In this age, the Endless Night covered everything. Luminous creatures were rare — and when one appeared, it meant danger. Real danger. Anything bold enough to glow in a world full of predators was either powerful beyond measure or too stupid to survive. Usually the former.
Qin Ming slid down from his tree and pressed into the shadows between trunks. His heart hammered.
This was no ordinary light. It was lighting the sky.
In the age before, there had been a sun. There had been a moon. The elders told children stories, and when the children looked confused, the elders said: "If you ever see a Moon Bug, you'll know what the moon looked like."
You didn't need to be told. You knew. The Moon Bug was the only thing in the sky.
The light climbed. Soft, then dazzling. Not an insect shape anymore — a disk of woven radiance, like a crown hovering over the black peaks, pouring silver light onto the forest, onto the ridges, onto the snow.
The deep black of the mountains vanished. Everything turned pale silver.
Qin Ming stared. His throat tightened.
*Was this what the old world looked like?*
He knew the Moon Bug only lit two hills. The real moon, the elders said, had shone across ten thousand miles — a great light. But this — this fragment — was enough to break his heart.
Every living thing lay still. The boar king, the thing that had driven it from its territory, the night birds, the predators — all of them silent, hidden, praying not to be noticed.
A streak of light crossed the sky. The Moon Bug departed. Silver faded. Blackness crashed back in.
Qin Ming stood in the dark, a hollow ache in his chest.
*When will I move through the world like that? When will the night not be a wall?*
He had no time for dreams. The big predators were still cowed — he moved.
He dragged the deer and the wolf over the ridge, through the forest, across the snowfields, and didn't stop until Twin Tree Village appeared.
---
At the village gate, a few children chased each other through the cold.
"Brother Qin — you killed a Blade-Antler Deer? Alone?" A skinny boy gaped.
The children saw the black-furred donkey-head wolf and flinched. Then they stared at the meat and swallowed.
"Come to my house," Qin Ming said. "We eat."
He hauled both kills home and started fires immediately. He'd been craving raw meat by the end of the trip.
Liang Wanqing spotted the blood on his shoulder first. "You're hurt."
"Scratches."
Lu Ze checked — shallow, already scabbed. Fine.
The yard filled with smell. Iron pot bubbling. Deer leg on the spit, dripping fat into the coals, sizzling.
Qin Ming's stomach roared. He carved a thin slice from the leg — still too hot — and ate it.
"Done. Good." He looked at Wen Rui. "Uncle kept his promise?"
Wen Rui's eyes curved into crescents, nodding furiously. "So good. I can't remember the last time I had meat. Uncle, you're the best!"
Two-year-old Wen Hui couldn't chew roast leg. He got mashed meat paste and sulked about it while the adults laughed.
Qin Ming ate. Not politely. His body was screaming for it, and every bite felt like fuel being poured into a furnace. Sweat ran off him. White mist rose from his skin.
He could feel it — sinews growing, joints cracking, senses sharpening. The New Life wasn't done. It was accelerating.
Lu Ze and Liang Wanqing set their bowls down and stared. Qin Ming kept eating. The hunger was a pit.
"His body's still changing," Lu Ze said, shaken. "From yesterday until now — and it's speeding up. Where does it end?"
---
Children at the gate. Dirty faces, bright eyes, drawn by the smell of roasting meat. Too shy to come in.
"I told you at the gate — come in!" Qin Ming waved them forward.
They filed in. "Thank you, Brother Qin." "Uncle's the best." Within minutes they ate like hamsters, cheeks stuffed, mumbling about how good it was.
"Slow down. There's more." Liang Wanqing gave them broth.
The children couldn't eat anymore. Bellies round, faces blissful. Qin Ming sent them off to play.
Word spread. Qin Ming had killed a Blade-Antler Deer and a mutated Donkey-Head Wolf. Alone. In this worst winter in years, when no one dared the mountains.
A girl in a patched coat tugged her mother's sleeve. "Mama, I'm hungry."
Other children hung behind their parents, staring at the meat. Qin Ming knew that hunger.
"Come on, all of you, sit." He looked at the adults. "Uncles, I won't invite you to eat here. But every household — five pounds of meat. Take it home."
"Xiao Qin, we can't—"
"Done." Forty households. Enough.
Someone laughed. "Qin Ming's too good. Let's find him a wife — he's old enough."
"Not happening," Qin Ming said quickly.
The yard filled with laughter. Children sat in a row, grease shining on their small faces.
---
Yang Yongqing arrived.
"Xiao Qin, level with me. New Life?"
Qin Ming nodded. "You said noble girls might come down. You said to work hard. And the mountains nearly killed me — that lit the fire. Body went hot. It just... happened."
"You sly kid." Yang Yongqing laughed and pointed at him.
Everyone knew the truth. His body had been ready. The rest was catalyst.
"Golden-age New Life. First in Twin Tree Village in decades," Old Liu said, voice thick.
They all knew what it meant — in this whole region, it was rare enough to turn heads.
Qin Ming's body ran like a furnace. Heat poured off him. Sweat steamed into white mist until he was half-lost in it.
"Blood activity like this — mine was nothing compared," Yang Yongqing said. His beard was trembling.
He understood what he was seeing. From crown to sole, inside and out, Qin Ming was burning through New Life. First stripping the dead — old tissue, toxins, impurities — then building the new, like spring forcing shoots through winter wood.
Qin Ming's eyes grew heavy. He'd eaten his fill, and now a deep, primal drowsiness dragged at him. A special hibernation.
"Lu Ze, hand out the meat," he said. "And take extra to the Zhou family. Granny Zhou was buried today."
He splashed ice-water on his body and lay down on the heated bed.
The others didn't fully grasp what they were seeing. But Yang Yongqing did.
White mist clung to Qin Ming like a shroud. His heartbeat thundered — not fast, but deep, each pulse hitting like a drum strike. The force of it shook the room.
*And it isn't finished yet.*
Yang Yongqing's hands shook. Could this boy, from a forgotten village, approach the prodigies of the bright city?
He shook his head. No. Root talent was one thing, but three generations of accumulated resources, high-grade manuals, noble bloodlines — that was another world. The boy and girl who'd stunned the city were beyond comparison.
Weren't they?