It was midsummer; the weather was hot and prone to sudden showers.
A young man walked through the grove, a racket strapped to his back and a small animal-skin pouch at his waist. The drizzle soaked him slowly, making him blink every time a drop hit his eyes.
"What luck I have. I really am lucky," Yu Xuan said with a mocking smile about his fortune. It was hard to believe that the rain had started the exact moment he set foot there.
"Heh!" He laughed aloud, finding the situation ridiculous, though inside his teeth ground with anger, wanting to vent it on something. "Ridiculous, everything's ridiculous!"
His mood was chaotic. His eyes, already irritated from wasted days, glowed with a dark, reddened light. The whites were starting to take on a red tint, making his blue irises stand out even more.
"I can't let myself act like this. Getting angry won't help," Yu Xuan whispered to himself, forcing himself back to reason. Even in his miserable state, it was not yet the end.
He still had three weeks. To panic now would be foolish. "Yes, I have to keep going. I can't let my emotions wreck my goals."
Yu Xuan inhaled deeply and regained his usual composure.
With a lighter expression, he brought his hand to his chin, standing motionless under the cold drops. He weighed whether it was wiser to leave and wait out the rain or to stay.
"The first option is safer. It keeps me from catching a cold or pneumonia. If that happens, I'd hardly have money for a healing potion and I could even die, depending on how bad it gets. The second option isn't naive: if I spread the candy on the trees, it will mix with the rain and its scent will carry farther, maybe drawing that damned butterfly. The rain won't stop it from coming."
Yu Xuan played out the choices in his mind like a chessboard where every move carried a calculated risk. He could retreat to protect his king or throw everything forward on a single gambit.
After five minutes of indecision, Yu Xuan made his choice: he would go all the way. It might be reckless, even stupid, but it was all he had left.
He had no other options. There was no guarantee he could capture the butterfly in three weeks. If he failed, Xiao Jin's progression would be delayed further, perhaps forcing him to start over.
Yu Xuan was sixteen, turning seventeen at year's end. Losing more time before beginning cultivation would bring no benefit.
"I'll accept the consequences," he told himself. "But at least I want to see a glimpse of hope before I get sick."
Getting the green butterfly today was essential at any cost.
Determination hardening his gaze, Yu Xuan reached down, took the half-empty jar of candy from his pouch, and spread the sticky paste across his fingers, repeating the motion from before. He dragged his syrupy finger along the tree bark in a thin horizontal line.
Stepping back, he watched the colorless liquid disperse at a glance, breaking into tiny droplets that mingled with the falling rain and filled the air with a damp, musty odor.
That smell, strange to Yu Xuan, seemed perfect to the minute creatures that hovered with their mouths open, devouring everything in a single bite.
"What does it taste like? Is it really the core?" he wondered. He wanted to try it but dared not, fearing possible ingestion problems.
It's true you should never drink rainwater because of contaminating microbes. The candy might be the same. Even if purified, who could guarantee it was risk-free?
Such thoughts flickered through Yu Xuan's head, but he pushed them away and focused only on the butterflies, growing more disappointed every minute as he burned through more of the candy he'd acquired.
By eleven in the morning, with the rain still falling, Yu Xuan's eyes lit up with sharp joy. He saw the damned thing right in front of him.
It looked like a leaf but wasn't one. It had two wings on each side, a butterfly-like form. The raindrops on its body triggered a deep green glow that made it even more beautiful.
Holding his breath, Yu Xuan slowly put the candy back in the pouch and grabbed a white porcelain bottle filled with green granules known as Nature Powder.
Raising the bottle to his scalp without blinking, he tipped it over himself.
Doused by the grains, Yu Xuan became scentless—his body odor disappeared entirely.
He drew his racket as if drawing a sword from its sheath and began to move between the trees in slow, measured steps. He never showed haste or lunged recklessly.
He knew that to catch it he had to be flawless in action. One wrong step and everything would go to ruin.
Sweat chilled on his brow and his heart beat strangely, but he closed the distance to the butterfly, which was alone, focused on its meal. It had let down its guard, concentrating solely on the hardened dew drops it was eating.
A perfect opportunity—but Yu Xuan still hesitated, not quite a hundred percent confident of securing it.
The butterfly kept eating, greedy and leaving nothing for others. When it finished and turned to fly away—
"Now!" Yu Xuan seized the moment of the creature's greatest weakness.
Gripping the racket with both hands, he stepped forward and swung upward in a leap, whistling air aside and throwing the rain off to the sides.
The butterfly, its belly full, tried to speed up but was too heavy. The racket was faster. Before it could react, it was struck squarely and trapped in the netting, the wires wrapping around it like manacles, pinning its wings.
Despite thrashing with all its might, it could not free itself.
Yu Xuan had captured the green butterfly in a week. It wasn't luck. It was the pure result of his actions.
He had kept calm in a desperate moment, controlled his anxiety, and avoided impulsive moves. Most importantly, he had gambled everything—risking his body by being soaked in the rain from six to eleven o'clock. That would surely have serious consequences.
"I don't care! The green butterfly has been caught!" Yu Xuan couldn't stop smiling, filled with happiness. "Gaining strength, even against the odds, is no easy feat. But at least now I can rest for the next three months and twenty-two days. That's plenty of time to recover from this flu."
He hoped it wouldn't come too strong. If it did, he would run to his older sister, who certainly wouldn't refuse to help her dear sick brother.
But Yu Xuan would hardly ask for help. He had his own pride.
"The coming days will be dark."