Alexei sneezed.
"Achoo!"
He rubbed his nose, trying to dislodge whatever had irritated it. A strand of hair had gotten sucked into his nostril, his own hair, annoyingly, and was making everything itch.
"Stupid long hair," he muttered, pushing it back. "I should've cut this days ago."
The mooshroom mooed sympathetically from its corner.
"Don't start with me, Bessie. At least your hair is useful. Mine just gets in the way."
He was about to cast his line again when movement from the bed caught his attention.
Qingxue's eyes were open.
"Oh," he said. "You're awake."
---
Qingxue had been fully awake for several minutes, but she'd spent that time trying to figure out what the hell had happened.
Her last clear memory was falling. Now she was... here. Wherever "here" was.
A wooden room. Warm, lit by strange torches that didn't flicker. And a young man, no, a teenager, she realized, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting on the edge of what appeared to be the bed she was lying on, holding a fishing rod.
That was strange enough. But the room itself...
Her divine sense had returned enough for basic scanning. And what it told her was impossible. The walls blocked spiritual energy. This tiny wooden structure was a spiritual isolation chamber. Which meant the Grey Mist hadn't found her because it couldn't sense her through these walls.
She'd actually escaped the Ghost Sect's pursuit.
Because a random mortal had dragged her into a magic treehouse in the middle of nowhere.
The absurdity of it made her want to laugh and cry simultaneously.
She had, of course, heard plenty of tales about the Ghost Sect. In the past few hundred years, the Ghost Sect's experts had attacked Nascent Soul cultivators all over the Eastern Region, sometimes even Manifestation-stage cultivators. By now, every sect in the East turned pale at the mere mention of the Grey Mist. And she had never once heard of the Grey Mist abandoning a chase midway. They were known for never giving up until their objective was achieved. She originally thought that, as a nobody from a small sect, she might never cross paths with the Ghost Sect in her lifetime.
Unexpectedly, she had still been targeted.
She cleared her distracting thoughts. Her top priority now was still to recover from her injuries. She tried to sit up.
Her body protested immediately. Spiritual veins were still a mess, her Dharma Aspect was damaged beyond quick repair. But she could move, barely. Which was better than the alternative.
The teenager noticed her struggling and quickly set down his fishing rod, moving to help support her arm as she shifted to lean against the wall.
"You've been out for two days. Don't push it."
His voice was young, with an accent she couldn't quite place. Definitely not from the Eastern Region. His spiritual energy was... nonexistent. No cultivation base at all. He was really just a complete mortal, who had somehow saved her life.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice came out rougher than intended, throat dry from disuse.
The teenager jerked his hand back like he'd been burned.
Qingxue ignored his reaction. Right now, she needed to assess her condition properly.
She tried circulating spiritual energy. Her meridians responded sluggishly, damaged and partially blocked from the tribulation lightning. After several minutes of effort, she managed to gather maybe a thumb-sized amount of qi.
It was pathetic compared to her usual reserves. But as long as she could still move spiritual energy at all, recovery was possible.
She guided that meager amount through her body, using it to shore up the worst internal injuries and regain some basic control over her limbs.
The teenager watched her, head tilted slightly.
"Are you doing... uh, qi stuff?" he asked. "Because it looks like you're just sitting there, but the air is moving weird."
Qingxue blinked. "You can sense that?"
"I mean, kind of?" He gestured vaguely. "Is that a cultivator thing?"
"Yes." She paused. "You're not a cultivator."
"Nope. Very much not. I'm just a guy who lives in a tree and fishes a lot."
That... explained nothing. But she filed it away with everything else that was bizarre about this situation. She needed to introduce herself properly. Basic courtesy, even if she had no idea how to talk to someone this young who'd saved her life.
"My name is Ning Qingxue," she said. "Ning like stillness. Qingxue like pure snow."
The teenager stared at her blankly.
Right. He probably didn't read the characters. She was explaining the etymology of her name to someone who might not even use the same writing system.
"It just means Ning Qingxue," she corrected. "That's my name."
Silence stretched between them.
She realized she'd stopped talking and had no idea how to continue. Conversation had never been her strong point. She'd spent most of her life either cultivating alone or training with senior disciples who didn't require small talk.
Talking to a teenage mortal who'd rescued her? Completely outside her experience.
"What's your name?" she finally asked, because that seemed like a logical next step.
The teenager had been staring at her fox tail, which was swishing nervously behind her back. When she spoke, he snapped his attention back to her face, looking caught.
"Uh." He cleared his throat. "Alexei. Alexei Volkov. That's my name."
Qingxue processed that. The name was definitely foreign. Not from any region she recognized. Which explained the accent.
"Alexei," she repeated, testing the pronunciation.
"Yeah. Or just Alex, if that's easier for you."
She nodded slowly. "Alexei."
More silence.
This was excruciating. She'd faced down demon beasts, survived lightning tribulation, and escaped an evil sect's assassination attempt. But making small talk with a teenager was somehow harder than all of that combined. She really needed to say something. But her mind was blank except for assessment of injuries and worry about the future and... Wait. Healing. She could heal.
Without another word, she reached into her spatial pouch, thankfully still intact, and pulled out a Rejuvenation Pill. Grade eight, expensive as hell, normally reserved for sect emergencies. She swallowed it dry and immediately began circulating the medicinal energy through her meridians.
Alexei watched this entire process but didn't interrupt.
Good. She could focus on healing and avoid the nightmare of continued conversation.
Hours passed.
Or what felt like hours. Time was hard to track while meditating. When she finally opened her eyes again, the pill's effects had stabilized. Her internal injuries were still bad. But no longer life-threatening. She could move without feeling like her body was about to fall apart. Her spiritual veins were still blocked. Her Dharma Aspect was still damaged. Those would take months to repair properly, maybe years, and would require resources she didn't have.
But she was alive. It was more than she'd had any right to expect.
She took stock of her surroundings properly this time, now that her mind wasn't entirely focused on not dying.
The treehouse was small. One room, maybe five meters by five meters, with a ceiling barely high enough for her to stand. But despite the cramped space, it was surprisingly cozy. The light from those strange torches made everything feel almost comfortable.
The contents, though. The contents were bizarre.
Three chests lined one wall. Two beds, one of which she was currently occupying. A suit of leather armor on a stand. A stone furnace. A wooden workbench with tools hanging from it that looked handmade. Four blocks of water just sitting on the floor in perfectly square depressions. Three patches of wheat growing indoors, which was already weird, but they were growing directly out of wooden planks without any soil.
And a cow. A cow with mushrooms growing on its back, standing in the corner like this was completely normal.
"What..." she started, then stopped. "Why is there a cow inside?"
Alexei, who'd gone back to fishing during her meditation, looked up. "Oh. That's Bessie. She lives here now."
"Why is... Bessie inside the house."
"It's safer." He said this like it was obvious.
"And the wheat?"
"Also safer inside. Everything's trying to kill me in this forest. Keeping things inside just makes sense."
Qingxue couldn't argue with that logic, even if the execution was deeply strange.
She looked around again. No extra clothing, second set of dishes, or indication that anyone else shared this space.
"Alexei," she said slowly. "Do you live here alone?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Just me and Bessie."
"Where's your family?"
The question came out before she could stop it. And the moment it did, she saw his expression shift.
"I don't have family here. It's just me and Bessie."
Qingxue felt her heart clench.
An orphan. A child living alone in a death-trap forest, surviving through what had to be sheer luck and whatever strange abilities let him build spiritual isolation chambers out of wood.
Her sect master had found her in similar circumstances. Alone, abandoned, with nowhere to go.
He'd given her a home, and a family.
She couldn't repay that debt, he was gone now, had been for over two centuries. But she could pay it forward.
"Then..." She chose her words carefully, aware this might be overstepping. "Would you like family?"
Alexei stared at her blankly.
"I could be your family," she clarified. "If you want. Your older sister, maybe?"
She'd never had siblings. She wasn't sure how that relationship was supposed to work. But she could try. For the boy who'd saved her life when he had no reason to, who'd kept her safe from the Ghost Sect without even understanding what he was protecting her from.
It was the least she could do.
Alexei continued staring.
"What the fuck?"