The Heavens: A Qing, the Yue Girl at the beginning

“The first story,” said the Pure White King, “took place in an era when only fragments of the Dragon Chronicles remain, when the glaciers had not yet completely retreated to the poles, and the positions of the stars were completely different from today: the Big Dipper was tilted, the Morning Star had fallen, and the entire sky carried an untamed wildness and desolation.”

“If you are willing to listen, please listen carefully—the wind is old, and so am I.”

The distant, lengthy, and somewhat lonely narrative evokes the image of a grave that has been neglected for a long time.

There was no cross or inscription on the grave, only a withered Antarctic lichen, curled up like a pale ear, still eavesdropping on the wind.

[First Story: Shadow and Tower]

In the beginning, the world was one piece of night.

In the deepest part of the night, the Black King awoke and felt lonely.

So he took his own shadow, cut it into a piece of silk darker than the night, and embroidered it with star patterns—each star being a pupil, watching over the territories he had yet to see.

After finishing the sewing, he draped his shadow over his shoulders, like a dull cloak; but the cloak was so heavy that it almost broke his spine.

The Black King then understood: the will of the stars was too vast, enough to cause the mortal world to collapse into a pitch-black seed, and even he himself would find it difficult to have a long conversation with it.

Therefore, a "container" and a "sacrifice" are needed.

A special "vessel," an "external heart" that belongs to him and can help him solve his problems.

The Black King cut off his shadow of day and night, and then plucked out the sharpest scale from his heart, kneading them together like a lump of black dough.

He drew the first pentagram on the ice field, placing the shadow in the center, transforming the illusion into a physical entity.

The shadow has no gender, no temperature, and even its name is omitted, as if it was destined from birth to be merely a preposition rather than a subject.

It is both a bridge and a dam, destined to endure unimaginable erosion in the clash of two supreme laws.

The only gift the Black King gave to Shadow was a prophecy: "You will become me, yet you must not be me; you will live for me, yet you must die for me." Shadow lay on the ice and replied, "As you command."

Its sound was like a snowflake falling onto another snowflake, without an echo.

This event was later referred to by the priests as the "Holy Spirit Plan".

……

That year, the Antarctic summer had no snow, only an endless, pale solar corona. The ice sheet, like a bronze mirror polished for millennia, reflected two opposing shadows—

One was a high priest in white robes, the hem of which was embroidered with golden acacia; the other was a "shadow" sculpted by the Black King himself, with features resembling a god, yet devoid of human color. The two plotted beneath the icy dome.

"Why are you trembling?" she asked.

“I fear becoming a sacrifice,” Shadow replied.

This was the first time it expressed its feelings, the first time it defied its destiny of "having no self".

“Then let billions of living beings accompany you,” the white-robed priest raised his hand, drawing a spiraling tower shape, “the Tower of Babel, with their souls as fuel and the memories and emotions of the entire world as its foundation, forging a stairway to ‘Taiyi’ to share the weight of the stars with you. And you, you only need to open your arms at the top of the tower, to welcome destiny as you would a lover.”

After a long silence, Ying asked, "Are those billions of souls guilty?"

“Sin is a word invented by later generations,” she laughed. “At that time, you will be the tower, and the tower will be you. When all beings resonate in your bones, all sins will be unfinished redemption.”

"The will of the stars that the Black King makes you accept, His descent will shine even brighter because of the vastness of the vessel."

At that moment, the wind in Antarctica suddenly stopped.

In the silence, Ying heard her own heartbeat, like a lost spark gently striking beneath an ancient layer of ice.

Trying to break a rift to freedom.

……

On the day the Tower of Babel was laid and construction began, the Black King sat high above the clouds, his dragon roar transforming into thunder that swept across the land:

"I want a tower that reaches the heavens! Let the celestial light shine down, let the prayers of the earth reach up, and let the boundaries between heaven and earth, between stars and dust, melt away like wax in fire!"

Shadow was appointed "Supervisor," overseeing both the design and construction. After the first massive brick, inscribed with dragon runes, was laid at the base of the tower, the white-robed priest met it again.

"Your face is starting to show a 'human' expression." This was the first thing she said after examining it for a long time.

Immediately following was the second sentence, spoken even lower, as if whispered: "Be careful, don't let the king see."

The white-robed priestess took out a spark of fire—only the size of a pea, yet radiating the golden hue of rice. She placed the spark in Shadow's palm, teaching him how to nourish it with his breath, how to let it take root and sprout within him.

"This is the most ingenious 'creation of life,' the pinnacle of alchemy."

She said, "Take 'nothing' into 'something,' and then take 'something' into 'love.'"

Ying doesn't understand what "love" is.

He learned about "loneliness" from the Black King and "fear" from the priest, but he had never heard of "love."

But he felt that the spark was hotter than the stars.

He peered through his cracked pupils and saw that within the spark lay a city: in the city, people cultivated the land, sang, named their children, and dug graves for the dead.

The city was small, small enough to fit a pea; yet so large that it would take billions of hearts to light it up.

Ying suddenly felt a strange longing—a longing to become one of those "hearts," even if it was just the dimmest one.

The priest sensed his desire and whispered the plan that would later be condemned as "rebellion":

“I want you to expand this city, to expand it enough to contain all the souls rejected by the tower. Expand it so that the tower is no longer a ladder to heaven, but a ladder to ‘humanity’. On that day, you will no longer have to live for the Black King, and I will no longer have to blow the horn for him.”

"I also want you to give 'fire' to mankind—the fire of alchemy, the fire of civilization, the fire of rebellion against the gods. If the lowly race obtains fire, they will be favored; if this favor is gathered, they will become rivals to dragons."

“By becoming their ‘ancestor,’ igniting the One, and awakening the stars, one can gain the height to look at the Black King on equal footing and stand on equal footing with Him.”

As she spoke, tiny ice crystals settled on her eyelashes, like a row of crystal wind chimes. Listening to the chimes, Ying suddenly remembered that she had never been allowed to "desire" anything.

So he clutched the spark to his chest—there was no heart there, only an empty cavity, like an altar forgotten by the world.

The flame touched the cavity wall and made a "sizzling" sound, leaving a scar that looked just like a human palm print.

The wind was strong that day, whipping their shadows into a thin rope. One end of the rope was tied to the tower, the other to the future yet to come. They stood side by side on the tower's eaves, the Soul Well still open beneath their feet, and the stars yet to open above them.

……

The tower grows taller year after year.

Like a sword thrust backwards, it wears calluses down on the palm of the sky.

The Black King occasionally looked down and saw with satisfaction that the tower's body was becoming more and more like his own spine, and the tower's shadow was becoming more and more like his own shadow.

He was unaware of it.

The shadow had already quietly grown a heart inside the tower.

He hid the secrets of alchemy and fragments of knowledge in a bizarre dreamscape, drifting with the wind, the snow, and the migrating whales towards the earliest human settlements.

Soon, in the far north, someone learned to strike fire with flint; in the far east, someone played the first melody on a bone flute; in the scorching desert, someone drew the trajectory of stars on the rock face.

Unbeknownst to them, every time they looked up, they were resonating with the flame atop the tower.

When the first human "fire pit" was lit, Shadow stood in the distance, like a withered branch stretched long by the firelight. He suddenly remembered the Black King's prophecy: "You live for me, and you must die for me."

At that moment, for the first time, he had a selfish question about "death": If I die, will these flames live on in my place?
……

However, the Dragon Clan's elders are not blind.

The whispers of the wind, the unusual movements of the fire, and the overly sophisticated knowledge circulating among human tribes all became clues for betrayal.

When the first secret report about the "Shadow's usurpation" was presented before the Black King's throne, the king was furious, but not surprised:
“I knew he would betray me. Having seen the shadow of light, how could he be worthy to be my shadow if he could continue to endure the darkness?”

The countermeasures were already determined when the film was created.

On the day the Tower of Babel was completed, the midnight sun suddenly ended, and dark clouds, like a torn curtain, covered Antarctica.

The Black King himself arrived, his dragon wings spreading wide enough to blot out the sky. He wanted to make the traitors see it with their own eyes from the highest place:
Every gift comes with a hidden price; every rebellious person will pay a heavy price; every attempt to break free from fate will only be ruthlessly crushed!
The ice caps that had been gradually melted by the flames of alchemy, and the once spring-like and vibrant polar regions, have returned to the harsh winters of thousands of years ago. The magnificent remains of the towers are frozen under kilometers of ice, never to see the light of day again, leaving only a desolate white expanse.

The shadow was nailed to the newly erected cross at the top of the tower—a cross that grew out of the tower itself, an interweaving of iron, copper, and bone.

Like a deformed tree.

The Black King issued an immortal decree, extracting and refining the power of "original sin"—the greed, hatred, fear, and confusion inherent in all life—that should have been integrated into the "Tower" as the substrate for the fusion of millions of souls. This power was transformed into millions of red-hot silver needles that pierced into the deepest part of his soul, against his will.

How dare you teach someone to be a human being?

"How dare you place dust on equal footing with gods?"

“Look at the lowly race you try to elevate,” the Black King’s voice, like rolling thunder, swept over the thousands of trembling creatures below, “They don’t even have the courage to shed a single tear for you.”

A long spear adorned with gold pierced through his chest, and Shadow, in extreme pain, opened his blood-stained eyes and gazed at the four directions of the earth.

He saw his "children," on whom he had placed so much hope, terrified and fleeing in all directions under the dragon's oppressive power; indeed, no one stayed for him.

"You like fire,"

The Black King's voice was devoid of sorrow or joy, and he finally delivered the verdict of the judgment: "Let fire burn from within you, and consume the light you stole from mankind, and the name you sought to create for yourself."

……

When the pale corona rose again, the shadow on the cross was no longer human—only an outline pierced by alternating light and darkness, like a piece of parchment that had been repeatedly crumpled and unfolded, ready to shatter at any moment.

The white-robed priest never appeared.

Some saw her standing amidst the clouds in the distance, the wind billowing her robes like a sail that refused to lower; but she merely gazed into the distance, never taking a step closer. There were no pleas, no visits, not even a single glance ever fell upon the cross atop the tower.

Then Shadow understood: he had been abandoned. The spark still burned in his chest, burning with a pain greater than that of "original sin."

He suddenly felt like laughing, and he actually laughed—the laughter was amplified by the ice field, like a million pieces of glass shattering at the same time.

Amidst his laughter, he chewed up all the secrets and swallowed them: the priest's plan, the alchemy of fire, the future of "humanity"... He didn't reveal a single one.

He gazed at the light she was hiding in, and recalled that snowless summer in Antarctica: the warmth of her fingertips, her soft words, "for the great love and justice of the world"—all of which were ice, yet enough to keep an artificial heart beating in the eternal darkness.

Tens of thousands of springs, summers, autumns, and winters cycle through endless nothingness.

The shadow is nailed to the spire symbolizing His dream, with unfinished great deeds beneath His feet, and the original sin that was originally used to create new life wrapped around His body, enduring endless torment and humiliation.

The shadow became the most painful coordinate in the world.

A living symbol of hell.

A rebel abandoned by God and forgotten by man.

At the last moment of his sentence, the Black King descended before the cross.

"The time has come," the king said.

The torment stopped.

Instead, there was a more thorough deprivation.

The Black King opened its massive maw and began to devour Shadow's existence. Shadow felt its power, memories, and the cursed "original sin" being drawn away like quicksand, returning to the Black King's body.

He transformed back into the original, dull silk, which the king draped over his shoulders. The king reclaimed the power he had used to create him, becoming more complete, more powerful, and more icy.

When the Black King left, he casually pushed the tower down.

The crushed ice and bone fragments mingled together and were ground into powder by the wind and snow.

The cross is empty, the tower has collapsed, and only the wind travels through the ruins, emitting a lullaby-like wail.

History books erased his name from the record, leaving only a faint trace:

Those who steal fire are forever bound by original sin.

The voice of the pure white king paused here, and the ripples in the blood pool gradually subsided. He lowered his six wings, as if gently closing an empty coffin lid for a shadow that no one sweeps its grave.

“This is the first story,” the king said, “about a shadow, a tower, and a…dawn when no one keeps their appointment.”

"No one knows that, as early as the beginning of the tower's construction, the will of the stars had already cast its glance, endowing the shadow with the quality of cherishing life, and the opportunity for resurgence was hidden in the ashes."

……

"And what about the second story?"

After a long silence, Zhao Qing spoke, her voice echoing in the empty tower hall, "A dawn where no one keeps their appointment..."

She repeated softly, "But the darkest hour before dawn often gives birth to the most intense light. The shadow failed, but it also succeeded—the Black King only took back the 'shadow,' not the fire it ignited in the hearts of all beings. That fire later burned through epics and continues to burn to us today."

Although it's just a story, inevitably embellished and exaggerated, it does, after all, unveil the veil of time.

People once unearthed elephants in Antarctica with fresh grass in their stomachs, frozen solid by a sudden onslaught of extreme cold. This unsolved mystery that had baffled many Antarctic scholars has now finally been solved.

That was not a natural change, but the wrath of the gods, the Black King's punishment of the shadows, and the traces left by the tragedy of the Tower of Babel.

Furthermore, the seemingly abstract and metaphorical "spark" actually represents the ultimate embodiment of alchemy; it is a container and reaction vessel for karma, revealing the core of this technique and achievement in just a few words.

Without the potential of the "spark" to scorch fate, no matter how much primitive humans are cultivated and educated, they will have no chance to resist the Black King. Shadow's indomitable will only serves to highlight his futile choices.

"The heart is the greatest variable, and also the most poisonous curse. It can make shadows yearn for light, and it can also make light... give birth to shadows."

The pure white king's gaze seemed to pierce through Zhao Qing, looking towards a more distant past. "Then, listen to this second story, about the stirring of a 'heart,' and a gaze that transcends life and death, destined to be hopeless, beginning with looking up and ending in disillusionment."

His wings fluttered, and new ripples appeared on the surface of the pool.

It coalesces into an ancient tapestry, reflecting a scene different from before—no longer ice fields and star maps, but blooming flowers and the sound of bells, permeated with an almost extravagant tranquility and sorrow.

[Second Story: The Moon and the Tree]

Tens of thousands of years is enough time for oceans to turn into mulberry fields, and for the sparks of civilization to flicker and die out several times.

The ice and snow melted into water, which flowed into the sea. The sea evaporated into clouds, which then fell back to the earth, diluting the tragedy of that failed attempt to "steal fire" into a fleeting legend, leaving only a vague echo in the oldest ballads.

By then, the white-robed priests had become myths.

She built a new reality outside of mythology—the World Tree Order, with branches reaching the sky and roots reaching the earth.

The White Moon, a "companion star" formed from mithril and light, orbits the heavens and earth once a month, casting a frost-like glow.

A heavenly ladder descends from the moon, like a spider's web adorned with morning dew, allowing the dragons and their chosen saints to ascend and descend.

Now, she is no longer a rebel hiding under the ice dome, but a "white emperor" walking openly in the sunlight.

In the lower realm, on "Kisheng Island," at the easternmost tip of the continent, a young human monk, carrying an old scripture, stepped ashore alone, treading on the rocks. It was late spring, after the cherry blossoms had all fallen.

He came from the westernmost and northernmost frigid lands of the world, traversing thousands of mountains and rivers to come here, just to see with his own eyes whether the legendary "White Moon's" descending ladder can truly draw those who look up at it into the light, amidst chants and the sound of bells.

His Buddhist name was "Dhamma", which means "silent moon".

But his very being was not silent—in that chest nourished by frost and moss, beat an ambition that had been born yearning for greatness.

As a boy, he witnessed the midnight sun in a snow cave: the sun, like a polished copper coin, hung overhead for a hundred days without falling.

At that moment, he felt dizzy looking up for the first time, and he also heard a silent call in his heart for the first time: Go, go to a higher place, go and become a part of the light.

So at the age of fifteen, he shaved his head and left his name in the snow cave, tying his fate to his feet.

Then, it headed south, like a white feather shot out by the wind.

Kesa Island was the last stop on the trip. The island is very small, so small that it can only accommodate an ancient city, a pagoda, and a few cherry blossom paths.

The island is also very large, large enough to hold the entire spring and all the hopes of a young man.

...(End of chapter)