Changkong Academy sat on the border between Ruoqiang and Loulan — a place that had once been riven by ceaseless war until a single master of the academy rose and brought peace to the region. In the calm that followed, the academy itself was founded, a solemn bastion on contested ground.
Not long after its founding the academy enrolled a farm boy of frail health. Three years beneath its tutelage and he emerged fierce and skilled beyond imagining — his talent multiplied many times over. He would become Mo Yan, now the ruler of Loulan. Mo Yan and Luo Hao had both once walked out of Changkong’s gates as students; now they each sat at the head of their own realms, one in Ruoqiang, one in Loulan. The academy’s fame spread like wildfire, and the scions of noble houses strained to get in.
Entry was never easy. Changkong sheltered some of the continent’s finest youth, and every year the selection alone took great effort. The academy held strict ranks: personal disciples first, then inner disciples, then outer disciples. For generations afterward the great families of the east used the same hierarchy when they took on apprentices.
Yet history is a fickle thing. In the annals a century later, during Luo Qiu’s time, the academy met its ruin and was all but erased from common knowledge. The records that remained were thin.
At the time of our tale, a girl named Zhao Shuning — traveling under the name Luo Qiu — had tried to enter the academy. A heavenly thunder tribulation had trapped her in a mystic realm for days, delaying her arrival. Even though Mo Yan himself had recommended her, the academy would not make exceptions. She had no choice but to take lodging in a cramped cottage outside the walls and look for other ways in. By grit and perseverance she finally scraped an outer disciple’s title — the sort of place everyone else assumed only existed to run errands and fetch tea for the inner disciples.
Changkong was a place of reverence; it answered to no lord. Though it sat between two rival states, neither side dared show it disrespect. Even at the height of enmity, when Ruoqiang and Loulan met there, they obeyed the academy’s rules.
That year Ruoqiang had been quieter than usual. News had spread through the city that the Marquis’s household had been blessed with a daughter of destiny. A crimson lotus, delicate and perfectly formed, bloomed at the child’s brow — a sign the family had long desired. The girl, Luo Feiyan, had grown beautiful and fragile; her health was delicate, and her parents coddled her. Ye Qingluan, her mother, wished for nothing more than a peaceful, gentle life for her child.
But Luo Hao had other plans. He insisted Feiyan be sent to Changkong.
A month before her departure the household had gathered for farewells. Feiyan kept glancing back as she walked; tears shimmered in her eyes and the sight tore something raw in Ye Qingluan.
“Mother, can’t I stay?” she asked, voice trembling.
Ye Qingluan looked to Luo Hao. He was grave.
“Not possible,” he said simply — the words heavy with finality. “Feiyan is weak. If she stays beneath our protection she will never grow. The court diviner says Changkong will be the turning point her life needs. If she spends three years there, her spiritual energy and inner strength will rise to heights she cannot reach here.”
“She hasn’t even opened her spiritual channels,” Ye Qingluan protested, grief in every syllable. “How can that be done in three years?”
“I have made my decision,” Luo Hao replied. “There will be no more arguing.”
Feiyan bowed her head, but she was dutiful. “I understand. I will obey my masters at Changkong. Father, Mother — don’t worry about me. I was weak before because I clung to you. That’s my failing, not yours.”
At her words a shadow of feeling crossed the face of Liu Yuan, Luo Hao’s concubine, standing a little behind Ye Qingluan. Feiyan always addressed others as “mother” when speaking to Ye Qingluan, but to Liu Yuan she called her “Aunt Liu.” Each time Feiyan said it, a tiny prick of shame seemed to pierce Liu Yuan.
“Aunt Liu,” Feiyan said now, her eyes never meeting the woman’s. “While I’m gone, please... speak with my mother sometimes.”
Liu Yuan forced a smile. “I will.” Then more firmly: “You must study hard and make us proud. Listen to your elders. Don’t be afraid of hardship.”
Feiyan’s brow tightened. Only when her maid gave a quick, almost apologetic squeeze to Liu Yuan’s sleeve did the girl look away and offer a pale, embarrassed smile. “Forgive me. I overstepped.”
Liu Yuan’s vision of Feiyan was different from Ye Qingluan’s. Where the mother urged caution and gentleness, Liu Yuan wanted the girl to harden and fight, to claw her way to the top and bring honor back to Ruoqiang. That view made Feiyan uncomfortable; she had never liked Liu Yuan. From childhood the woman had carried herself like a mother and dictated how Feiyan should behave, and Feiyan had bristled against it. But her position in the marquisate left her no choice but to tolerate the arrangement.
“Father, I’ll go now,” she said at last. “Please take care of yourself.”
“I will,” Luo Hao answered, steady as the man who had ruled and planned for wars. And with that, the comfortable nest of eighteen years came to an end for Luo Feiyan.
At Changkong the children were either scions of noble houses or born to wealth. As a marquis’s daughter she was not unique; more, she was resented. She had arrived with no spiritual energy awakened, yet was granted a place among the inner disciples — a position that should have been earned. Her presence stoked envy and indignation.
Ridicule followed. Small slights multiplied into cold shoulders and whispered accusations that she had used her title to cheat her way inside. Feiyan’s gentle nature and her mother’s teachings kept her from answering in kind. She suffered in silence, biting back words she would later frame into letters home. She could not bear to tell her father that in her first month she had already been pushed and dismissed by her peers. To do so would be to disappoint him, and she could not bring herself to add that weight to his shoulders.