Wind whipped snow pellets into their faces as Chen Wuya suddenly opened his eyes. He found himself lying in the snow, with Bai Zhi and Mo Feng collapsed nearby. The three of them lay in a circle, as though some force had flung them out.
His hand was still held in the motion of drawing a circle, his fingertips frozen in midair. The silver-gray light had already receded, and his pupils had returned to their original icy blue, but his head buzzed as if countless fine needles were pricking it.
"Awake?" Mo Feng propped himself up, his voice slightly hoarse.
Chen Wuya did not answer. He remembered the last thing he had seen: the door within the aurora, and that whisper—"You've always wanted to be acknowledged... why not stay?"
But now, everything was quiet.
Leaning on her sword, Bai Zhi slowly sat up, her complexion worse than before. She glanced at Chen Wuya. "Just now... that wasn't you."
"I know," he said. "But I'm still here."
The moment he finished speaking, the scene before him swayed.
The light changed. No longer was it a gray-white snowy plain, but a resplendent hall of gold and jade. He wore an official robe embroidered with golden trim, standing in the center of the academy's main hall with an imperial edict of yellow silk patterned in red cradled in his hands. A crowd knelt all across the floor below him. Former classmates who had mocked him bowed their heads and kowtowed, crying, "Please forgive us, Top Scholar Chen."
His father stood in a corner, tears streaming down his aged face, while his mother clasped her hands together and kept murmuring, "Blessings from our ancestors."
This was the dream he had dreamed most often as a child.
But the longer he stared at the imperial