Lin Xian knelt amid the withered stems, his hands stained with earth, tugging weeds from the skeletal remains of what once might have been a magnificent garden. Thorny vines clawed at him like forgotten sentries, but he paid them no mind. A snapped trowel lay discarded at his side. His real tools were his fingers and his will — and lately, even those seemed barely enough.
Above him, the ancient walls of the Verdant Heart Sect loomed, their once-proud banners faded to rags in the mountain winds. Somewhere behind those cold stones, disciples honed blade techniques sharp enough to split rivers, or meditated to forge golden cores. They were the future — shining, lethal, glorious.
And he was here. Pulling weeds.
"Still playing gardener, weed-boy?"
The sneering voice echoed from the archway.
Lin Xian didn’t look up. He knew who it was: Han Zhi, Inner Disciple, favored pet of Elder Mo. Han Zhi’s crimson robes rippled with the qi of advanced Body Tempering — visible proof of his status. Others clustered behind him, laughter hidden poorly behind their sleeves.
Lin Xian’s fingers tightened around the dead roots he held.
He smiled without humor. "Every sect needs someone to clean up the trash."
The laughter grew louder.
Han Zhi’s eyes glittered. "Trash should know its place." He reached down, plucked a wilted blossom from the ground, and crushed it between two fingers. The petals crumbled to dust, scattering like broken dreams.
Then, as if even that small cruelty bored him, Han Zhi turned away.
His entourage followed, crimson shadows against grey stone.
Lin Xian let out a slow breath, his shoulders sagging only after they disappeared into the mists. The broken flower still stained the air with its faint, dying scent.
Slowly, he buried the crushed stem under a patch of soil. A silent promise.
One day, all things broken would bloom again.
The garden was not merely dead; it was abandoned.
Tangled vines strangled cracked stone basins once filled with Spirit Wells. The soil was dry, the cultivation arrays shattered centuries ago. No disciple bothered coming here except to mock him — and none of the elders cared. This patch of rotting ground was a fitting reflection of what the Verdant Heart Sect had become: a hollow corpse worshipping its own long-faded glory.
And Lin Xian tended it anyway.
He didn’t know why.
He only knew that when he touched the dry earth, something stirred inside him — something small, but stubborn. A heartbeat beneath the dust.
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He wiped his hands against his robe and sat back on his heels, gazing up at the grey sky. It was late afternoon. Soon, the mists would thicken, swallowing the outer grounds until only the inner halls remained visible. Most disciples would retreat to warm quarters or meditative chambers.
Lin Xian had his corner of the garden, a scrap of canvas stretched between two broken statues, a brazier salvaged from the rubbish heap. No qi-forging technique. No sword style manuals. No cultivation pills. Just stubborn hands, empty dreams, and a dying patch of weeds.
He closed his eyes, breathing slowly, sinking into that faint stirring inside his chest.
It was not true cultivation, not as the sect demanded.
There was no gathering of qi threads from the heavens, no refining of breath into golden seas.
It was something quieter. Older.
A memory, maybe.
Of hands that knew how to mend what was broken, rather than destroy it.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
One moment, the wind hummed low and steady around him; the next, he stood in darkness.
Not the velvet darkness of night — but a deeper, stranger void, pulsing with unseen currents.
A voice spoke, soft and distant as falling petals.
"Life sleeps within death."
Lin Xian turned, heart hammering, but saw no one.
Only... a faint glimmer.
Something cracked and broken, nestled in the black.
He stumbled toward it without thinking.
A seed.
It pulsed once — weakly — then again, a little stronger.
Hairline fractures ran along its surface, leaking pale green light into the void.
"Tend the withered roots," the voice whispered. "Awaken the Verdant Heart."
The light flared—
Lin Xian jerked awake with a sharp gasp.
The mist had thickened, turning the garden into a ghostly labyrinth. The brazier's coals had long since died. A fine sheen of dew coated his robes and hair.
He shivered, rubbing his arms. The dream clung to him like cobwebs.
Life sleeps within death.
He didn't understand it.
But the feeling in his chest — that faint stirring — had grown. Stronger. Hungrier.
The mist shifted.
A faint light blinked from the far end of the garden.
Lin Xian frowned.
He rose slowly, scanning the swirling fog. That part of the grounds had been sealed for decades — forbidden to all disciples. Legend said a great Spirit Tree once stood there, its branches cradling the very heart of the sect’s power. Some said it had been destroyed in the wars centuries ago. Others claimed it simply… died, taking the sect’s golden age with it.
The elders forbade anyone from approaching the ruins.
Punishments were severe.
But that light... it pulsed like a heartbeat. Like a beacon.
Lin Xian hesitated — then took a step forward.
Then another.
The mist closed around him, muffling the world to silence.
Each footfall sounded absurdly loud on the broken stones.
At the edge of the abandoned grove, the air changed.
It smelled richer here — damp earth, crushed leaves, something wild and bitter and sweet all at once. The decay of ages layered thickly, but beneath it, a living scent struggled upward, like new shoots breaking through winter’s grave.
The barrier that once sealed the grove shimmered faintly.
Cracks laced its surface — ancient runes flickering fitfully, like candles guttering in a storm.
Lin Xian pressed his hand against it.
It was cold.
Then warm.
Then—
The runes flared one final time and shattered silently, falling away like flakes of ash.
A path opened before him.
And at the heart of the grove, cradled in the tangled roots of a dead tree, lay a seed.
No bigger than his thumb. Cracked. Broken.
And shining with that same pale green light from his dream.
It pulsed once.
And Lin Xian felt something inside him — something old, something buried — reach out in answer.
His breath caught.
This was madness.
This was fate.
He stepped into the grove.
And the withered garden began, slowly, tremulously, to breathe again.