The Parting
---
Two years passed like distant thunder, felt more than heard.
The storms that had once split Heaven seemed to sleep, but their echo never truly faded. At Chentang Pass, people still whispered the boy's name like a spell half-prayed, half-feared. Fields ripened strangely; lotus flowers bloomed even in frost. The Li manor stood quieter now, as if listening for footsteps that did not belong to this earth.
Nezha had grown. His face was sharper, eyes clear as polished amber. Sometimes, when he laughed, the air shimmered. When he wept, the pond trembled as if remembering ice. His mother still sang to him each morning — though she no longer finished the lullabies, her voice breaking on verses she could not bear to complete. His father watched from the doorway, proud and burdened, both sentinel and supplicant to something he did not understand.
The lotus seed the monk had given him three years ago remained tucked in a small silk pouch at Nezha's waist. He took it out sometimes at night, held it to the moonlight, and wondered when the promise would be kept.
*"When the time comes, I will return for you."*
He did not have to wait much longer.
---
One dusk, mist rose early.
It came not from the river but from the road itself, curling upward like breath made visible. A single bell tolled in the village though the temple was empty. The air grew cool and still.
Madam Yin felt her heart fold in on itself even before she saw him.
She knew.
The way a mother knows winter is coming, the way birds know to fly south — something in her blood recognized the shape of loss approaching.
She found Li Jing in the courtyard, his hand already on his sword though he did not draw it. Together they watched as the mist parted and the monk appeared, walking the same path he had walked years before. The grass bowed beneath no footstep. His robes were white as salt, his face calm as still water.
Taiyi Zhenren had returned.
Heaven had come calling.
---
Nezha stood in the doorway, small but steady. He looked at the monk, then at his parents, and said nothing. He understood before the words were spoken.
Taiyi bowed to Li Jing and Madam Yin — a gesture of respect, not command.
"I have returned, as I promised."
Li Jing stepped forward, jaw tight. His voice was rough as old iron.
"You have come for him."
It was not a question.
Taiyi's eyes softened, like storm clouds parting.
"The world has begun to stir," he said quietly. "The sea remembers what it fears. The heavens whisper of imbalance. If the boy stays, storms will fall upon this pass — and not all storms can be weathered by mortal walls."
Madam Yin's hand trembled as she reached for Nezha, pulling him close.
"He is but five years old," she said, her voice breaking like silk torn slowly. "How can Heaven demand so much from one so small?"
The monk's expression was kind, but unyielding.
"Because Heaven fears him even more than it made him."
---
The words hung in the air like smoke that would not clear.
Li Jing looked down at his son — this strange, radiant child who had bent their lives around his existence like gravity bending light. He thought of the night Nezha was born, the sphere of fire, the storm that had bowed its knee. He thought of every candle that had flickered, every impossible thing his son had done simply by breathing.
He had always known this day would come.
Knowing did not make it easier.
"How long?" Li Jing asked.
Taiyi did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was gentle.
"That is not for me to say. The mountain will teach him what he needs. The world will call him when it must."
"And if we refuse?" Madam Yin's voice was barely a whisper.
"Then the world will come for him anyway," Taiyi said. "And it will not be gentle."
---
Nezha looked between them — father, mother, and the stranger who felt like memory. The air smelled of incense and coming rain. He felt the weight of their fear, their love, the way it wrapped around him like chains made of silk.
He thought of the lotus seed in his pouch. He thought of the boy made of light he had seen in the pond. He thought of the question he had asked three years ago, and the answer the monk had given.
*"You are thunder learning to be rain."*
Perhaps it was time to learn.
He stepped forward, out of his mother's arms, and spoke. His voice was small but steady.
"I know they fear what I am, and what I might become," he said, looking at his parents. "But you chose to love me anyway. Perhaps that is what keeps me from breaking the world."
Madam Yin covered her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
Li Jing looked away, for the soldier in him could not bear the sound of surrender — especially when it came from his own child.
---
Taiyi Zhenren knelt before Nezha, meeting his eyes.
"The mountain is not a prison," he said softly. "It is a place where you will learn not only to wield your power, but to understand it. To choose what you become, rather than letting others' fear choose for you."
Nezha nodded slowly.
"Will I see them again?"
Taiyi glanced at the parents, then back at the boy.
"If Heaven allows. And if you choose to return."
The monk extended his hand.
"The mountain awaits, little flame."
---
That night, no one slept.
Madam Yin prepared a small bundle for her son — a change of clothes, a charm woven from thread she had spun herself, a painting of the manor so he would not forget what home looked like. She moved through the house like a ghost, touching things that Nezha had touched, as if trying to memorize the shape of his presence.
Li Jing sat with his son in the courtyard, beneath stars that seemed too bright and too distant all at once.
"Do you remember," Li Jing said, "the day you asked if you could be not what they expect and still be ours?"
Nezha nodded.
"You are ours," Li Jing continued, his voice steady though his eyes glistened. "No matter how far you go. No matter what you become. The world may name you storm or god or weapon. But you will always be the boy we chose to love when the world chose to fear."
He placed both hands on Nezha's shoulders.
"Do you understand?"
Nezha looked up at his father — this man who had drawn his sword the night of his birth, who had stood between him and the world's fear, who had learned to love what he did not understand.
"I understand," Nezha said quietly.
Li Jing pulled him close, and for the first time in years, Nezha felt small in a way that was not about power but about being a child held by his father.
They sat that way until the first light of dawn began to touch the sky.
---
They walked him to the gate as the sun rose.
The mist clung to the earth like breath that refused to leave. The village was silent — even the birds seemed to hold their songs. Taiyi Zhenren walked ahead, patient and unhurried.
At the gate, Madam Yin knelt and cupped Nezha's face in her hands. Her tears fell freely now, and she did not try to stop them.
"My bright disaster," she whispered, using the name she had never meant the world to hear. "You were born strange, but you were born *mine*."
She pressed the silk charm into his hand — a strip of cloth that smelled of her, of home, of all the mornings she had sung to him.
"Keep this," she said. "And when you are lonely, remember: you came from love. You carry it with you, always."
Nezha closed his fist around the silk, nodding because he could not speak.
---
Li Jing knelt next, and when he placed both hands on his son's shoulders, it was not as a command but as a prayer.
"Whatever you become," he said, his voice rough and breaking, "the world will know you came from love."
Nezha looked into his father's eyes and saw something he had never seen before: not fear, not duty, but simple, terrible sorrow.
"I will come back," Nezha said.
Li Jing smiled, though it did not reach his eyes.
"I know."
---
Taiyi Zhenren stepped forward, placing a gentle hand on Nezha's shoulder.
"It is time."
Nezha took one last look at his parents — his mother kneeling in the dirt, his father standing like a soldier at attention though his hands trembled. He looked at the manor behind them, the pond where lotus flowers still bloomed, the gate he had run through a thousand times.
He tried to memorize it all.
Then he turned and walked toward the monk.
---
Taiyi raised his staff.
The air folded. Light gathered beneath their feet, not harsh but warm, like the first sun after a long winter. The ground fell away.
Nezha looked down as they rose.
His mother had collapsed into his father's arms. Li Jing held her, one hand pressed to the back of her head, the other clenched at his side. They were growing smaller, more distant, like figures in a painting.
Nezha watched until he could no longer tell them apart from the earth itself.
Then he looked up.
Above them, the sky opened.
---
They rose on a current of wind and cloud, the world falling away beneath them. Mountains emerged from the mist like the bones of sleeping giants. Rivers wound through valleys like silver thread. The air grew thinner, colder, brighter.
Nezha had never flown before — not like this. The Wind Fire Wheels he had summoned in his dreams were nothing compared to this. He felt weightless and impossibly heavy all at once, as if his body could not decide whether to rise or fall.
"Where are we going?" he asked, though the wind nearly swallowed his voice.
Taiyi glanced back, his expression unreadable.
"To the place where earth touches Heaven. To Mount Qianyuan — the mountain of primal origin."
"Will it hurt?" Nezha asked. He did not know what he was asking about. The training? The loneliness? The leaving?
Taiyi's voice was gentle.
"Yes. But you will also become more than you are now. And that is worth the pain."
---
The mountain appeared slowly, as if revealing itself only to those it chose to see.
It rose from the clouds like a pillar holding up the sky — vast, ancient, impossible. Waterfalls poured upward instead of down. Stones floated in the air, arranged in spirals and geometries that hurt to look at. The air shimmered with light that had no source, and the wind carried voices too old for language.
Nezha stared, wide-eyed.
"This is... the mountain?"
"This is the threshold," Taiyi said. "The mountain itself is beyond."
They passed through a veil of mist — and the world changed.
---
Suddenly, they stood on solid ground.
The sky here was not blue but gold, streaked with colors Nezha had no name for. Trees grew from stone, their roots visible and gleaming like veins of light. Rivers flowed through the air in slow, winding paths. The temperature was neither hot nor cold — it simply *was*, as if the mountain existed outside the ordinary rules of the world.
Taiyi gestured to a pavilion carved from a single piece of jade.
"This will be your home."
Nezha stepped forward slowly. The pavilion was simple but beautiful — open to the sky on all sides, with a low table, cushions, and a sleeping mat. At the center was a small altar with a single lotus blossom carved from white stone.
"It's..." Nezha searched for words. "Quiet."
"Yes," Taiyi said. "The mountain is where noise goes to remember silence."
He knelt beside Nezha, his gaze kind but serious.
"You will train here. You will learn to master the fire within you. But mastery is not control, Nezha. It is understanding. It is choice."
Nezha looked around — at the impossible sky, the floating stones, the rivers of light.
"Will I be alone?"
Taiyi smiled faintly.
"The mountain is never empty. But yes — you will often be alone with yourself. And that, little flame, is the hardest training of all."
---
That night, Nezha sat at the edge of the pavilion, legs dangling over the side.
Below him, clouds moved like slow-breathing creatures. Above him, stars burned brighter than he had ever seen. The air was filled with a sound like distant singing — or perhaps it was just the wind.
He took out the silk charm his mother had given him and held it to his face. It still smelled like her. Like home.
He did not cry. He had cried enough on the way up, where no one could see.
Instead, he whispered into the wind:
"I will come back. I promise."
The wind did not answer. But somewhere far below, in a manor beside a quiet pond, a mother looked up at the stars and whispered the same words into the night.
And perhaps — just perhaps — the distance between them was not as great as it seemed.
---
Far beneath the mountain, in the abyssal depths of the Eastern Sea, the Dragon King stirred.
He had felt the child rise. He had felt Heaven claim what the ocean had marked for reckoning.
Ao Guang opened his eyes, and the water around him turned cold.
"Let them train him," he murmured, his voice rolling through the deep like distant thunder. "Let them sharpen the blade. When it falls, I will be waiting."
The ocean listened.
And in the darkness, something ancient began to prepare.
---
⸻
**End of Part II — The Parting**