Among the ruined walls, the dust settled.
A small, thin figure lay sprawled on the rubble. His outstretched hand had caught nothing in the end.
In his fading vision, the Flying Vessel carrying his sister dwindled to an imperceptible speck on the horizon, then vanished completely.
Only the glaring "First" clan emblem on their robes remained seared deep into his young eyes.
"Si... ster..."
His vision went black, and he lost consciousness.
He did not know how long had passed. Perhaps several days.
Cold night rain struck his face, and the boy's eyelashes trembled.
He did not wake at once. His consciousness drifted through a profound darkness.
Fever burned through his organs and every bone in his body like the flames of hell.
A needle-like pain stabbed from deep within his marrow, as though something had been forcibly awakened in his desperate struggle against death.
It was no Immortal Spirit Root. His talent was as ordinary as roadside weeds.
It was an extreme capacity to endure pain, an instinct to survive, a soul warped by overwhelming obsession and hatred.
In his delirium, his sister's warm hand stroked his forehead as she softly hummed a half-remembered tune.
Then came the cultivators' indifferent faces, and his sister's tear-filled eyes when she looked back.
"Stay... alive..."
"Get... stronger..."
"The First... Tribe..."
Those broken thoughts flickered like a candle in the wind, yet never went out.
At last, on a morning when the first light of dawn appeared, his fever broke.
The boy slowly opened his eyes.
Those eyes, once merely bright and clear, were now unfathomably deep.
All his childishness and weakness seemed to have burned away in that terrible illness.
His name was Tianyun. Now he alone remembered it.
He staggered to his feet, so hungry his stomach clung to his