Jin Mu: THUNDER UNLEASHED

Chapter 5

The road out of Heiyan through the southern cliffs was narrow and rough Jin Mu walked ahead his cloak torn his sleeves stained from the night before. Orin followed a few steps behind, humming softly as he scribbled notes into his weathered journal.

“Do you always take notes after nearly dying?” Jin Mu asked without turning.

“It keeps my hands from shaking,” Orin said cheerfully. “And my mind from breaking.”

Jin Mu’s lips twitched into a faint smile It vanished quickly, but Orin caught it.

They reached a plateau by noon, overlooking a sea of clouds. From here, the land stretched far villages like pinpricks of clay and smoke they stopped to rest.

Orin unpacked dried fruit and cold rice handing half to Jin Mu. “You fought like a man who’s been training all his life,” he said. “But you move differently No stance I’ve seen before What do you call that?”

“I don’t,” Jin Mu replied. “It just happens.”

“That’s not how Qi works.”

“I don’t think what I use is Qi.”

Orin chewed slowly, studying him. “Then what is it?”

Jin Mu looked out across the horizon. “It’s like… breathing smoke It burns but it feels like home.”

The scholar jotted that down, muttering, “Breathing smoke symbolic Possibly literal.”

“Don’t write that.”

Orin grinned. “Too late.”

The wind carried the faint scent of pine and rain. Below them a hawk wheeled lazily through the air. Jin Mu tried to let his mind still, but it wouldn’t. The whispers were gone since Heiyan, but something else had taken their place a pulse deep within faint and steady as if the power itself was waiting for him to speak first.

He flexed his fingers black fire flickered for an instant between them then vanished.

“Careful,” Orin said, eyes on the flame’s afterglow. “You don’t know what that’s doing to you.”

“I know what happens when I don’t use it,” Jin Mu said quietly.

Orin frowned. “Which is?

“It builds like a tide and tides drown what they can’t escape.”

they camped near the base of the cliffs beside an old waystone carved with runes too worn to read. Orin had coaxed a small fire from damp wood Jin Mu sat opposite the glow catching faint silver in his eyes.

“Tell me something,” Orin said, breaking the quiet. “Before Heiyan, before all this… what did you want?”

Jin Mu thought for a long time before answering. “Peace a place to stop running.”

“And now?”

He looked at the fire. “Now I want to understand why the heavens spared me.”

Orin closed his book. “Maybe they didn’t.”

Jin Mu glanced up.

“Maybe it wasn’t mercy,” Orin continued. “Maybe it was correction you were meant to stand between two worlds so they made you both.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“Truth rarely is.”

A breeze swept through the camp scattering embers. Jin Mu caught one on his fingertip it didn’t burn the tiny spark hovered trembling before dissolving into ash.

He remembered Gensuo’s voice all gifts demand a price.

He wondered when he’d be forced to pay it.

The next morning they reached a stretch of forest known as the Vermilion Hollow ancient trees with bark the color of rust their roots coiling through stone like veins. Travelers’ warnings had painted the place as cursed but to Jin Mu it felt quite almost reverent.

The deeper they went the dimmer the light became filtered through dense crimson leaves the air grew cool dry and still.

Halfway through they found an old clearing with a single stone platform at its center. Strange markings spiraled across it half seal, half scripture.

Orin crouched to inspect it. “This is a conduit circle Not for summoning… for binding.”

“Binding what?

Orin traced a symbol with his finger “Something that once had a name.”

Jin Mu knelt beside him As his hand brushed the stone a pulse rippled through it soft and familiar

The Death Qi within him stirred.

“Something’s under here,” he said quietly.

Orin stood, wariness flickering in his eyes. “Then don’t touch it.”

But it was already too late.

The markings glowed faintly lines of light snaking across the stone in black and silver the glow faded as quickly as it came

Orin exhaled. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“It wasn’t me,” Jin Mu said He stared at his palm still faintly warm. “It recognized me.”

“Recognized you?”

“Like I was part of the same chain.”

Orin frowned. “If that’s true this circle wasn’t meant to keep you out It was meant to keep you in.”

The words hung between them like a shadow.

The forest opened into rolling fields and far ahead, faint on the horizon a city glimmered under the setting sun white walls, tall spires, banners fluttering.

“The City of Veils,” Orin said softly. “Seat of the southern sects If the old records survive anywhere, they’re there.”

“And if the sects discover what I am?

Orin smiled thinly “Then I’ll just have to convince them you’re a very polite heretic.”

Jin Mu huffed a quiet laugh It was the first real one in weeks.

They walked on until the stars rose the air smelled of rain again distant inevitable.