Cultivation starts with picking up attributes
Chapter 94: Ch-94: Miss Him

Chapter 94: Ch-94: Miss Him

The sun hung lazily above the Feilun Sect, its golden rays filtered through layers of cloud and mist like a divine lantern straining to pierce the veil.

It was a peaceful afternoon. Too peaceful.

The kind of peace that didn’t soothe, but unsettled.

Feng Yin didn’t trust it one bit.

She stood atop one of the outer courtyard platforms, hands behind her back, spine straight as a sword, watching the distant mountain paths vanish into the horizon.

Somewhere beyond those silent ridgelines, Tian Shen was walking beside a woman colder than moonlight and twice as sharp.

The wind curled past her robes with a hush, as if the mountain itself was holding its breath.

She exhaled softly. In worry. In restraint.

No matter how she presents herself to Tian Shen, she still was, but a woman in love.

If she let her mind drift too far, it would reach him. And then it would stay there.

"Still no news?"

Asked a voice behind her.

Little Mei padded up, a woven basket of herbs hanging from her arm, her boots caked with mud and a leaf stuck boldly to her cheek. She looked like she’d fallen down a hill or two.

"No," Feng Yin replied without turning. "But that’s normal."

"Hmph."

Little Mei puffed her cheeks.

"Normal shouldn’t feel this long."

Feng Yin gave her a side glance, one brow arched in mild amusement.

"That’s called missing someone."

Little Mei blinked, then furrowed her brow in offense.

"That sounds like weakness."

"Maybe," Feng Yin admitted, her tone gentle but firm. "But it’s the kind of weakness that means you care."

The younger girl fidgeted with the strap of her basket. Her lip wobbled like she wanted to argue but didn’t know how.

"He always finds a way back, doesn’t he?"

Feng Yin asked, more to the horizon than to Little Mei.

Little Mei shrugged.

"Master’s too annoying to die. The heavens wouldn’t know what to do with him."

That earned a chuckle.

It surprised them both.

...

Later, by the Whispering Brook

A silver ribbon of water wound its way through the valley floor, murmuring secrets as it slipped over stones.

Willows bowed gracefully to its current, their trailing leaves brushing the surface like idle fingers.

Feng Yin sat by the brook. Across from her, Little Mei balanced on a boulder, awkwardly trying to pluck lotus stems with her foot dipped halfway into the mud.

"You’re getting more on your robe than in the basket," Feng Yin commented dryly.

"That’s because i am not completely used to my human form, plus these lotus stems keep fighting back!"

Little Mei huffed, trying again.

"These plants are vengeful."

Feng Yin snorted.

A beat passed, and then Little Mei asked, in that too-light voice she used when something truly weighed on her.

"Do you think he’s fighting something terrible right now?"

Feng Yin didn’t answer right away. She let the question linger like mist above the water, delicate and undisturbed.

"Probably," she finally said. "But he has her."

"That Sadist?"

Little Mei grimaced.

"She’s so... scary. Like she was born to smack people."

Feng Yin smirked.

"She’s strong."

"So is he," Little Mei mumbled, not quite convincingly.

Feng Yin tilted her head.

"You don’t think he’ll win?"

"I think..." the younger girl sat on the rock properly now, hugging her knees and watching the flowing brook. "He’ll win. But not without losing something."

Feng Yin’s hands stilled.

The wind picked up, rustling the leaves. A bird cried high above, unseen.

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t know," Little Mei mumbled. "Just a dream I had."

Feng Yin turned to her now, fully, eyes narrowing slightly.

"A dream?"

"Mm-hmm." She nodded without looking up. "There was... Blood. And broken things. And him. Standing alone."

Dreams. In a world of mortals, they were just echoes of thought.

But in a world of cultivators?

They were warnings. Omens.

Whispers of fate that slipped through cracks in reality.

Feng Yin’s fingers tightened on the bamboo basket.

"We can’t lose him. We won’t lose him."

"I know," Little Mei said quietly.

"That’s what scares me."

...

Feilun Sect, Inner Pavilion.

The moon had risen by the time Feng Yin wandered to the inner practice hall.

She hadn’t meant to.

Her feet simply brought her there, like the gravity of memory had pulled her in.

The hall was quiet, save for the whisper of old paper fluttering in a forgotten draft and the soft creak of worn floorboards beneath her step.

Moonlight filtered in through latticed windows, casting fractured patterns across the training dummies.

One dummy had fresh cracks across its chest—clean, deep, deliberate.

The kind Tian Shen left when he was angry at something he couldn’t punch directly.

Like fate.

Or expectations.

Or... himself.

She moved closer, brushing her fingers across the damaged wood. A tiny smile formed at her lips.

Still impulsive.

Still reckless.

But trying. Always trying.

A broken talisman lay half-tucked under a bench nearby. She recognized it—a wind-talisman.

He’d used it once during a spar with her. It hadn’t helped him win. But he’d tried anyway.

His Qi still lingered here.

Faintly wild. Warm. Stubborn, like moss refusing to die in shade.

She sat beside the bench and closed her eyes.

And waited.

Minutes passed.

Then an hour.

She didn’t meditate.

She didn’t cultivate.

She simply existed in the space that still remembered him.

And in that silence, she felt him—not his actual presence, not a transmission or tether—but in the way this space refused to forget him.

Like footsteps pressed into snow, preserved by chill winds.

"...Don’t make me go find you."

She murmured to the night.

"Or I swear, I’ll drag you back and beat you myself."

She leaned back and exhaled.

The stars outside blinked gently.

And she almost smiled.

...

The Sect’s Edge.

Little Mei lay curled under a thick quilt, her small body swallowed by soft fabric and soft moonlight. But she didn’t sleep.

Not really.

Her eyes fluttered behind closed lids.

She dreamed.

Not of warmth.

Not of familiar hands or playful days.

She dreamed of blood.

Of blackened trees reaching for the sky like skeletal fingers.

Of statues—people—bloodied, torned apart, locked in screams she couldn’t hear.

Of a lake made of blood, rippled with crimson veins like lightning sealed within.

And Tian Shen.

He stood at the center of that blood lake.

Back turned.

Alone.

His shoulders slumped with exhaustion. His silhouette trembled—not from fear, but from something worse.

From acceptance.

He whispered something.

She couldn’t hear.

She reached out.

But before her fingers could graze his robe—

The dream ended.

She woke with a gasp, chest tight, sweat clinging to her brow despite the cold night.

The moon hung outside her window like a watcher with no eyes.

And the silence felt... wrong.

Like the world was listening.

She sat up, the quilt clutched to her chest.

Her heart wouldn’t calm.

Her eyes wouldn’t stop searching the shadows.

She whispered into the stillness, as if he could hear it across mountains and mist, death and danger.

"Come back."

She gritted her teeth.

"Master."

...

Elsewhere.

The sun had long passed its zenith, casting the world in dusky amber as Lan Yueru descended from the cliffs overlooking Blackscale Marsh.

Her jade-green robes clung to her frame, damp from mist and blood.

She wiped a smear of ichor off her cheek, her sword humming faintly in its sheath, not from energy—but from satisfaction. The battle was over.

The mutated swamp serpent lay coiled in its final resting place behind her, riddled with frost-laced gashes and the scent of crushed lotus herbs.

Another rogue beast dealt with. Another village protected.

Another day without him.

Lan Yueru sat on a lichen-covered rock by the water’s edge, pulling off her outer cloak.

She wrung it dry, watching as crimson-tainted droplets fell into the murky stream and disappeared like forgotten memories.

She didn’t sigh.

Yueru didn’t do sighs.

But her shoulders—usually squared like spears—slouched ever so slightly.

"Idiot," she muttered, not to herself, but to the sky.

A crane flew overhead, wings spread wide, carrying the wind with it.

’I wonder what kind of nonsense you’ve gotten into this time, Tian Shen.’

...

Earlier That Day.

Mission Grounds, Outskirts of Blackscale Marsh.

The mission had sounded simple enough.

"Scout out the marsh. Confirm rumors of unnatural beast movements. Exterminate if necessary."

It was a routine disciple task, barely worthy of someone at her level. But Lan Yueru had accepted it without protest. She needed the distance. The quiet. The isolation.

Away from the curious whispers in the sect. Away from Tian Shen who wasn’t even around. As if she were missing her shadow.

The path to the marsh had been long, but uneventful.

It was only deep within the fog-blanketed wetlands that she’d encountered resistance.

A serpent with three eyes and blackened scales had emerged from the water like a ghost.

It moved like silk and struck like lightning. She didn’t hesitate.

Sword drawn.

Footwork sharp.

Her Frost Breath technique painted the reeds with glimmering ice, and the duel that followed was a dance of steel and venom. In the end, she’d prevailed. Barely a scratch. Not bad, all things considered.

But as she wiped her blade clean and slid it back into its scabbard, her heart beat with an ache that had nothing to do with the fight.

It wasn’t the danger she hated.

It was the silence afterward.

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