Lan Jingyi

When Jingyi was only five, he stepped outside the Gusu Gate for the first time—a small world squeezed between high walls and strict restrictions. Everything around him seemed too big: the road ahead, the bustling markets, the strange faces. He didn't yet understand how one could get lost so easily. At some point, the crowd parted, the sun sank toward evening, and the boy realized he knew neither the way back nor where to go. Fear made his breathing heavy, his legs stiff as oilcloth. He sat down under a sparse tree and wept the way children cry—bitterly, without consolation.

His tears froze when a warm, small hand touched his cheek. He looked up and saw another boy—just as small, but somehow incredibly confident and yet fragile. His eyes were green, soft, filled with a strange calm. It seemed as if the very air around him had grown warmer. "Are you lost? Don't worry, I'll help," he whispered, and his voice, thin and quiet, was more soothing than any adult's words. He wiped away Jingyi's tears, gave her a candy, led her away, and vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, as if dissolving into the fog at the gate.

That brief moment transformed into a whole world of images for Jingyi. He saw that boy not as a passerby, but as a knight: in his hands, it seemed, he held either a sword or a subtle confidence, and in his heart, something rare and bright, like a golden core, which in fairy tales was called a sign of fate. For little Jingyi, this was heroism in its purest form—a simple touch, a smile, and a pinch of compassion. He treasured the green handkerchief with the bunny, given away that night, like a treasure; he kept the feeling of a warm hand on his cheek, which he never forgot.

Over the years, the memory didn't fade, but rather grew. The older Jingyi grew, the more distinct his yearning grew—strange, quiet, full of reverence and dreaminess. He began searching: he rummaged through the lists of disciples, pored through the sect's archives, searching for mentions of young talents who had discovered their golden core at an early age.