Ten years painted the village of Ember Comet with the gentle, weary brush of time. The crater on the mountain remained, a silent, scarred altar to the night Ye Xingliu was born. And every evening, as the sun bled its last light over the jagged ridge, a small, shadow-draped figure would slip from his window and race towards it.
Tonight was no different. Ye Xingliu moved through the sleeping village like a whisper, his feet finding the familiar path without a single misstep. The air was cool, tasting of pine and distant, untamed things.
He reached the crater's rim and sat, legs dangling over the abyss, his chin propped on his fists. Below, the earth was still fused into glassy, strange shapes, a permanent wound that refused to heal.
"Still here, old friend?" he murmured to the scar in the earth. "Still keeping my secrets?"
This was his true home. Not the small hut where his mother's love was a tender, anxious thing, laced with the fear of Elder Guo's prophecy. Here, under the infinite, winking eyes of the cosmos, he felt no curse—only a vast, humming kinship.
He closed his own eyes, the ones the village children called 'demon eyes.' He'd long since stopped caring. Their taunts were just noise, the buzzing of gnats to a creature who dreamed of eagles.
He let his mind go quiet, the way he'd accidentally discovered a year ago. He wasn't meditating; that sounded too much like sitting still. He was… listening.
And the world answered.
First, the thrum of the earth itself, a deep, slow bass note of slumbering power. Then, the sharper chitter of a night-moth's wings, the patient, silent unspooling of a root in the soil. And further out, towards the village…
Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
A slow, steady rhythm. Old Man Feng's hound, Tu, asleep by the cold forge. Ye Xingliu could feel the lazy pulse of the dog's life, a warm, contented ember in the vast darkness. He could count the heartbeats from a hundred paces away. He'd named this feeling 'Life Sensing,' a secret game between him and the silent, breathing world.
A sharp, grating voice shattered his peace. "Well, look what the night dragged out. The little star-demon, talking to his dirt."
Ye Xingliu sighed, not opening his eyes. "Little Bo. Come to improve the view? I'm afraid even the stars are hiding now."
Big Bo, the butcher's son, was a mountain of youthful bluster, flanked by his two shadowy cronies. "Think you're better than us, up here with your creepy eyes? You don't belong here, freak."
Ye Xingliu finally turned, a slow, easy grin spreading across his face. In the moonlight, his eyes did seem to hold a faint, silver luminescence. "Belong? Who wants to belong? That sounds terribly boring. I'd rather go."
"Go where? Nowhere!" Big Bo scoffed, stepping closer. "You're just a cursed orphan. My dad says your own soul doesn't even want you."
The words were meant to sting, but they landed on a spirit that refused to be anchored. Ye Xingliu's grin only widened. "My soul wants the road. Your soul wants an extra pork bun. We are not the same."
With a roar, Big Bo lunged. Ye Xingliu didn't move to fight. He simply leaned back, his senses flaring. He felt the shift in the air, the tension in Big Bo's muscles before the boy even knew he was going to move. It was like reading the rhythm of a song only he could hear.
As Big Bo stumbled past him, overcommitted and clumsy, Ye Xingliu's hand shot out with an almost lazy grace. His fingers dipped into the pouch at Big Bo's belt and emerged with a small, cloth-wrapped parcel. He landed nimbly on his feet a few paces away, unwrapping it.
"Ah, pickled radish and steamed buns," Ye Xingliu said, taking a loud, deliberate bite. "Your mother's cooking is the one thing about you that isn't utterly disappointing. My thanks for the midnight snack."
Big Bo stared, dumbfounded, at his empty pouch. His friends gaped. The theft had been so fluid, so impossibly fast, it seemed less like a fight and more like a magic trick.
"How… how did you…?"
"Trade secret," Ye Xingliu said around a mouthful of bun, his words muffled but his eyes sparkling with unconcealed mirth. He winked, the silver in his eyes flashing. "Maybe my curse is better than your blessing, Little Bo. I never go hungry."
He turned his back on them, a gesture of utter, unshakeable confidence, and looked back up at the stars. The bullies stood for a moment, confused and defeated by a victory they couldn't comprehend, before shuffling away into the dark, their taunts dying in their throats.
Alone again, Ye Xingliu finished his stolen meal, his gaze fixed on the river of stars above. The road was out there, beyond the mountains, beyond the sky. It called to him in the whisper of the wind and the rhythm of a distant dog's heartbeat.
He laughed, a bright, clear sound that echoed in the crater, a challenge to the silent, watching universe.
"The Dao is a road," he whispered to the infinite, repeating the phrase that felt more true to him than any village elder's wisdom. "And I don't walk it." He stood up, dusting the starlight from his trousers, his spirit already racing ahead into the great, unknown maybe.
"I race it."
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