Re-birth: The Beginning after the End - Chapter 70

Chapter 70: UNEXPECTED

The cave entrance that remained was surprisingly small—barely large enough for a child to squeeze through. Li Hua studied it thoughtfully, noting how the temperature seemed to fluctuate wildly around the opening. One moment, a blast of heated air would rush out, hot enough to make her step back; the next, a frigid wind would whisper past, carrying crystalline frost in its wake. All the while, Little Firefly’s presence flickered with anticipation in her inner space, responding to the cave’s strange energies.

“I could fit,” she said slowly, already knowing how her brothers would react.

“Absolutely not,” Li Wei started, but Li Hua was already shrugging off her outer training jacket.

“I’ll be careful,” she promised, adjusting her inner robes and checking that her daggers were secured to her waist. “Besides, I’m the only one small enough to fit, and we’ve already broken the seal. I could sense something important inside—we have to know what it is.”

Li Hao looked torn between curiosity and concern, his dual essences flickering unconsciously—small flames dancing between his fingers while drops of water gathered in his palm. The nervous display reminded Li Hua of when they were younger, how his control would slip whenever he worried about his siblings.

“Don’t worry. I have my daggers, and my light essence will guide me through the darkness,” Li Hua coaxed, summoning a soft glow around her hand to demonstrate. The strange pulses of hot and cold air from the cave entrance made her training clothes flutter against her skin.

Li Wei said nothing, but the way he shifted his stance told her he was preparing to use his water essence at a moment’s notice if needed. She saw Li Hao open his mouth to protest, but she quickly brightened her light essence, letting it illuminate the cave entrance to show her brothers she would be fine.

Before her brothers could raise any more objections, Li Hua took a deep breath and squeezed through the narrow opening. The rough stone scraped against her shoulders as she pushed forward, guided by Little Firefly’s eagerness thrumming in her consciousness. She tried to ignore how the temperature shifted jarringly from scalding to freezing with each step forward, her skin prickling with each change. The last thing she heard was Li Wei’s resigned sigh: “Bàba is going to kill us if anything happens to her.”

Once the entrance widened enough for her to stand properly, Li Hua let her light essence spread out around her in a gentle sphere. The illumination revealed dancing shadows on the cave walls, which seemed to shimmer with traces of ancient formations. Her light caught and reflected off mineral veins running through the stone, creating patterns that reminded her of starlight on water.

“Little Firefly, what does it feel like?” Li Hua whispered, her voice echoing slightly in the confined space. Her light essence pulsed in rhythm with something deeper in the cave, though she couldn’t yet see what it might be.

Master, it’s just like yesterday at the festival,” Little Firefly’s voice resonated in her mind, tinged with both excitement and uncertainty. “That same strange pull we felt near the mysterious stranger. But now I’m wondering—was it truly the stranger, or was it this place?”

Little Firefly’s presence flickered thoughtfully in her consciousness before continuing, “We’ve explored these mountains countless times, Master. We’ve passed this very spot before, I’m certain. So why would this pull appear now? What changed between then and now?”

Li Hua traced her fingers along the cave wall, feeling the residual energy of the formation, they’d broken. The stone was warm despite the frigid air swirling around her. “Maybe,” she murmured, “we weren’t ready to feel it before.” Her light essence shimmered in response, casting prismatic reflections off the ancient formation marks that still lingered on the stone.

Li Hua slowly approached a small chamber but froze when footsteps echoed through the darkness. She immediately extinguished her light essence and pressed herself against the cold stone wall, heart thundering in her chest as she listened to the steady approach of footsteps. There must be another entrance, she realized, tracking the sound’s direction.

A shadow appeared at the chamber’s opposite side—a man, tall and broadly built, his stride confident and unhurried. The scattered light from some luminescent moss revealed only his silhouette and the black cloth that covered the lower half of his face, leaving just his eyes visible. He walked to the chamber’s center with practiced movements, raising his hand toward an array formation Li Hua hadn’t noticed before. The ancient patterns crumbled under his touch, revealing a bead that pulsed with a warm, familiar glow.

“Master!” Little Firefly’s voice surged with desperate recognition in her mind. “It’s mine! The bead—it’s part of me! You can’t let him take it!”

Li Hua moved with lethal precision, muscle memory from a lifetime ago taking over. Her daggers whispered from their sheaths as she launched forward, but this was no novice’s charge—her light essence flared not just around her blades but in carefully timed bursts meant to blind and disorient. The masked man spun to counter, but she was already gone, her wind essence carrying her into his blind spot.

His open palm met empty air as she ducked beneath his guard, daggers tracing deadly arcs toward his vital points. Only a burst of spiritual energy at the last moment prevented her strikes from finding their marks. There was a slight widening of his eyes—the first crack in his composed demeanor.

“Impressive reaction time,” he commented, voice deep and slightly muffled by the cloth covering his face. His counterstrike came like lightning, but Li Hua’s body moved with the fluid grace of an experienced killer. She didn’t just dodge—she transformed the movement into an attack, her wind essence turning her evasion into a deadly dance that forced him to defend against strikes from multiple angles.

They traded blows in the dim chamber, Li Hua’s daggers drawing arcs of light through the air as she pressed her advantage. Each strike targeted tendons, meridians, vital points—the movements too precise to be merely learned. The man moved like flowing water, but now his dodges held more urgency, each evasion barely keeping him ahead of her blades. When he caught her wrist, she didn’t just counter—she turned her body into a weapon, using his grip as an anchor for three consecutive attacks that forced him to release her or risk a blade between his ribs.

“Very impressive,” he said, sliding back with more caution than before. “But while your combat skills are refined, your essence control still needs work. You’re fighting your current nature, relying too much on old habits.”

His criticism ignited Li Hua’s temper, but the anger didn’t cloud her judgment—it sharpened it. She gathered her light essence into her daggers, making them blaze like captured stars, but this time the light was precisely controlled, creating shadows that concealed her true attacks. Her strikes came in intricate combinations, each movement flowing into the next with deadly efficiency. The masked man found himself gradually pushed back, forced to expend more energy defending against attacks that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

As he retreated toward the chamber’s center, stepping into a patch of brighter moss-light, Li Hua caught her first clear glimpse of his eyes above the black cloth mask—and nearly dropped her daggers in shock.

Those eyes. The same honey-brown eyes that had caught her attention at yesterday’s festival, now watching her with that same mysterious glint of knowing amusement, though there was newfound respect in their depths.