The morning after his awakening, Li Fan woke with frost on his breath.
Summer still blanketed the land, but his shack was coated in a fine layer of silvery frost. Even the candle had frozen solid.
He rose slowly, heart still echoing with the pulse of last night’s event.
His skin had changed. Not visibly—but he felt heavier. Denser. When he walked, each step pressed deeper into the earth than it should. And when he breathed...
He no longer pulled air alone, but something else. Something faintly radiant, like the heat from a distant star.
Qi Refining – Stage One. But no ordinary Qi.
Astral Pulse.
Unseen. Untouchable by ordinary roots. Unrefinable by standard techniques. But raw and ancient, it coursed through him now like a second heartbeat.
Still… what now?
No technique. No cultivation method. No sect.
The only thing he had was a single phrase whispered in his dreams:
“You shall refine the void between stars.”
A crimson-robed figure stepped from a silver airship, boots pressing into the earth just beyond Yanshi village.
She was tall, with robes lined in starlight runes. On her back, a crescent-shaped sword sealed in crimson talismans.
Elder Yue Xian of the Scarlet Cloud Pavilion. Earth Immortal – Middle Stage.
Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the trees. “It’s here,” she murmured. “The pulse didn’t lie.”
She reached into her sleeve and drew a crystal. It flickered—then burned bright red, pointing toward the Azure Mist Forest.
A single star-shaped sigil pulsed on its surface.
“After five centuries…” she whispered, lips trembling with awe. “A Starforged fragment has awakened.”
Li Fan’s body was already adapting.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
His hearing sharpened. He could count the steps of the village elders from his shack. His sense of time shifted. Even his dreams began folding into lucid fragments of constellations and gates.
But the power brought a cost.
That evening, as he sat quietly at the river’s edge, his skin cracked—not bleeding, but shimmering, like scales of starlight breaking through flesh. It hurt. Gods, it burned.
The moment passed.
Then the mist came.
Not the Azure Mist—this was different. Thicker. Hungrier. And with it, a whisper:
“Found you.”
A figure emerged from the shadows.
Not Elder Yue. No, this one wore black and gold. A scavenger, perhaps—drawn by the same pulse. Cultivation: Core Formation Stage Nine.
“Give me the core fragment, boy,” he said, smiling. “You didn’t even know what you picked up, did you?”
Li Fan stood. “I don’t have anything.”
“You lie,” the cultivator snarled. “I can smell it on you.”
He lunged.
Li Fan raised his arms in panic—but something reacted.
The stars.
A flash of silver burst from his palm—a starlit seal flared to life and repelled the cultivator in a thunderous pulse. The man hit the trees with a scream, smoke rising from his robes.
Li Fan stumbled back, stunned.
The seal faded… but not completely. A single rune now glowed on his forearm. A gift from the fragment.
The black-and-gold cultivator snarled, hand weaving a fire talisman. “You—!”
But then—
A flash of red.
A blade of light split the air, cleaving the talisman in two.
Yue Xian landed between them, robes fluttering, eyes like burning moons.
“You dare touch a Starforged inheritor in front of me?”
The cultivator froze.
“E-Elder Yue…”
“Run.”
He ran.
Yue Xian turned slowly to Li Fan.
She looked him over, gaze sharp yet unreadable.
“You’re unrooted. And yet…”
She stepped forward. Her hand brushed the rune on his arm.
“You’ve absorbed the First Fragment. That makes you mine.”
Li Fan bristled. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
Her smile was thin. “No. But the heavens marked you. And if you stay here, more like him will come. Some won’t talk before striking.”
She paused.
“Come with me. To Scarlet Cloud Pavilion. I can’t offer you peace. But I can offer survival—and a path.”
Li Fan hesitated.
He looked up at the night sky. The stars had returned. Faint, but there.
He nodded. “Alright. I’ll come.”
