committing to a strike. Each movement had a response, and each response led to an outcome. Windy followed that rhythm, not just keeping pace but bending it. The moment the white serpent surged forward, he coiled in just the right way, not to evade, but to bait. He let the serpent believe he would be in one place, and then—

He felt his body blur, just for an instant.

For the first time, the serpent struck nothing.

An afterimage stood where he had been a breath before.

The air shuddered. The Interface chime rang again.

You can now utilize the skill, Illusory Motion.

The void shuddered. The frozen wasteland rippled like disturbed water, as though the fabric of this endless liminal space could not contain what had just happened.

Windy stilled, his forked tongue flickering in the cold air. Something had changed. The cycle had shifted. This was no longer an endless loop of death. He had taken something from this place—something real. A skill. A power. A truth hidden within instinct.

The white serpent, his eternal adversary, had stopped moving. It coiled in on itself, no longer poised to strike. For the first time since this endless battle had begun, it lowered it's head, and lay still.

Windy did not move. He watched it carefully, expecting another attack, another death, another reset. But nothing came. The tension bled from the serpent’s form, and the air around them changed.

Then, he felt it.

The world was fading.

The ice beneath him no longer felt solid. The cold still stung his scales, but it was distant now, muted. The wind’s howl grew softer, stretching into silence. The sky, that endless expanse of gray nothingness, dimmed further as if it, too, were unraveling at the edges.

Windy coiled himself tightly, his instincts bristling. He did not understand this place, did not understand what governed it, but he could feel it slipping away. This strange, endless trial was coming to an end.

And then the words came.

They did not come from the serpent. They did not come from the void.

They came from nowhere. From everywhere. They pressed into his mind.

Protect the Interface Manipulator.

The intent behind it felt heavy, but not coercive. As though it were a request.

Windy recoiled, his mind reeling. “Who—?” he hissed, his voice ragged from the countless battles he had endured. “What is—?”

But before he could demand answers, before he could even finish forming the thought—

The world vanished.

Windy gasped.

Scales tingling with sensation. A rush of warmth flooded his senses, jarring and unfamiliar after the bitter cold of the dreamscape. It was overwhelming. The scent of earth. The weight of his own body, real and whole. The sound of breathing—not his own, but another’s.

Warmth pressed against him, solid and firm. Not Tianyi.

Kai.

The realization settled slowly, disjointed and dreamlike. He was being held, cradled against Kai’s chest, his heartbeat a steady, grounding rhythm against his small, coiled form. The warmth seeped into his body, banishing the phantom chill of the void. He was alive. Here. Not trapped in that endless cycle.

“Hold on—Tianyi! Tianyi, he’s awake!”

Kai's voice resounded in his skull giving him a headache.

His mind spun with questions. Who spoke to him? Why had he been given those words? What was that place?

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” The human continued to murmur, pressing him against his chest.

But then—

A terrible, unbearable itch ran down his spine.

Windy’s entire body stiffened.

The questions, the mystery, the lingering traces of instinct that had followed him from that realm... all of it was obliterated in an instant.

Shedding.

The realization hit like a hammer. His skin felt too tight, his scales tingled with maddening urgency, and his entire body demanded one thing and one thing only.

Rub against something. Now.

Windy let out a small, exhausted hiss and weakly pressed his snout against Kai’s sleeve, dragging it along the fabric in a desperate attempt to start peeling away the suffocating layer of old skin.

Kai made a noise of surprise, shifting slightly. “Windy—ow, stop that, you’re—”

Windy ignored him. Bigger problems. Important problems. He needed something rough. Something textured. The edge of a rock, a piece of bark—

His tired body squirmed, rubbing insistently against Kai’s arm, then his collar, then—yes. The coarse hem of his robe.

He latched onto it, winding himself tighter and dragging his snout along it with all the force his weary form could muster.

For now, all that mattered was this shedding skin and getting rid of it as soon as possible.

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