A Song For The Ages

Over the next several days, Feiyin made it a ritual.

Each morning, before the city fully awoke, he left the skyship in disguise, a plain brown robe over simpler garments, a patchy scarf drawn across the lower half of his face, and his long hair tucked under a wide, beaten straw hat. It was not a perfect cover, but in a city like Hu Zhao's, few looked twice at another travel-worn stranger moving through the alleys.

He always brought food.

Wrapped parcels of steamed buns, soft rice with salted herbs, dried meat, fruits, and the occasional sweet cake, which was quite a first for many of them. But more than that, he brought presence, and hope.

The courtyard hadn't changed. Still cracked and shadowed, still tucked away in a forgotten district of the city where the guards didn't patrol and the rich never stepped foot. But slowly, the children within it had begun to.

There were fourteen of them.

Jin, the pickpocket, quickly took on the role of their outspoken face. Twelve years old, wiry, with sharp eyes and a protective streak that showed in the way he always counted the food before eating his share. He had grown to trust Feiyin, but not blindly. Every gesture was tested. Every promise weighed, as if it was already an ingrained instinct.

"Why are you really helping us?" he asked one morning, watching Feiyin unpack breakfast.

Feiyin paused, tearing apart a loaf to divide.

"Because I can," He met the boy's gaze. "And because I see something strong in you. In all of you."

Jin didn't answer, but that day he smiled for the first time.

Then there was Luan, the quiet girl who rocked the toddlers to sleep. She was perhaps eleven, with tangled black hair she tried to braid each morning with broken bits of ribbon. She never asked for extra food. She never spoke unless spoken to. But when one of the younger children cried in the night, it was her arms they ran to.

Feiyin gave her a simple, finely woven ribbon one day, a deep blue strip of cloth, soft to the touch, the kind often used by other girls her age. He hadn't said anything, just handed it to her with a nod.

She had stared at it for a long time, then quietly tied it into her hair.

"Thank you," she whispered, "For seeing me."

There was Han, the boy who made hats from straw. It turned out he wasn't just making them for the other children. He was selling them in the outer market for a few coins. It wasn't much, but it helped, sometimes enough to buy a bit of bread or dried fruit. He'd been a basket-weaver's son before a plague took his family, and even now, he held onto the trade like it was the last thread tying him to them.

Feiyin sat with him one afternoon, watching the boy twist rough straw into a neat circle. "How's the market been treating you?" he asked gently.

Han shrugged, not looking up. "Most people don't even look. They see a dirty kid, they walk faster. Sometimes they say mean things."

"But you still try?"

Han nodded. "It's the only thing I know how to do. If I can sell one or two, sometimes I can get a crust of bread. Maybe some soup bones. I just… want to help a little."

Feiyin placed a hand on his shoulder. "You are helping. You're doing more than most adults. Keep at it, Han."

Han gave a small smile, fragile but real.

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There were others, Mi, the stubborn girl who insisted on sparring with a stick like a warrior; Bao, the toddler who clung to Feiyin's leg every time he arrived; Lin and Yao, the twins who repeated every word Feiyin said with the seriousness of tiny monks.

Each of them was different. Each of them mattered.

He trained them slowly.

Not in cultivation, not yet. Their bodies were too weak, their reserves empty. But he taught them to breathe.

"Feel your chest rise. Now lower it slowly. Don't rush."

He showed them how to stretch without hurting themselves, how to feel their balance, how to walk in silence, how to hold their center. Every movement was simple. Every lesson built toward control.

They laughed. They stumbled. But they tried.

And Feiyin began to hope.

Maybe, one day, they could be more than forgotten orphans scraping food from alleys. Maybe they could stand upright in the world, even if it seemed so intent on stomping them.

But that hope was a fragile thing.

Each afternoon, before leaving the courtyard, Feiyin looked toward the city above. Toward Hu Zhao's palace. Toward the training grounds, where soldiers marched in polished armor and barked orders echoed through the stone.

Hu Zhao didn't know about the children.

He couldn't.

Their alliance with him was built on utility and gain. There was no friendship there, only war and treasure. If Hu Zhao found out Feiyin was spending time, effort, and resources on a group of non-cultivating slum children, he would see it not as kindness, but as leverage.

Something to use, or destroy.

So Feiyin was careful.

He changed his disguise slightly each day. One day a merchant's sash, the next a worker's boots. He used dust and scent blockers. He shifted his gait, his posture. When needed, he shielded his presence.

He trusted few, and told no one.

Still, the days passed.

He came every morning and left before midday. He brought food and taught different postures. He brought some fabric to help mend their makeshift clothes with, bought them blankets, and always slipped some revitalizing pills to help them get better.

He never lectured. He never asked for thanks.

But they gave it anyway, in little drawings scratched into the dirt, in the way the younger ones scrambled to clean before he arrived, in the way Jin nodded at him each day with a little less suspicion.

And then, on the fifth day, Luan gave him a handwoven straw charm she made with Han. It was shaped like a lotus. A little crude, but delicate, with care in every weave.

"For luck," she said. "You give us things, so I wanted to make something back."

Feiyin held it in his palm for a long time.

Then he tied it to his sash.

"It's perfect," he said.

He didn't cry. But something in his chest ached with quiet, unspeakable warmth.

The rest of his days, however, were no less demanding.

Each afternoon, after parting from the children, Feiyin returned to the Red Lotus skyship. The warmth he'd carried from the courtyard would settle into focus, channeled into his other responsibilities, refining pills, cultivating, and preparing for the upcoming ruins exploration.

He used the time well.

In the solitude of his cabin, after finishing his quota of repairs and refining some new weapons, he worked tirelessly to improve his pill series, refining his recovery and fortification recipes with improved balance and absorption. The base versions were already efficient, but his aim was consistency and quality, pills that could be made quickly and still healed twice as fast.

When not refining, he cultivated.

His breathing deepened. His control grew sharper. With careful pacing, he opened fifteen more acupoints over the course of those days, bringing his total to fifty-five. As more opened, he found he could draw in the surrounding essence faster and in greater volume, his body becoming more responsive with each refinement. He leaned on his custom-made pills to help recover from the grueling strain of each new opening, their steady recovery effect allowing him to keep up a pace that would have broken most others.

Alongside this, he studied.

From scrolls smuggled by formation disciples to conversations shared with the more senior members, Feiyin absorbed all he could about ruins, particularly those like the one they were soon to explore. Ruins left behind by ancient dynasties were not just traps and treasure vaults; they were tests of fate and power, full of trap formations, guardians, and trials meant to strip away the unworthy.

By the seventh day, his body had grown a little stronger, his essence a little deeper, and his plan, more precise.

The ruins would be the place.

Not just to uncover power. But to end a shadow that had loomed over him since Hui's death.