Chương 3: The Celestial Cycle

Mingxuan's second day in the world proved, mercifully, far less eventful than his first. Night had long since surrendered its claim to the sky by the time they reached the outlying fields, yet the heavens refused to wash themselves clean. When he craned his neck from the sling that bound him to the midwife's chest, what he saw defied any memory his fractured mind could offer. The sky had become a canvas of restless crimsons, each shade pushing against its neighbour like dyes bleeding together in water.

Lacquer red deepened to the wet hue of dragon fruit flesh, which in turn dissolved into the hushed maroon of old bandages left too long unchanged. Near the horizon, pink vapour coiled into cinnabar ribbons. Overhead, a deeper red pooled like wine in a cup. Between them, shy threads of dusty carmine peeked through tears in the cloud cover, hardly noticeable until the wind tore the clouds thin and sent the colour streaming across the vault of heaven like burning silk.

He found himself reaching toward it, one tiny hand stretching upward as if he might catch a drip of that scarlet light. It no longer reminded him of torn throats or spilled blood. Instead, he thought of a painter's palette upended across the world, each gradation alive with motion rather than menace. The woman carrying him had walked through the night. Mingxuan at least had been able to sleep, curled against her heartbeat, his infant body demanding the rest that hers could not claim.

Now, as the crimson dawn spread its light across the land, he could feel the tremor in her arms, the hitch in her breathing. She was wrung dry, empty of everything save the determination that kept her feet moving. The road beneath her worn sandals was rutted and crude, scored deep by cart wheels. Millet fields stretched away on either side, their ripening heads standing in tidy rows that caught the red light and turned it bronze. The sight of them stirred something in his fragmented memories.

A sense of wrongness, though he could not say why. Beyond the paddies squatted houses of wattle and daub, their latticed windows covered with oiled paper that rustled in the breeze. Smoke curled from clay chimneys set into roofs thatched with straw and split shingles. The tallest structure in sight was an ancestral hall that might have reached two stories, its swooping eaves carved and painted with a care that spoke of reverence rather than industry. No lamp posts lined the road.

Instead, wooden stakes stood at intervals, each hung with a reed cage containing drowsy fireflies that pulsed a sleepy green. The sight of them stirred a smile in him. Nothing here had been touched by the hand of mass production, by factories or assembly lines or any concept of modernity at all. Whatever world he had arrived in, it belonged to carved jade seals and ink decrees, not steel towers and electric lights. The knowledge stirred neither fear nor sorrow in his infant heart. Only a curious thrill.

At the village entrance stood a gate that must have once stood proud against raiders. Now it leaned like a veteran favouring a bad leg, one horizontal beam snapped to show a craggy grin where careful joinery should have met. Yet faded cinnabar paint still clung in the sheltered grooves, and an upside-down charm fluttered from the lintel, promising luck to those who passed beneath. The woman carrying him paused there.

He felt her draw a breath that shuddered in her chest, steadying herself before she stepped through. The smell of the village reached him as they entered. Split bamboo and pig feed, underlaid with the rich tang of river silt. A pair of children stopped their game to stare at the soot-smudged stranger with the red-rimmed eyes and the silent babe bound to her chest. Chickens scattered before her passage, their indignant clucking breaking the morning stillness.

She made her way to a shrine near a well, and there she paused to bow, her lips shaping words too quiet for him to hear. Thanks, perhaps. Or prayers. Or simply the acknowledgment of spirits whose protection she hoped to claim. A door creaked open across the way. An elderly man emerged, lantern held high despite the growing light. His beard nearly brushed his chest, but the eyes above it were sharp and assessing.

He took in the woman's appearance and the newborn cradled in her lavender sling, and his expression softened. Around them, other doors began to open. Faces appeared in the growing light, wary but curious. The woman spoke first. Her voice had frayed to threads, worn thin by terror and grief and a night spent fleeing through darkness. There was a pleading note in it that made Mingxuan's chest ache.

She gestured to him several times as she spoke, and though most of her words slipped past his infant understanding, he caught fragments. Shelter. Healer. Pay. Skill. The language itself was tonal, rising and falling in pitch with each syllable, and he found her voice unexpectedly beautiful now that terror was no longer choking it. The sound of it soothed him, familiar in a way he could not explain. The elderly man studied the road behind her, as if expecting demons to come loping out of the morning.

But the road remained empty, and at length he grunted. When he spoke, his voice was a deep rasp like a croaking frog, but there was kindness in it. He stepped aside, raising his lantern higher, and gestured her deeper into the village. The house he showed them to crouched beside a jujube tree at the village's edge, where the neat rows of millet gave way to wild grass. Wattle walls. A thatched roof that bore the marks of a dozen repairs. One window that rattled even in the mild morning breeze.

Yet there was a hearth inside, and the rafters looked sturdy enough. It would keep the rain out. It would be shelter. The old man and the woman spoke as they walked, their voices weaving together in conversation. By the way the elder's face creased with worry, Mingxuan knew he had heard of the demon horde now. Of the slaughter. Of the hell they had fled. But Mingxuan learned something more important in that exchange, something that settled into him like a gift. The woman's name was Xinyi.

He repeated it to himself, silently, committing it to memory with a fierceness that surprised him. Xinyi. He would not forget. Could not forget. She had carried him through fire and darkness, had chosen to save him when everything else had been lost. The least he could do was remember her name. She fell asleep beside the hearth within moments of the elder's departure, her body finally surrendering to exhaustion.

Mingxuan found himself cradled against her chest, feeling the steady drum of her heartbeat beneath his cheek. He had barely been awake half an hour, but that rhythm lulled him as surely as any lullaby. His eyes drifted closed. Sleep claimed him gently, and he did not fight it. After that first day, life settled into a regular rhythm. They learned the name of their refuge: Seventh Stone.

A simple name for a simple place, derived from a milestone on the nearby road that had been marked with the character for "seven" so long ago that no one living remembered who had carved it. Xinyi's skills as a midwife granted her a place in the village. She prepared herbs into poultices by lantern light, and when dawn peered through the rush blinds she was already out, babe bound to her chest with that faded lavender sash that had survived the flight through hell.

The villagers soon learned the rhythm of her visits. Whatever the ailment, Xinyi arrived soft of step and sharp of eye, and she tended to them all with quiet competence that swiftly earned their trust. Mingxuan rode along, content to watch the world from his sling, breathing in the smells of motherwort and aloe that clung to her clothes. When he gurgled or cooed, she would glance down at him, and her mouth would try for a smile that never quite reached her eyes.

Time passed, threading small wonders through quiet days. Mingxuan learned to crawl before his first winter, driven by a determination that seemed outsized for his small body. His mind remembered how to walk with the coordination of a grown man, even if his muscles did not, and he refused to remain a helpless lump that could only travel by sling. He toppled more than he stepped, but each tumble ended in laughter rather than tears.

When he finally managed his first wobbling steps across the earthen floor of their small house, Xinyi's face transformed. She scooped him up and spun him around, laughing with a brightness he had never heard from her before. Her joy in his achievements never seemed to dim, no matter how small the victory. Those moments were precious for their rarity. A sadness clung to Xinyi that never quite loosened its grip, and Mingxuan found he could sense it the way he had once sensed approaching death.

Grief or trauma or some bitter mixture of both had carved itself into her, and though she tried to hide it from him, he knew. So when her eyes went distant and her throat worked as if swallowing something hard and sharp, he made certain to be close. To take her hand. To look up into her face with understanding written in his infant eyes. It tended to bring her back, pulling her from whatever dark place she had drifted to. But when she cried in her sleep at night, there was nothing he could do but listen.

And remember. And vow to be worth the terrible price she had paid to save him. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. She kept trying, though. For him more than herself, he suspected. No matter how lost she looked, she always made certain he was fed and clothed and healthy. She gave him everything she had, even when it left nothing for herself.

Learning the local language proved harder than learning to walk, but he approached it with the same stubborn determination. He listened to every conversation he could, slowly piecing together meaning from context and repetition as the months turned to seasons. There was a familiarity to the tones and cadences, something that tugged at memories he could not quite grasp. It brought to mind an old woman's voice, wrinkled and gray-haired but always smiling, though her name and identity was lost to his memory.

He was strategic with his first word, waiting for the right moment to let it slip. It came during a dawn colder than most in early spring. Xinyi had spent the night lending her skills to a difficult birth, and when she returned she was wrung out, moving through exhaustion by will alone. As she rocked the village's newest arrival while the mother wept with relief, Mingxuan clung to her side and tugged on her skirt.

"Mama," he whispered. The word was barely more than breath, soft enough to be lost in the morning breeze. But Xinyi's shoulders jolted as if struck. The newborn paused mid-wail, confused by her sudden stillness. She looked down at him, and for a long moment neither of them moved. Then she leaned down, pressing her forehead against his. She said nothing, but her tears spoke for her. By eighteen months, he spoke in full sentences. One neighbour joked that Heaven had swapped the boy's tongue for a scholar's quill.

Others whispered of phoenix blessings and auspicious signs, their voices low and wondering. Mingxuan paid them little mind. Memory fragments still drifted through his thoughts—a clean hospital smell, a hand growing cold in his, faces with no names attached. Questions pressed against his teeth, begging to be asked, but the sight of Xinyi's shoulders curling whenever the fire crackled kept them trapped inside. Children were not supposed to remember the day of their birth.

He did not want to draw her mind back to that horror, not until she was ready to speak of it herself. He was certain she would tell him about his origins someday. There was no rush. Besides, the world itself presented far more enticing mysteries than his own tangled rebirth. And paramount among them stood the sky. It did not take him long to understand that the heavens here were a restless clock, marking time in shades and hues rather than the movement of sun and stars.

One day might arrive draped in quiet turquoise, promising gentle breezes and easy tempers. Days later, that placid colour would whirl into hammered bronze, and the very air would ring with tension. When bruised amethyst bled across the clouds, the village elders whispered prayers. Flame-vermilion afternoons heralded heat that shimmered above clay jars until their lids clattered. Rice shoots surged upward during those days, greedy for warmth. Skin prickled. Tempers flared.

Lovers quarreled and reconciled in the span of an afternoon. Even the breeze smelled different then, like something wild and burning. There were gentler faces too. Azure mornings brought rain, but the bamboo leaves knew it was coming long before any cloud darkened. Spiders spun silk so fine it caught the light in prisms, and children played in puddles without fear. On brass evenings, shopkeepers swept their thresholds twice, whispering that coins stuck together better on such nights. Laughter came easier then.

Even Xinyi's smile reached the corners of her eyes. Mingxuan kept a journal in rough animal parchment bound with plant fibres, and a charcoal stub he had begged from the village scribe. He marked down the colours of the sky with meticulous care, and beneath each entry he noted what changed: sap rising faster, insects growing louder, shadows shortening or lengthening. No one had taught him to write.

He copied the ink notices posted outside the shrine, combining them with the fragmented knowledge already present in his mind until the strokes felt true enough. He noted everything. How bread refused to rise beneath sea-indigo skies. How bees flew in wider circles when the heavens turned orchard-pink. How words of kindness seemed to carry farther across silver days, while anger soured faster under gray. Colours governed mood, growth, and decay.

An invisible emperor changing laws with every sweep of its chromatic robe. Even the quiet kingdom of leaves obeyed that tyrant sky. On moss-yellow mornings, the pond lotus opened before the rooster could crow, petals drinking in the gentle light. But when the heavens darkened to storm-slate, those same petals clamped shut, stems stiffening, and a bitter sap oozed from any cut edge. Millet blades flushed brighter under flame-vermilion afternoons, ripening a full week early as if racing the heat.

Xinyi's herb patch mirrored the dance: angelica roots growing fattest on earth-brown days, while motherwort sprouted silvery fuzz during lilac cycles, its scent sharper and more medicinal. Animals followed the choreography as well. Swallows cut lower arcs beneath azure, their warning cries sending field mice scurrying for burrows moments before the first raindrops fell. Stray dogs grew restless under silver skies, pacing the village lanes until the colour gentled.

Cats sought high perches on green afternoons, tails flicking in contentment. Even the pond frogs adjusted their chorus, croaking double-time during pink days and falling nearly silent when white spread like frost across the vault above. If he was honest with himself, his data gathering yielded no substantial patterns. Sometimes a colour changed after only a single day. Other times it persisted for dozens. The longest cycle he recorded before frustration overtook him lasted thirty-three days.

His only triumph came in learning just how many different shades of every colour existed, and in discovering the magic—literal magic, he was certain—of watching them curl together at the height of noon. Towards the end of his second year, the journal boasted an ordered list fit for a bureaucrat's desk. The villagers thought it charming, a child's fancy. In praising him, they inadvertently granted him the name for what he was tracking.

"Are you charting the Celestial Cycle, little scholar?" one woman asked, smiling down at him from her doorway.

"Maybe you'll be the one to finally predict the changes, eh?" The Celestial Cycle. Of course. What else would one call the breathing of the heavens? Only Xinyi read his pages with a furrowed brow.

"You memorize the sky better than you memorize your chores," she teased one evening while grinding herbs in their small house. He grinned up at her.

"The sky's more interesting than laundry."

"You say that now." She tried for sternness, but the corners of her mouth betrayed her.

"Wait until you have even more stains to scrub out." Emboldened by her playful mood and frustrated by his lack of progress in finding patterns, he asked, "Mama, why does the sky change colours?" Xinyi's hand paused mid-stir. She wiped her brow with the back of her forearm, considering.

"Because the world breathes," she said at last.

"Because the heavens have moods. Every breath, they say, is a different flavour of qi. Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water are the most common." She glanced at him.

"Can you tell me what colours those are?" Qi. The word struck him like a bell. He knew it already, even though this was the first time he'd heard it that he could recall. Vitality. Breath. Life force. That was what the feeling inside him had been, the current he had drunk from dying warriors and demons alike. Death Qi. He should have asked her about this sooner. But the question had never formed quite right until now. He answered her question first, his mind suddenly bright with attention.

"Fire is red, water is blue, earth is brown, metal is grey, and wood is green?"

"Good." She smiled and returned to grinding her roots, but her voice grew softer.

"There are stranger colours besides. Dream, Shadow, Time, and more. Some people I travelled with once said there are hundreds." He drew a breath. Let it out.

"And Death Qi? Which colour is that?" Xinyi's pestle clattered onto the table. Silence pooled thick between them. The hearth popped. She held a breath, lifted her shoulders, then let both fall as she exhaled. After a moment that stretched too long, she moved to sit beside him, charcoal dust still stippling her work apron.

"Death Qi is rare," she said slowly, watching his face with an expression he could not read.

"It doesn't belong to the Cycle in the common way."

"Then how does one get it?" Her flinch was small, but visible.

"They say the Heavens grant it when a life ends," she said, eyeing him oddly.

"Or when certain days come round, very rarely. Everyone hides in their homes when that colour rules the sky. Even the strongest of cultivators."

"Which days?"

"Child." Her tone broke, apology wrapped in frustration.

"I'm no cultivator. I can bind wounds, guide babies into the world, ease a passing. That's all I know." Mingxuan tucked his chin against her collarbone, breathing in the familiar smells of star anise and damp hay that clung to her.

"You saved me," he said quietly.

"That was mercy, not mastery." For a moment, her voice sounded younger. Rawer.

"You were born for more than this, Mingxuan. A lowly midwife doesn't understand the full scope of your destiny. I can't give you what you deserve. I don't even know where to begin explaining these things to you. I barely know much about them myself." He pulled back to search her eyes. They were dark and sad and full of love.

"You gave me everything worth having," he said. She kissed his brow and rose, returning to her mortar with shoulders squared. The matter, for her, was closed. For him, it had cracked wide open. Later, when the village had surrendered to cicada song and darkness, Mingxuan climbed onto their roof with his journal tucked under one arm. Thatch pricked his feet. The sky had been draped in rich indigo for the last few days, and tonight it was sprinkled with stars like pinholes leaking something brighter beyond.

He flipped through his pages until he reached the back, where one entry remained blank. A space left waiting for a colour he was yet to witness. He pressed charcoal to hide and hesitated, frowning. No hue seemed to fit the pulse that lived against his sternum. Death Qi felt colorless. Yet it also felt full. He closed his eyes and let instinct guide him. The current inside him had thinned over the years to a thread that hummed only when chickens stopped crowing or a mouse breathed its final squeak in the walls.

But it obeyed him still. He coaxed it into motion, and it slid through channels he could not see but could feel as clearly as his own heartbeat. When it filled his limbs, the night air grew cooler. Smells sharpened. The distant hush of sleeping villagers layered itself in new textures. In that quiet, he considered how to find more of it. Waiting for Heaven's generosity seemed foolish. Destiny meant movement, not patience. But dealing out death based on his own whims felt wrong. Predatory.

Who was he to decide when death should come? Looking up at that wondrous sky, he wondered what colour would Thanara's robes be beneath this iridescent indigo. Would she appear here at all, in this strange world, or did she walk only between the spaces where souls passed from one existence to another? The thought of her filled him with a strange ache. Longing and grief for something he had barely known before it was lost. A breeze ruffled the pages of his journal.

He looked down at the blank entry and marked it with a single charcoal dot, dark as a sealed horizon.