Ashriver City sat where the world thinned out, as if even reality had decided not to linger.

  The river beside it ran gray year-round. When the wind turned, the city smelled of damp wood and old refuse. People said the river remembered everything that had been thrown away.

  Chen Mo grew up beside it.

  He was born behind the Golden Dice Gambling Hall, wrapped in a torn stage curtain that smelled of cheap incense. The midwife looked once and turned away, muttering that his fate was light. Even if he vanished, the world would not notice.

  His mother noticed.

  Her name was Liu Yun. Before everything fell apart, she lived quietly—cooking simple meals, washing clothes by the river, waiting for a man who promised he would return.

  That man was Chen Mo’s father.

  Years ago, his father encountered fortune. People said he stepped onto the path of cultivation. People also said that once someone truly walked that path, mortal ties became a burden.

  He left.

  He never came back.

  When he left, the house lost its protection.

  The neighbor noticed first.

  Zhao Shun spoke often of righteousness and fate. He had once been a rival of Chen Mo’s father, and he coveted what had been left behind. At first, he came with food. He offered help. He spoke gently and reminded Liu Yun that the world was harsh to women without protection.

  Then the visits changed.

  Money appeared where there had been none. Liu Yun never explained where it came from. Bruises followed. Chen Mo learned early not to ask questions. He learned which footsteps meant silence, and which meant he should stand between his mother and the door.

  Once, when Zhao Shun struck him, Liu Yun stepped forward and took the blow instead.

  After that, Chen Mo stopped crying.

  Eventually, people stopped calling Liu Yun a widow.

  They called her worse things.

  They said her work was impure. That desire pulled one away from the Dao. That such a woman could only raise a cursed child with blocked meridians.

  Chen Mo learned to keep his head down.

  Crying brought fists. Speaking brought laughter. Silence brought fewer problems.

  At five, he learned how to beg without looking desperate. At seven, he learned how to steal without being seen. At nine, he learned the cruel trick: eating didn’t end hunger. It only reminded him what it felt like to lose.

  Cultivators passed through Ashriver City from time to time.

  They wore clean robes and carried weapons that hummed faintly with power. When they walked, the crowd parted without thinking. Chen Mo watched from doorways and alleys, memorizing how they stood, how no one dared meet their eyes.

  Sometimes, one would glance at him and sneer.

  “Meridians blocked.” “Impure cultivation body.” “Trash.”

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  Chen Mo did not know what made a person’s meridians pure or impure. He only knew that trash was something meant to be stepped on.

  Once, years ago, a passing cultivator pressed a jade bottle into his hands, laughing as he told him to feel what real medicine was like—before snatching it back and calling him unworthy.

  By twelve, Chen Mo was smaller than boys years younger than him. His arms were thin. His ribs showed when he breathed. Liu Yun worked longer hours to feed him, returning home exhausted and quiet.

  Late one night, Chen Mo heard her whisper toward the empty doorway, “You knew what would happen.”

  No one answered.

  One winter night, Chen Mo collapsed in the street.

  Snow fell onto his face. He lacked the strength to wipe it away.

  This time, no one stopped.

  When morning came, a cart followed the familiar route through Ashriver City.

  It was not a merchant’s cart.

  It was the body wagon.

  Two men walked beside it, faces wrapped in cloth against the cold. They did not look at what they lifted. They had learned not to.

  Chen Mo felt hands on his arms. Rough. Efficient. He was light enough that one man carried him alone.

  "Another one," someone muttered.

  They tossed him onto the wagon.

  Wood pressed against his cheek. Frozen cloth stuck to his skin. Around him lay shapes that did not move.

  The city rolled past in fragments—the gambling hall’s shuttered doors, the river’s gray surface, smoke rising from chimneys he would never feel warm inside again.

  The cart rattled onward, out past the districts people bothered to name.

  By the time it stopped, the ground beneath him smelled of ash and rot.

  This was where Ashriver City put what it was done with.

  A shallow pit yawned ahead, half-filled with frozen bodies.

  Chen Mo’s breathing slowed.

  He thought, distantly, that dying like this was fitting.

  It was quiet. That was almost kind.

  High above the clouds, beyond mortal sight, two immortals were fighting.

  Their clash tore the heavens.

  Golden lightning split the void. Space folded like paper. Mountains cracked under the pressure.

  They were not rulers of the world—but they were close. Both had already stepped into the Void Refinement Realm, standing only a few steps away from the peak that even immortals feared.

  Neither noticed when something slipped from the chaos of their battle.

  A jade furnace, ancient and scarred, was flung away like debris.

  It fell.

  Through clouds. Through wind. Through fate itself.

  Chen Mo awoke in pain.

  His stomach burned. His throat was dry. His limbs felt heavy, like they were filled with sand. He pushed himself upright, hands shaking.

  Something lay before him.

  A jade object, half-buried in frozen ground. It was no larger than a child’s head.

  It was warm.

  That alone was wrong.

  Chen Mo stared at it. He had learned not to touch strange things. Strange things belonged to people who could kill him without consequence.

  But hunger twisted his thoughts.

  “If I’m going to die,” he muttered, “it doesn’t matter.”

  He reached out.

  The moment his fingers touched the jade, blood seeped from the cracks in his skin and soaked into its surface.

  The furnace pulsed.

  For an instant, its glow stabbed upward—thin, pale, gone too quickly for mortal eyes to follow.

  A voice echoed inside his mind, neither cold nor gentle.

  “Ten-Thousand Pill Heavenly Furnace awakened.”

  A second line surfaced, faint and already fading.

  “First activation consumes essence.”

  “Name a pill.”

  Chen Mo froze.

  He remembered drunken boasts in the gambling hall. Failed cultivators cursing their luck.

  “Marrow-Cleansing Pill.” “Bone-Tempering Pill.” “Body-Refining Pill.”

  His lips trembled.

  “Marrow-Cleansing Pill,” he whispered.

  The furnace glowed.

  A single pill dropped into his palm—smooth, fragrant, warm.

  Chen Mo swallowed it.

  Pain tore through him.

  It felt as if his bones were being crushed and rebuilt at the same time. Black filth poured from his pores, freezing in the cold air. His muscles spasmed as something ancient forced his body open from the inside.

  Chen Mo screamed.

  Then darkness took him.

  When he woke, the snow had stopped.

  His body was warm.

  The hunger that had followed him his entire life was gone.

  He stood slowly. His back was straight. His breathing was steady. His hands did not shake.

  The jade furnace floated silently before him, dull and unremarkable.

  For a brief moment, Chen Mo felt lighter—like something had been shaved off the inside of his chest.

  The feeling passed.

  He did not know what had been taken.

  Chen Mo looked at it.

  Then toward Ashriver City.

  It had not changed.

  But he had.

  And this time, when he took a step forward, it was not just to survive.

  Far above the city, beyond cloud and star, something ancient stirred—drawn by a faint, unfamiliar signal.

  The heavens did not look down often.

  But when they did, they remembered.

  Somewhere far above the clouds, something that had not cared about mortals in a very long time began to pay attention.