BENEATH HEAVENS GAZE

Chapter 6 – A Blade From the Past

The wind over the Boneglass Ridge howled like wolves mourning the sky.

A man stood at the highest peak, robes tattered, black hair streaked with silver strands. His eyes were shut—not in rest, but remembrance. His sword hovered beside him, sheathed in bone and wrapped in golden chains that pulsed with a quiet curse.

His name was Qin Yuemian.

To the world, he was a wandering immortal swordsman, once the heir of the Seven Star Pavilion. To those who knew better—he was a butcher of realms.

But to Chen Fi… he had once been a brother.

Before the wars. Before the heavens split. Before the betrayal.

Qin Yuemian opened his eyes.

“I smell it,” he murmured.

The sword beside him trembled.

From the mountain winds, a whisper passed—Dao-scented silence.

He looked southeast, toward the mist-veiled peaks no sect dared to name.

A girl had fled there, chased by fools.

Now, a force had erased a cursed star without leaving a ripple.

“…Is it you?”

His voice cracked like dry bark.

“No,” he told himself. “You died.”

But the sword trembled again. The golden chains binding it uncoiled slightly.

Qin Yuemian placed a hand upon its hilt. “If it is you, old friend… will you hide again?”

He stepped into the air and vanished into the clouds.

---

On the mountain, Chen Fi stirred in the garden.

He didn’t look up, but his fingers tightened around the tea gourd.

He felt it.

Not the approach.

The memory.

A shadow of something that had once stood beside him at the edge of creation.

Not a threat—not yet.

But a thread pulling toward his peace.

---

Liun practiced her breathwork by the stream. Each day, her control grew sharper. The Silent Flame within her, once restless, now hummed quietly beneath her skin.

It was morning, and dew hung like tiny mirrors from every leaf. She stood up from her meditation when she felt a shift in the air.

A presence.

She turned—and saw something floating in the air.

A blade. Thin as shadow, forged of onyx and red metal. It hovered just beyond the trees, humming faintly, as if smelling the air.

She froze.

It didn’t attack.

It… watched.

Then turned—gliding away like a bird of prey.

She ran back to the cottage. Chen Fi was seated on the step, as if he’d been waiting.

“There was a sword,” she said breathlessly. “Floating. It just… came.”

Chen Fi nodded.

“I know.”

“You… you let it come?”

He poured tea. “It’s looking for something. Not to kill.”

“Me?”

He looked at her with unreadable calm.

“…Perhaps.”

She felt her heart sink.

“Is it from the Black Flare Sect?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

He stared into the sky for a moment.

“A man who once could split mountains by speaking,” he said. “A man who used to walk beside me.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes.”

“What will he do?”

Chen Fi drank his tea.

“That depends on what he remembers.”

---

Far below, in a city drowned by clouds, Qin Yuemian descended upon a temple ruin.

The black blade returned to him, spinning before settling into its sheath.

He knelt beside an altar that bore the mark of an old clan—the Liun clan.

All gone.

Burned out over a century ago.

But their last descendant, it seemed… had survived.

He touched the cracked stone and murmured, “She carries more than the Silent Flame…”

Then stood.

“The old hermit hides her. But why?”

He looked once more toward the mountain beyond the horizon.

“You never could let things die quietly, could you… Chen Fi?”