At the far northern ridge of Cloudpeak Sect, where the breath of heaven itself turned to snow and time seemed to sleep beneath the frost, Jiang Yunxian walked alone.
The world was white and endless—sky, ground, even the bones of the mountains were one unbroken sheet of shimmering ice. His boots sank into the snow with a muted crunch, the faint trail of his steps swallowed as quickly as they appeared. Overhead, the clouds hung low, like silken curtains dipped in silver. Between them, faint glimmers of runic light pulsed—seals, ancient and divine, woven into the very fabric of the storm.
This was the Restricted North, the place even the Cloudpeak Elders dared not tread.
And yet, here he was.
The air hummed faintly with power. It was the kind of energy that made the heart tremble and the soul ache, a divine resonance that whispered warnings into mortal bones.
Jiang Yunxian brushed snow from his orange robes with lazy disinterest. "Well," he muttered, squinting toward the distance, "if I freeze to death here, at least the heavens can call it poetic justice. A fool drunk on curiosity."
A streak of gold flame darted through the wind and landed beside him with an exhausted flutter.
"...You know," came the faintly irritated voice of Rong Qi, "you truly have no sense of survival, do you?"
The once-glorious phoenix feather now looked pitifully dull, flickering with embers instead of burning bright. It drifted down into the snow, then twitched weakly, its edges melting a thin ring into the ice before collapsing entirely.
Yunxian knelt, scooping it up. "You know you can't come here," he said softly. His tone carried mockery, but also worry—barely hidden beneath his drawl.
Rong Qi gave a tired little hum. "Fire is my domain," he said. "And yet here you are—dragging me into the snowlands as though my wings were made of ice."
"You're not even a full bird," Yunxian said, rubbing his thumb against the feather's cold shaft. "You're a talking accessory with a bad attitude."
If the feather had eyes, it would have rolled them. "I've been following you for a hundred years," Rong Qi said. "And you still forget I existed before your first wine cup."
Jiang Yunxian chuckled, but there was a tiredness in it. "I don't remember much before that wine cup. Or the one after." He glanced at the horizon again—the faint glow of a sigil, half-buried beneath ice. "Now hush. We're here for something."
The energy seal stood before them like a curtain of light—thin, shimmering, impossibly still. The symbols that formed it pulsed faintly like living eyes. They were old, older than Cloudpeak itself. Each rune seemed to breathe with power.
Jiang Yunxian reached out, fingers just brushing the barrier. A hum reverberated through his bones, the air thickened, and for a moment, he felt the weight of countless gazes pressing down from unseen heavens.
Then—
A piercing screech cut through the air.
He jumped so hard he nearly lost his footing, spinning around. "By the Celestial Emperor's bald head—!" He clamped his mouth shut before the rest of the curse spilled out. His thousand and one oaths burned at the edge of his tongue.
Rong Qi lay limp in his palm, his warmth fading. The feather was freezing fast.
"Why are you cold?" Yunxian frowned. "Didn't I—wait, no. Don't tell me you're dying. Not again. You just resurrected three moons ago."
Rong Qi's voice was faint but teasing. "You cast a snow shield to protect me from the cold," he said weakly, "but you forgot the one thing I needed. Fire."
Yunxian blinked. "Fire?"
"I am fire, idiot."
The man groaned. "Why do I even bother?" He muttered something unflattering about heavenly beasts and their fragile constitutions, then conjured a flicker of crimson flame between his fingers. The fire coiled like a serpent, then settled atop the feather's body—a warm, pulsing glow.
Almost immediately, Rong Qi brightened. "Ahh… that's better," he sighed dramatically. "You have no idea what it feels like to have your essence frozen solid."
"Trust me, I don't intend to." Yunxian pocketed him into his robe, his gaze still fixed on the barrier. "You said no one's ever broken this seal before?"
"No mortal one," Rong Qi corrected.
"And I'm supposed to believe you're anything but mortal these days? You're literally a feather."
"A feather with more divine blood than the entire Cloudpeak Sect combined," Rong Qi shot back. "That's the Heart-Burn Seal. From my clan. It kills from within—starts with your soul flame, then devours your heart until it turns to ash."
Yunxian whistled low. "Poetic. And brutal. I like it."
"Don't even think about touching it."
But the thought had already crossed his mind. His eyes glimmered with mischief—and a strange, dangerous curiosity. There was something calling to him from beyond that barrier. A pulse that matched his heartbeat. Like a whisper he had always known.
"Don't tell me you're hearing voices again," Rong Qi said, wary.
"Every night," Yunxian said softly. "They call my name, though I don't even remember who I am." His voice trailed off, eyes darkening. "And no matter how many times I silence them, they find me."
Rong Qi grew quiet.
Snow fell heavier. The sky had turned pale violet, and the world seemed to hold its breath. Yunxian stepped forward again, hand outstretched.
Before he could touch the seal, a voice—clear, female, teasing—broke the silence.
"You better listen to the feather, dude."
He froze.
Ten curses leapt from his lips at once: "By the Golden Emperor's empty cup—Heaven's bald donkey—Thunder's left armpit—Cloudpeak's stinking elders—Rot of ten thousand spirits—flaming peaches of the East Heaven—may the Skyfire burn your tongue—ah, why does everyone sneak up on me?!"
It was too late.
He knew that voice.
"Xing Yue," he groaned, turning around.
The Falling Star God stood behind him, her silvery robes swaying gently in the snow. Her hair shimmered faintly—white as moonlight, but streaked with faint hues of night-blue when the wind shifted. There was something otherworldly in her gaze, too calm to be human, too tired to be divine.
"That's too much for an advice, don't you think, Yunxian?" she said, lips curved faintly.
"How did you—what—why are you here?" he demanded. "This place is restricted even to Sect Masters! You stalking me or something?"
She smiled. "The heavens have a way of guiding their strays."
He squinted. "That sounded like a threat disguised as poetry."
Before he could argue further, Xing Yue bent gracefully, picked up a frozen log from the snow, and—without warning—hurled it straight into the barrier.
The world exploded.
Flames roared like a dying god's last breath, searing through the blizzard. The shockwave sent Yunxian stumbling backward, his orange robes flaring wildly. He hit the ground, rolling, snow scattering like pearls around him.
"Miss!" he shouted, coughing smoke. "If you're going to kill me, at least buy me dinner first!"
Rong Qi wheezed out laughter from his robes. Xing Yue, dusting frost from her sleeve, only arched an eyebrow. "You're still as dramatic as ever."
Yunxian blinked. "As ever? Don't start that cryptic nonsense again!"
But she wasn't listening. Her gaze was fixed on the barrier—the burnt section still glowing faintly red. "So it is the Heart-Burn Seal," she murmured. "A phoenix's fire rune… one forged in divine fury."
"You can't break it?" Yunxian asked.
"If I had my full body," Rong Qi interjected dryly, "I could reduce this entire mountain to molten glass. But right now, I'm a decorative feather."
Xing Yue's brows furrowed. "Aren't phoenixes immune to their own flames?"
Jiang Yunxian lifted the feather slightly. "You see any flames left? He's got the personality of a fire, not the power."
That earned him a faint, weary sigh. "You are impossible."
"Thank you. I practice daily."
For a heartbeat, the three stood in silence—snow swirling, the seal pulsing faintly like a living thing. And beneath it all, a hum—a call—something vast, ancient, and watching.
Something waiting.
---
"I can possess a body to be able to break the seal," Rong Qi said.
The words fell into the frozen air and landed like a stone against the barrier. For a beat, everything was ridiculously, unbearably quiet—snow trembling in mid-fall, the rune-light in the Heart-Burn Seal pulsing as if listening.
Jiang Yunxian stared at the feather in his palm as though it had grown a mouth and started telling fortunes. Xing Yue's eyes sharpened; for the first time, the faint veil of her composure quivered. The three of them had expected plan and bluff; none had expected this confession to echo like a divine verdict.
"You can possess?" Yunxian asked, voice hoarse in the cold. "How is that even—"
Rong Qi's ember-flare winked. "Phoenix law," it said simply. "A remnant art from before the Empires carved law into the sky. The phoenix does not only burn and rise. It gives a piece of its soul to a dying spark, and if needed, it can lend that spark to another flesh. But—" the feather's light dimmed, "—it is forbidden. It burns the vessel. It burns the heart. It is not a blessing; it is a crucible."
Xing Yue's lips tightened. "Possession is taboo among beasts and gods," she said softly. "It draws the clan's eye. It twists fate into debt." Her hand hovered at her throat as though feeling for some old scar. "Why would you—?"
"Because the seal eats from the inside," Rong Qi replied, and for once the feather sounded older than its size. "It devours the soul-flame, consumes the heart's ember until only ash answers the name. A human hand cannot hold divine fury cleanly. My flame can. But only if I step into a ready vessel."
"Ready?" Yunxian spat the word like a pebble. "Who offers themselves for such an inglorious burn?"
Xing Yue did not answer. Her face, lit by the seal's dull glow, was a map of decisions. "There are ways," she said after a long breath. "The star-god once swore all manner of vows for those who owed her. I can bind, for a time, my aura to a willing body. I can create a scaffold—a shell. Rong Qi can climb into that scaffold and coax his flame into flesh."
Rong Qi's quiver was a gust of small sparks. "It will pain them," it warned. "The Heart-Burn Seal awakens its hunger by probing the heart's heat. If the vessel is not true—if it wavers—a thousand knives of fever will stake the chest. The flame will scour the membrane. And when the phoenix retreats, if the shell's heart is too fragile, the body will be hollowed out like a drum."
Yunxian swallowed. The barrier's light crawled. He dropped his hand to the gourd at his belt, finding nothing there but the memory of wine. "So who's the sacrificial lamb?" he said, smiling a smile that did not reach his eyes.
"You," Rong Qi said without irony.
For a moment the world tried to laugh and failed. Yunxian barked a short, incredulous sound. "Me? My cultivation? I'm a joke between sparrows and constables—how do you suppose I will take a phoenix inside me and not become barbecue?"
Rong Qi's ember-shade darkened. "You are stubborn, and that is why you can be chosen. I need a body that can resist corrosion—not strong in cultivation alone, but one tethered to the oddities of fate. You carry the pendant. That shard is a husk of star-runed law; it resists Heaven's bite in small measures. It will not save you entirely, but it will anchor enough for me to hold."
Xing Yue stepped forward, snow kissing her robes. Her voice lost the mockery Yunxian had come to expect. "The scaffold I build will be porous—temporary. The phoenix must burn through it and be the flame itself in the vessel; my aura will bind and hold the cracks. But the price is raw. You will taste your own bones. You will understand the phoenix's hunger."
Jiang Yunxian thought of a thousand crude curses. He thought of drinking until breaths were wasted, of running and hiding and laughing, of everything he had avoided since the Eye shattered. He thought of Rong Qi's voice when it had first sung in his ear, thin and fierce. He thought of the feather's earlier claim—he had once trapped a phoenix-soul into a shaft and made of it a companion. He thought of the whispering nights and the pendant's faint glow. He thought—finally—of nothing but the thin line between survival and cowardice.
"Fine," he said. The word was an ember itself. "If I must be the fool for your pyromancy, I'll be the fool."
Rong Qi puffed, so proud it could have burst. Xing Yue's small smile was a crescent of moonlight.
Then they began.
Xing Yue's hands moved in arcs older than most sectarian sutras. Her fingers traced sigils in the air—the strokes of the Heaven-Threaded Bond, a binding rite half-remembered by human clerics and half-held by star-priests. The runes she traced were not only lines; they were syllables of weight, chanting that hummed deep in the marrow. The snow around them hissed as if recognizing the language. The log's scorch-mark glowed in the barrier's afterlight like a wound.
As she wove, Rong Qi inhaled. The feather's embers crawled, then blossomed—a bloom of furiously tiny suns that licked at the scarf of cold around it. His voice, when he spoke, was layered—many-pitched, like flames whispering in a shrine. "This is the Ancestral Inversion. It will let the phoenix's remnant cross into flesh. But the remnant is not whole. It will seek a bond: blood and promise. It will look for the heart's rhythm it recognizes, then fold into it."
Rong Qi turned himself to face Yunxian and Xing Yue both, the soft filaments of his edge trembling with an inner wind. Yunxian felt a tug at his chest as if something pulled on the thread of his pulse.
Xing Yue placed her palms upon Yunxian's shoulders; the skin there hummed at her touch. "Do you accept the price?" she asked—no accusation, only a truth.
"For the chance to stop the seal from burning more—yes." Yunxian's answer was a whisper, and even the Heart-Burn Seal seemed to lean forward to hear.
Xing Yue closed her eyes, drew breath like a bell toll. The space between her and Yunxian shimmered. The phantom sigils she had spun tightened into a lattice like a cradle of moonlight. Blood-and-ice met star-will, and the lattice sang.
Rong Qi unfurled. The feather elongated, threads elongating into filigree. His embers coalesced, a streak of living gold and crimson that refused to be contained by feather. He shivered as the burn of the air rose; snow vaporized where he passed, turning to a steam that smelled like iron and old incense.
When the phoenix-flame touched the lattice, the world reacted like flesh struck. Heat slammed into bone, and Yunxian's breath stuttered. For a moment he saw fire shaped like a throne—an impossible garden of ash—and felt a hundred ancient eyes watching him as if he'd dared to read their names aloud.
Rong Qi's essence reached for Yunxian's chest. The first touch was an electric humiliation—warmth like the memory of a sunburn. Then came tearing: the flame pried open the heart's hinge and peered in. For a second, Yunxian felt his life unwind: the wine, the laughter, the nameless nights; the dreams that had come like stray dogs; the whispering voices that called a name he never learned. It was unbearable—like drowning in heat.
He gasped, and pain bloomed spectacularly—the kind of pain that announces revelation. It started in the sternum, claws searching the ribs, then roared outward like a furnace. He wanted to call out; instead, curses clotted in his throat and spilled as ragged exhalations. The snow around them steamed, and his skin prickled as if flea-bitten by embers.
Xing Yue's aura moved like a surgeon's hands. Her lattice bent and bled with the flame's pressure but did not break. The scaffold held; the seal's probing met not bare flesh but a set of steps and locks fashioned of star-thread. Rong Qi surged deeper—less a possession than a full-bodied descent. The feather's voice layered over Yunxian's mind: images, a lifetime of plum blazes, nests atop ruined altars, a chorus of phoenix cries, the loss of a body, the taste of ash, the hungry geometry of rising.
"Give me your center," Rong Qi commanded—not cruel, but necessary.
Yunxian realized, with the absurd clarity of someone finally deciding to laugh while burning, that he could offer his center. Not the memory of his childhood, not the things the whispers asked of him, but the single stubborn thing he'd always refused to part with—his refusal to bow.
He gave it.
The phoenix-flame took it like a drink.
The sensation that followed was a breaking and a making. Pain and then a strange, lucid power: his bones no longer only his; his blood warmed as if someone had poured a second sun into his veins; his senses lifted, tasting the sigils in the air like metal. He could hear the Heart-Burn Seal think. He could feel the rune-runner's intention like a stone in his mouth.
Rong Qi—now more flame than feather—filled Yunxian's chest like a living furnace. The phoenix's remnant sang along the ribbed cage; it mapped the contours, sang them into remembering. Yunxian's breath steadied; the pain remained, but it was now a cord he could pull upon.
Outside the lattice, the Heart-Burn Seal recoiled like a beast pricked. It lashed out at the intruder with white-hot tongues, probing at the marrow. But the mounted phoenix answered with a roar that was not his voice and not entirely a beast's. It was an order from before law, a recall of rights. The flame within Yunxian flared, met the seal's tongues, and held. The last thing the Heart-Burn Seal felt was not triumph but the smell of old spice and the iron of a man's laugh.
A shockwave rolled across the snow. The rune-light in the barrier twisted, sparking, and then—like a thing remembering a face after ages—cracked.
The seal's light spidered outward, then shuttered. The rune-mesh splintered, the roars of fire met the silence of broken law, and for a moment the world paused between breaths.
Yunxian collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest where fire moved like a caged animal. His face was ash-smudged, eyes wide and newly reflective. A hand—Xing Yue's—braced his shoulder, anchoring him. Rong Qi's voice now whispered everywhere and nowhere in his mind, both jubilant and lamenting.
"You did it," Xing Yue said, and her voice trembled in a way that made it feel like she, too, had paid. "But not for free."
Rong Qi laughed in Yunxian's chest, a sound like embers snapping. "You fool! You actually let me ride you!"
Yunxian drew a ragged breath. He tasted iron and wine and something like memory. "You—don't you dare roast me later," he managed.
"Later," Rong Qi replied cheerfully, a warmth that was both comfort and threat. "Much later. For now—get up. We have to leave. The seal will sing for retribution, and the heavens will notice."
Yunxian tried to stand. The world spun like a lantern. His heart felt heavy and hot, a furnace with gears. He laughed—half-crazy, half-exultant. "If the heavens come, I'll tell them I heated my own soup," he croaked.
But in the mirror of the shattered rune-light something had changed: the pendant at his chest glowed, a pale star beating in tandem with the new flame. And above the cloudline, far beyond the sect, unseen eyes blinked awake.
The price had been paid. The fire would not leave him now. And somewhere, in the bones of the mountain, an old registry scratched its name back into memory: The Careless Immortal has lit a flame inside a man again.