Chapter 1: Shén Hū — The Unbreathing
Wei’s thread shattered. TikTok down, his mind screamed. Life was a scroll in waiting—until it went viral under his feet. And in the valley, fantails flew. A table jolted. A grandmother’s hand stilled. Shén hū—breath—hah.
Ten thousand years seethed ego’s wrath with pent fury. “I am Liánhuǒ, Celestial of Raging Flames,” his breath bellowed. “Yield unto me, existence—I claim love. Spite me not, or the earth shall part and tear from itself all that dares to walk upon it.”
And from across the void, a ripple—a slight of a feather’s flutter so faint it mocked him—touched a world soon vanquished by ego’s reign. A needle, frozen mid-fall, hung suspended in the air. A teacup trembled on a table’s edge. The Celestial of Raging Flames had been spurned, and in the depths of the ether, vengeance awoke.
It did not come as fire, not yet. It came as absence. The un-breath before the inferno. And then, eternity cracked. His rage, unleashed, was a celestial sigh that annihilated. Worlds were taunted. Realms distorted. Stars tumbled, cascaded, careened, and collapsed. Existence ceased. Genesis convulsed, and a tear of ten thousand thunders ripped through the fabric of being.
In the valley, untouched by cataclysm, Qi flowed. Grandma’s needle paused, her hand trembling ever so slightly as the thread slipped from her fingers. A jolt ran through the teacup in Wei’s grip. Porcelain clinked, sharp as a struck bell. Warm tea sloshed over his knuckles, the heat biting—a sting like Liánhuǒ’s distant rage made intimate.
He lunged, reckless and bright, to catch it. “Swifter than the strike of plasma that melts mountains!” Wei boasted, chest puffed. “Smoother than the echo that shatters sound, eh, Nai Nai?” The old woman’s fingers closed over his wrist, steadying him.
“Breathe, little storm,” she murmured. A faint squeeze. Grounding. “Qi flows when Yang yields. Hah—be conscious of it. True strength lies in yielding… not just pushing.” Her smile deepened, soft undulations bunching the wrinkles of her face.
Wei exhaled—shen hu—hah. His fingers tingled. The cup settled. The water stilled. Outside, the earth quaked. A mountain fractured, its peak sliding into the valley below. Inside, Pa leaned over the steaming teapot. He drew in the aroma, then shook his head, wiping one eye. “Your Qi grows strong,” he grunted. “Control it… and mountains won’t crumble. And my tea won’t spill.” A tremor. “That’s hot, Ma,” he muttered, as his tea cup wobbled and splashed Pa’s knuckles.
“Ahhhhhh!” Liánhuǒ’s cry split the heavens. “My hand, why does it burn?” No blade. No lance. No taiaha thrust into his flesh. Yet agony seared deeper than bone. “What is this that I cannot see?” His wings of flame thrashed, scattering embers that birthed dying stars.
“I am greater than all others!” Shen hu—hah. His exhalation crushed galaxies. Black holes swallowed their own light. Fusion imploded, then erupted in manifestations of raging flame. The cosmos was fuel. And Liánhuǒ, the scorched and scorned, roared again: “I will burn it all.”
‘Why does he hide?!’ Shen hu—the breath—howls and shreds the nebula. ‘I feel its fire, the raging flames! It mocks me from… from everywhere, and nowhere to be seen!’ ‘Who, Grandpa, who’s hiding, who’s teasing you? I’ll punch them!’ Wei squinted, his head tilted, eyes squinting and forehead frowning…’Come on, Grandpa…tell me who.’ His small fists flexed, knuckles whitening.
‘My young hero, sometimes the strongest punch is a TikTok comedy viral—like when I beat that donkey in a race,’ Grandpa said, gesturing to the pile. ‘Wei, fetch some wood. I’ll help your Nai nai make dinner.’ ‘Wait… was that the punch line, Grandpa?’ From the kitchen, Ma didn’t look up. ‘Didn’t the donkey win that race, Pa?’
As a chuckle, then a squeaking clank of the door and pings of WeChats quieted, Ma looked at Pa. ‘We must seek their help. Tell them the Gateway has been breached. Call the JumpMasters; we’ll need their skills…’
‘Okay, Ma,’ Pa replied, ‘it’s done. I saw for a mere moment a flutter; it was Fantail Piwakawaka and Magpie, and now the Jade Star glows…They are here and there, but exactly where, I don’t know. But I feel it, the Qi is wrong, it is offset. I’m wary, Ma; Ominous hides out in the open, in plain view, where we cannot see.’
Wei breathed again. Deeper this time. The recklessness in his veins cooled, not gone, but deepening, flowing like the hidden current of the Mysterious Waters within him—a fatherly trait. Balance, not chaos. Qi. ‘It grows strong in him, teach him well, old lady,’ Pa cheekily muttered.
“What is this?” Liánhuǒ’s voice reverberated through the ether, the sound of planets colliding. “Who dares play life with my fire?!” His exhalation—shen hu—unspooled into the ether. From its wake, shapes of thought and feeling congealed. A whisper of a long-lost chance. A snarl that swore if time would not yield, he would end all that dwelt within it.
They pulsed into being, not from shadow, but as shadow itself—given form by yearning, by words choked back, by forgiveness left and forgotten. “I should’ve said something…” one whisper said. “I want to forgive her—but I can’t.” a snarl echoed. Darkness laughed as the shapes solidified; mercy had long fled this place.
Liánhuǒ watched them, his sigh neither welcome nor fear. He named them. “You,” he declared, his voice carved from glacial silence, “I name you Lost First Kiss. Infest their ribs. Let every heartbeat echo a warmth they can never hold again. Sow grief without pity.” The shape twitched, then slithered into the mind’s fragile cracks.
“And you,” he turned to a form too fluid to trust, “I name you Vengeance Scorned. Kneel, or I cast you into the beast-cloud. You are the voice that whispers ‘they deserved it’ in the dark. Louder.” The shape shuddered, its voice becoming the inner monologue of a thousand hearts.
Another manifested—thin, whispering, uncertain. “You are The Promise That Wasn’t Meant. Blur their past until they question every ‘I love you’ they’ve ever heard. Breathe into memories and make them wonder: was truth ever real?”
One more materialized—elegant and still, with cold fire for eyes. “You are Jealousy Masked as Caution. Whisper that safety is betrayal. Turn their loved ones’ shadows into threats. Make devotion taste like poison. Persuade them to push away those who would cease their heart’s beat for them.”
Liánhuǒ stepped back, lowering his blade. “You are all born of what once touched me, fragments of what I was denied. Obstruct them. Play them against each other, Pull the strings of Piyingxi’s marionettes. And behind the scenes of life’s silhouette, sow illusions and break them open; lay bare their flaws: make love unravel.”
Finally, he commanded, his final words a curse hissed into the void: “Find the one who still loves too deeply. The mortal who would chase forever. When they are broken within—I will feed their ruins to my raging flames. And I will be love’s immortality.”
He vanished. The curses scattered like black sparks. But elsewhere—a quiet tide still flowed. Where Liánhuǒ’s breath had split a star, her fingers stitched it back together with threads of starlight and jasmine. Where his torments whispered “you are unworthy,” her voice murmured “remember the peach blossoms by the river?”—a balm of specific, stubborn kindness. The balance held. Barely.
In the swirling voids of nebulae, Tumatauenga, heaved and shoved, fending gamma bursts and meteorites into the beyond, the Māori celestial of battles, moved through nebulae that pulsed with oceans of gas and light. His shadow plunged the universe dark as he hovered on his longboard, Nukutaimemeha. His voice boomed across light-years, a cosmic resonance, as he addressed a faint hum and what seemed like a darting dot. ‘Atta-bay Fantail, —what’s up?’
Fantail, a celestial of seemingly insignificant size next to the colossal Tumatauenga, yet radiating an ancient light borne of the Qi, returned. Hello, my friends.’ His voice was hushed but clear, carrying across the continuum. ‘A soft breath of spirals came, and I fluttered—I arrived… look.’
Where his wing pointed, the fabric of reality puckered—not with the violence of Liánhuǒ’s ruptures, but with the inevitability of tide meeting shore. He swiftly angled a wing, pointing. ‘Thunder and light, streaking molten plasma… Are you fighting down there, Tumatauenga?’
From the vastness of space, a resonant voice, the size of worlds, replied, no, e hoa mā. That is what troubles me… I feel the ache of Papatūānuku—life suffers. Hòutǔ, Earth Mother, the ancient turtle, asks: why? I am not war. That beast stirs in the machinations of the few who wage it—to make profit from it, to fill personal chasms fathoms deep. They bear the mark of the Lucifer.’
He turned, voice deepening with gravity. ‘Look, Fantail. See the fiery obliterator, streaming from the deepest void. As one, they can defeat it. I am that battle. —Will you go? Fantail-Piwakawaka turned in the starlight, his wings subtly tensing. ‘No, Tumatauenga. But in that word plans came to be—I lead the divine dogs who bear the sign of the Jade Dragon to shepherd the JumpMasters. They go to the place where tea brews… where the young one learns Qi from the elder: Yin.’
He paused, the starlight deepening in his eyes. ‘And if summoned by the soft breath of Qi, then yes—I yield unto her word. I shall challenge him face to face, taiaha to raging flame. I sense hell is coming.’
In the dark of the ether came a croaky muttering, ‘Excuse me, Master, I beg your audience.’ ‘Why do you return? I see neither soul nor his essence, well!’ Liánhuǒ bellowed. ‘Oh Master, the JumpMasters, they, they…!’ But before it could finish, Liánhuǒ turned and stared, his eyes spawning raging flames…
‘Then hit them as well! Make them mortal…and take my wrath into time’s realm and it will wait for those who come after…make them all suffer. Now go,’ he said as fragments of stars bombarded the scuttling thumps of terror rushing to inflect its master’s bidding. Somewhere in the mortal realm, a single shard survived the barrage. It landed in a teacup, where it dissolved into the steam—and Wei’s next breath carried the taste of supernovae.
As dusk settled over a tranquil mountain village, a strange breath filled the air—not quite wind, not quite memory. The elders called it a returning. It drifted like an old love letter rediscovered, fluttering through open doors, brushing cheeks with the scent of something almost remembered.
The old couple, Grandpa and Grandma, sat in the courtyard where leaves piled easily and the door wasn’t that far. And there they gathered around ancient fire rocks where epic stories had long been told. Teenagers—young of Yang—surrounded them hunched over glowing screens. Their worlds brimming with emoji-filled ping ping pings, yellow smiley things and crimson rosy red hearts. And the occasional flying plasma breathing dragon and Additron Commando.
Wei crossed his arms, feigning boredom, while Lifen attempted to smooth things over. Their eyes remained fixed on a little box at Grandpa’s feet, pulsing with soft green light.
Grandpa cleared his throat, eyeing Wei. ‘What’s wrong, kid?’ Grandpa said. ‘You going on a date through your WeChat feed?’ His eyes fixed on his shoes, Wei mumbled ‘Maybe’ as the sound of rapid-fire pings bounced off the ceiling. Lifen nudged him playfully. ‘Wei, hush. Let your Ye Ye talk.’
The old man grinned, brushing off an ember that landed on his pant leg. ‘All right then, you want a story? Your Nai nai has one that will set your WeChat abuzz.’ ‘Nai nai, Grandma,’ Wei asked, ‘is the Jade Star real?’ ‘Is your love for… your WeChat date real? We’ll keep that a secret,’ Grandma responded, smiling and winking at Lifen as Wei flushed brighter than a golden moon.
‘You know, long ago, in the hush before time… the Qi… breathed and formed into stars. Three radiant forces emerged from the Essence of the Ether: Mínghé — the luminous still point, the harmony between flame and tide. Her presence infused stillness into chaos, tempering fury not with force, but with grace. Where day clashed with night, she held the line—as there was more at stake than the whisper knew.
