The young girl stood alone in the streets of Goeun. People streamed towards her left and right as they earnestly chattered their successes, bemoaned their failures, their arms waving to express their fluttering emotions.
The various people who walked past her did not turn their heads, nor did they express any knowledge towards the young girl’s existence. Their movements were swift and natural, uninhibited by the young girl’s mysterious presence.
She seemed eternally disconnected from the remainder of the street.
The people naturally made way for her presence, as if she were a natural law instead of a living person.
With the passing of every breath, the young girl raised her hand, the fingers twirling the brush.
The movement of the wooden brush constituted a total of two sweeping downwards strokes, one to the right and the other to the left. The young girl moved the brush at a slow speed, her fingers clasped around the wooden handle as if she were painting in lieu of inspiration.
Shua!
The wooden brush whirled through the air in a delicate sweep, the weasel hair tip flickering with an invisible ink.
The movement was halting, pausing in the air at each fluctuation of the surrounding people’s emotions.
The atmosphere gently vibrated as the brush’s tip lightly grazed its surroundings, a faint sliver of color rippling throughout the air. The descending sunlight and the uprising clouds of dust and sentiment created layers upon layers of colored hue over the streets of Goeun, prompting the skies to fluctuate with a strain of scarlet and gold.
But the people paid no heed to the peculiarity.
The invisible ink scattered by the wooden brush stained the hearts of the passerby of Goeun who were finalizing the day’s tasks and heading home, but not a single person recognized the stain on their heart.
The skies danced and howled in colors, but the rays of light pouring onto their backs remained the same.
The citizens of Goeun could not comprehend or observe the peculiar skies, the peculiar atmosphere, or the peculiar young girl and her wooden brush.
But a young girl noticed the peculiarity.
“What was that?”
An Fei’s brows inexplicably twitched in the midst of Wen Jiu’s impassioned lecture, and her heart tinged with a faint sear. A sudden onrush of fear and vigilance swamped her soul, as though a vice had choked her throat.
“Young Miss, you must remember that at the root of the matter, we are considered as merchants of Great Yan coming to observe the customs of Bei Tang! As such, please remember to restrain the urge to practice – what did you say?”
Wen Jiu cleared his parched throat at the sudden interruption and parted his lips to question the young girl, only to notice that she had stopped paying attention to him and was instead staring outside of the window.
The handsome man’s eyebrows twitched in exasperation, though the annoyance swirling in his heart wasn’t as much as he proclaimed.
“Young Miss Xu, did you find something peculiar?”
“The sky… why is it so weird?” An Fei muttered after a few moments of indecision.
“The colors are changing slightly, like someone’s playing on a canvas…”
“The sky? Colors?”
Wen Jiu’s eyebrows shot towards the heavens at the young girl’s remark, and strode towards the windowsill of the room. He stared towards the skies, straining his eyes as to decipher the mystery pointed out by the mortal girl.
The skies were dyed with a healthy shade of gold and scarlet, a clear indicator of sundown.
Even when he employed spiritual essence into his eyes and executed his martial arts techniques, Wen Jiu could only detect the clear blue skies and the overlay of golden sunlight with the hue of sundown, prompting his confusion.
“…the skies are normal?”
The handsome man could only mutter as such. In response, An Fei’s squinted eyes prompted her to shake her head in denial, an unsettling feeling bracing the tip of her tongue.
“The skies are… not normal,” the young girl finally pressed against her chin to squeeze the words out.
“There’s spots of black and white… as well as hints of purple, yellow, green… and red?”
Why was the sky so weird this evening?
An Fei could not find an answer towards the question. She continued to stare through the windows despite Wen Jiu’s assertions that everything was normal, her heart continuing to pump the unsettling sentiment through her veins.
The sky retained its natural blue shade as the handsome man firmly declared, and the shimmering rays of gold and scarlet that were iconic of a healthy sunset similarly were present.
However, there was something else, an inkling that An Fei could only observe but not make a judgement on.
She saw plumes of violet, of which she felt an unsettling malice and resentment striking towards the depth of her soul. She observed unnatural giddiness in the spots in the sky that radiated a pure yellow color, and the unusual shade of green brought a disturbing drowsiness throughout her body.
But what was most unusual and the source of her unsettled feeling was that each of the hues that did not belong from the skies seemed to have been released from the ground.
The massive blotches of unnatural color had tails extending from the busy streets of Goeun directly before her position in the inn, and when An Fei lowered her gaze towards where she discovered the greatest intensity of the color, her heart leapt into her throat.
Her vision was cluttered by a seemingly infinite sea of passerby dressed in an assortment of robes, linen cloth, and scholarly and military attire like. Nonetheless, An Fei saw a figure holding a wooden brush, the tip releasing the throes of color that had dyed the skies.
To be precise, a young girl with a robe of black and white cloth draped over her body.
A young girl with skin so white and milky, the appearance soft and delicate that even an emotional glance could cause it to break. Beautiful strands of black hair glistening with dewdrops from the sky coiled around her waist, and a pair of scarlet irises gazed deeply towards the window against which An Fei’s disguised countenance stared from.
Near her forehead, there was a little region of hair that was of a silver color. It did not distort her appearance but rather exemplified the overall character of fragility and delicateness.
“…how?”
The word spilled from An Fei’s lips without her awareness, and the young girl’s eyes flickered with shock. She stared directly through the window, her eyes eradicating the clutter of the numerous residents of Goeun City on the streets to reveal just her in the inn, and the young girl standing alone on an empty street.
How could that appearance manifest once again?
Such an inhumane appearance, such an inhumane beauty, how could anyone possess it?
Most importantly, why did she resemble her original image?
“Young Miss Xu!”
Caw!
Wen Jiu and the little raven squawked in shock as they witnessed the young girl leap from the windowsill, yank the taijijian from its sheath, and bolt out of the inn in a single breath. Their hearts froze at the pure shock and disbelief in her eyes, forcing their reactions to be delayed.
“Wait!”
When they had regained their senses, An Fei had vanished from sight and had merged into the streets of Goeun City.
An Fei had not run far from the inn; rather, she was directly outside of the plain-looking building, standing just a few meters from the doorway.
The young girl stared at the river of humans striding on the street, her nose blocking the foul odors of incompatible fragrances and burnt spices, and her ears disregarded the chattering of those present.
The invisible diagram of both Yang and Yin attributed spiritual essence throbbed gently in the centre of her heart, isolating her from the natural world. Just as the young girl standing directly across from her, the people strolling by quickly avoided An Fei’s presence, moving past her body as though she didn’t exist.
“Who are you?”
An Fei coarsely muttered as she stared directly towards the young girl. The taijijian’s blade flickered with an uncertain radiance, and flames began to coalesce at the tip.
The young girl’s lips began to move, and the brush in her hands gently moved through the air.
Who am I?
Who are you?
The instant the brush swept through the air, five existences shot to their feet in shock, their minds brimming with disbelief. At the same time, A swath of color enveloped An Fei, erasing Goeun City, the empire of Bei Tang, and even the massive Shattered Star Continent from her mind.
“That old geezer is here as well!?”
