The distant rumble of wheels against stone cut through the usual quiet of the Jin estate. A servant paused mid-sweep, head cocked toward the sound. The rumble grew louder—too fast, too urgent.
"The master's carriage!" someone shouted.
Servants scattered like startled birds. The groundskeeper dropped his pruning shears. A young maid nearly toppled over with her basket of linens. The luxurious black carriage with the Jin family crest thundered through the gates, horses frothing at the mouth, driver struggling to maintain control at such reckless speed.
"Something's happened," the head servant murmured, straightening his robes. "Something terrible."
The carriage hadn't even fully stopped when the door burst open—or rather, was kicked open with such force it slammed against the carriage side. Jin Haoran emerged like a storm personified. His blonde hair, usually immaculate, stuck out at odd angles. His blue eyes, known throughout the province for their calm calculation, now blazed with barely contained fury. His expensive robes were wrinkled, as if he'd dressed in haste.
"Where is she?" he demanded, not waiting for the steps to be lowered, jumping down with a thud that seemed to shake the courtyard.
Servants bowed deeply, none daring to meet his gaze.
"Master Jin, we—" the head servant began.
Jin Haoran pushed past him, striding toward the main house with the force of a man possessed. His long legs ate up the distance in seconds.
That's when he saw her—Jin Xiyue, slumped against a pillar near the entrance, her clothes torn and dirty, dried blood caking one side of her face.
Jin Haoran froze. For a heartbeat, the fury in his eyes transformed into something far more vulnerable—raw shock, disbelief, and beneath it all, a father's fear.
"Xiyue?"
Jin Haoran crossed the distance between them in three long strides. His hands shot out, gripping Xiyue's shoulders with desperate strength.
"What happened to you?" His voice cracked as his eyes darted frantically over her body, cataloging every injury. The gash on her temple. The way she favored her left leg. The bruises blooming across her exposed skin. "Who did this?"
Xiyue opened her mouth to explain, but Haoran had already whirled toward the gathered servants, his face contorted with rage and fear.
"Get alchemist! Feng Liwei! Bring him here now!" His voice thundered across the courtyard, sending two servants sprinting toward the stables. "And if he refuses, tell him Jin Haoran will burn his shop to the ground!"
He turned back to Xiyue, his expression softening just enough to reveal the terror beneath his anger. Without warning, he bent down and scooped her into his arms.
"Father, I can walk—" Xiyue protested, surprised by how easily he lifted her.
"Be quiet." The command held no real bite. His arms tightened around her, as if afraid she might disappear again.
Haoran stormed through the manor's entrance, Xiyue cradled against his chest. She felt the rapid thump of his heartbeat, smelled the familiar scent of sandalwood and ink that always clung to him.
"Prepare her chambers!" he shouted as they moved through the halls. "Warm water! Clean linens! Where are those medicinal herbs we purchased from the southern merchants?"
The household erupted into chaos around them. Servants darted in every direction, bumping into each other in their haste to follow orders.
"The blue blankets from the eastern storage—bring those too! And light the braziers in her room!"
Xiyue felt a strange tightness in her throat. How long had it been since someone had cared for her this way? The orphanage had been all clinical efficiency. No one had ever carried her when she was hurt, or shouted orders to make her comfortable.
"Father," she whispered, "I'm alright."
Jin Haoran swept through the manor's corridors with Jin Xiyue clutched against his chest. Servants parted before him like water around a boulder, pressing themselves against walls to avoid his path. His face remained locked in a mask of controlled fury, but his arms held her with surprising gentleness.
"Father, please—I can explain—" Xiyue started.
"Explanations later," he cut her off, his voice tight. "First, we heal you."
They reached her chambers where servants already scurried about like startled mice. Two maids stripped her bed of its silken covers, replacing them with the blue blankets Haoran had demanded. Another servant struggled under the weight of a steaming copper basin, water sloshing dangerously close to the rim.
"Careful with that!" Haoran barked, causing the young man to flinch.
He deposited Xiyue on the freshly made bed with unexpected tenderness, then turned to direct the chaos around them.
"Where are the medicinal herbs? And someone fetch clean bandages! You—prepare a light broth. Nothing heavy." His commands rang through the room as he pointed at various servants.
Xiyue watched this whirlwind of activity centered entirely around her comfort. In her past life as Jennifer, she'd fallen ill with fever once at the orphanage. They'd given her medicine and left her alone in the infirmary with a pitcher of water. No one had sat with her. No one had worried.
Her father knelt beside the bed, his expensive robes pooling on the floor. He reached out, hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair from her forehead with trembling fingers.
"I thought—" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "When they told me what happened at the mountain... that no one could find you..."
Something warm and unfamiliar expanded in Xiyue's chest. Her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes. She blinked rapidly, trying to contain them, but one escaped, sliding down her temple.
"Father," she whispered, the word still new on her tongue.
Haoran's face softened in a way she'd never seen before.
"Don't you ever—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "Don't disappear like that again."
Another tear escaped Xiyue's control. Then another. She turned her face away, embarrassed by this display of weakness, but Haoran gently turned her chin back.
"It's alright," he murmured, so softly only she could hear. "You're home now."
The chamber doors crashed open with such force they bounced against the walls. Jin Lihua burst through, her normally immaculate appearance in disarray. Her dark hair tumbled loose from its ornate pins, and her embroidered robes twisted around her legs as she stumbled forward.
"Xiyue!" The name tore from her throat, half-scream, half-sob.
Haoran barely managed to step aside before Lihua flung herself toward the bed. Her hands trembled violently as they hovered over Xiyue, afraid to touch, afraid she might cause more pain.
"My daughter," she whispered, tears streaming unchecked down her porcelain face. "My daughter, my daughter..."
She reached out with shaking fingers, brushing matted hair from Xiyue's forehead. Her touch was feather-light, impossibly gentle as she traced the outline of the gash on Xiyue's temple.
"The servants said you were—" Lihua couldn't finish the sentence. "They said no one could find you.
Her voice broke completely. Without warning, she gathered Xiyue into her arms, cradling her against her chest. The scent of jasmine enveloped them both as Lihua pressed her face into Xiyue's hair, her tears dampening the tangled strands.
"I thought I'd lost you," she sobbed. "I thought I'd never see you again."
Something cracked inside Xiyue—a wall she hadn't even realized was there. The cold, analytical part of her brain that had always maintained distance suddenly crumbled under the weight of her mother's raw emotion.
Xiyue's chest heaved. A sob tore from her throat, surprising even herself with its intensity. Her fingers clutched desperately at Lihua's sleeves, twisting the expensive fabric as she buried her face against her mother's shoulder.
"Mother," she cried, the word catching on another sob.
Jennifer had never known a mother's touch. Never felt arms that held her with such fierce protectiveness. Never known what it meant to be so desperately loved that someone's world would shatter at her absence.
Lihua rocked her gently, murmuring soothing words against her hair. "I'm here, my little one. I'm here."
For one crystalline moment, the weight of everything—the death she'd experienced, the new memories, the confusion of two lives colliding—all of it faded beneath the simple, overwhelming warmth of being held.
Xiyue took a deep breath, steadying herself. The room had grown quiet, the only sound the occasional crackle from the brazier in the corner. Her mother's hand remained wrapped around hers, a gentle anchor.
"I heard rumors," she began, her voice low but clear. "About an ancient artifact hidden in Cloud Forest. They said it could unblock meridians—even those that were damaged since birth." She glanced up at her father's face, watching his expression shift from concern to understanding.
"My meridians." The words hung between them, heavy with years of disappointment and frustration. "I thought if I could find it, I might finally be able to cultivate."
Jin Haoran's face tightened. "You went searching for a miracle."
"I convinced Captain Liu that we needed to investigate." Xiyue's fingers twisted in the blanket. "I told him Father had sent us. He believed me—they all did."
Jin Lihua inhaled sharply but said nothing.
"We traveled the forest grew thicker, the paths narrower." Xiyue's voice remained steady even as her eyes grew distant. "Captain Liu wanted to turn back. He said the area didn't feel right. But I..." Her voice caught. "I insisted we continue."
She looked down at her hands, knuckles white against the blue fabric. "Their deaths are on me. Not just the ambush—my deception led them there."
"The men who attacked you," her father prompted gently. "What did they want?"
"They never spoke. But they weren't interested in our valuables. They targeted the guards first, systematically." Xiyue's voice hardened. "They wanted me. Or perhaps what they thought I might have found."
"Did you find it?" Jin Haoran asked quietly. "This artifact?"
Xiyue hesitated, the weight of the strange object now somehow part of her soul pressing against her consciousness.
"No," she lied smoothly. "I never reached the location from the rumors. The ambush happened before we arrived."
She described the battle in clinical detail—how Captain Liu had fought like a demon, how her personal guard had formed a wall of flesh and steel around her, how she had run when ordered, hearing their final cries fade behind her.
I tried to run away to escape, but they were able to catch up to me and cut me down. I was bleeding out, but they didn't finish the job, thinking I would just die and leave me there.
Jin Haoran's face transformed as Xiyue recounted her near-death experience. The composed patriarch vanished, replaced by something primal and dangerous. His eyes narrowed to slits, nostrils flaring with each breath. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
"They left you to die?" His voice emerged as a whisper, more terrifying than if he had shouted.
Xiyue nodded, watching her father's control splinter before her eyes.
Jin Haoran stood abruptly, his movements rigid. He paced three steps, then froze. The muscles in his jaw worked beneath his skin as he struggled to contain the fury building inside him.
"Father—" Xiyue began.
His fist crashed down onto the ornate table beside her bed. The wood split with a sickening crack, porcelain medicine cups shattering, herbs scattering across the floor. The impact echoed through the chamber like thunder.
"I will find them." Each word emerged precise and deadly. "Every single one."
Jin Lihua reached toward him. "Husband—"
"No!" Haoran whirled, eyes blazing. "They ambushed my daughter. Cut down my men. Left my child to bleed out alone on a mountainside."
His breathing came in harsh, uneven bursts. A vein pulsed at his temple.
"I swear by my ancestors," he continued, voice dropping to a guttural growl, "I will tear apart whoever orchestrated this. I will dismantle their organizations, their families, their legacies. I will erase them so thoroughly that even the memory of their existence will fade from this world."
He slammed his fist into the broken table again, reducing more of it to splinters.
"Every connection I have built, every favor I am owed, every resource at my disposal—all of it will be directed toward one purpose." His eyes locked with Xiyue's. "Justice for what was done to you."
Jin Lihua stood and placed a steadying hand on her husband's trembling arm. "And I will stand beside you," she said, her gentle voice now edged with steel.
Haoran covered her hand with his own, their eyes meeting in silent communication before he turned back to Xiyue.
"Rest now," he commanded, though his voice had softened slightly. "Heal. And know that your father will not rest until those responsible have paid in blood."
'My lord, alchemist master Feng Liwei has arrived.