Chapter Text
The story begins many years past, in the dead of a bone chilling winter. Under the cover of night, a group of Qing Ding peak disciples had found their way to a small backwater town. With no teacher nor instructions. They were a rescue party. The group was a mismatch of senior disciples led by a single newly accepted boy. That boy, who had won over more than half his seniors with a tearful story of parting and promise, was none other than Yue Qingyuan.
Steps as silent as a breeze, he weaved his way through the manor where his dear friend was being held. The others quietly followed suit, alert and ready for anything. When they finally reached the locked library door, they pooled around it in a crescent, overlooking every angle. The boy stood in the middle and quietly knocked on the door.
"A-Jiu, are you there?"
A whisper as quiet as the wind carried through the keyhole. At first there was nothing, then a commotion of movement. Injured, with a drag in his step, the boy inside shuffled to the door.
"Qi-ge, is that you?"
His voice was tired, and though he tried to sound annoyed the tone was soaked in hope and disbelief.
"It's me. I said I would come back for you, didn't I?"
The boy was freed swiftly, just as promised. Under the cloak of the dark, the mission snuck their way out of the mansion, back to their home of Qing Ding Peak. In the morning, when the little stowaway was found, the head of the peak almost sent him away, but a good word slipped in for the boy. Late by not many days, he was allowed to try out for a place at the sect.
And try he did!
The child blew away every last lord of the sect. His cultivation had unmatched potential, and when his trials were over, he found his place in the Qing Jing Peak.
As the years passed by, he found himself on the other end of that same trial. Shen Jiu had grown to be the new lord of his Qing Jing Peak. He stood at the top of the hill, alongside the very man who saved him that day; Yue Qingyuan, the new head of the Caong Qing Mountain Sect, and the Qing Ding Peak.
They watched carefully over dozens of new young candidates, tirelessly working on their trials down in the valley in hopes of being accepted into the legendary sect. As the peak lords stood beside each other, evaluating each child, Shen Jiu's attentions drifted to a particular candidate.
A young, thin boy in scruffy clothing toiled away dutifully. The child was scrawny and small for his age and he seemed disheveled. And yet, for all his thin frame, he worked twice as hard as everyone else. Among all the candidates from wealthy families of prestige and status, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Both for his clearly harsh background, and for his shining gift for cultivation.
Shen Jiu watched the boy work and it was as if he'd suddenly turned back the sands of time. He saw himself, down in that field. He felt the long forgotten burn of muscles too weak for the work they were doing. He felt the desperation and the hope of a child with no home, finally offered a chance at life worth living.
He called on the boy and accepted him as his disciple that day. With a mist in his eyes only Yue Qingyuan recognized, he swore, from that day, he would ensure this child got the chance he had been offered himself.
Perhaps it was this shared fate that brought the man to give so many second chances.
So many second chances, so many forgiving glances, that they'd doomed the kind soul that gave them.