Xuanxi never thought he would end like this.
As a web novel author, his life could be summed up in four words: typing and being chased for updates. His fans called him “Pigeon King” because he updated so slowly that readers wondered if he had already abandoned the story.
Today was Saturday. The sun was nice. He had wanted to sleep in, but his phone started vibrating at seven.
“Author, are you updating today?”
“Did you quit again?”
“If you don’t update, I’m sending a knife.”
Xuanxi pulled the blanket over his head. The phone kept vibrating. He sighed, crawled out of bed, opened his laptop, and stared at the blank document.
Inspiration is like summer cicadas—deafening when they sing, but when you go looking for one, there’s not a single one to be found. Today happened to be one of those days.
He stared at the blinking cursor for ten minutes. Typed a line. Deleted it. Typed another line. Deleted it again. Then he shut down the laptop, put on his jacket, and went out.
As he left, his phone vibrated again. “Author, are you running away again?” Xuanxi didn’t reply.
He walked along the path by the river. The autumn wind blew across the water, carrying the smell of waterweed and the smoke from a barbecue stand in the distance. He thought of the protagonist in his story—a small character struggling to survive in another world.
No golden finger, no system, just a heart that refused to give up. Readers said he wrote too painfully, that he gave his protagonist too many hardships. But he felt that true growth was never smooth sailing. It was the twists and turns that made a story compelling.
The path by the river grew narrower. He looked down at his phone and opened the reader group. There were over 99 messages. He scrolled through a few—all of them were urging him to update. He sighed and typed a few words: “No update today.” Then he sent it.
The group exploded immediately.
“I knew he quit!”
“Pigeon King confirmed!”
“Count how many chapters you owe us!”
Xuanxi curled his lips, about to type something more, when his foot slipped. It had rained yesterday, and the ground by the river was still wet.
Stepping on it was like stepping on ice. Before he could react, he lost his balance. His phone flew out of his hand, arcing through the air, the screen still lit. The last message was: “Author, be careful not to fall—”
The water was very cold. Not the cold of autumn, but a bone-piercing, needle-like cold. As it happened, he couldn’t swim. Water rushed into his nose, mouth, ears.
He heard his own heartbeat turn into a dull drum in the water. Just before his consciousness faded, his last thought was: If I had just written that chapter, I wouldn’t have gone out.
Darkness. A very, very long darkness.
No sound. No light. No temperature. He didn’t know how long it lasted—maybe a moment, maybe forever. Then he heard a voice, very close, like a vibration transmitted through the water.
“She’s breathing!”
“It’s a girl.”
Girl? Xuanxi wanted to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t obey. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt sewn shut. He tried to move, but his body was immobile. Then he felt the cold.
Not just the cold of the river, but another kind of cold, seeping in from outside his skin, carrying unfamiliar smells. Earth, grass, and something he had never smelled before—like pine resin mixed with perfume.
He struggled to open his eyes. The sunlight stabbed his eyes, so he closed them again.
He could only squint and see blurred outlines—a huge black shadow blocked the sky, like a cloud, like a mountain, like something that shouldn’t exist in the real world. That shadow lowered its head. Two eyes lit up, like two lamps in the darkness.
“It’s a girl,” the voice said again.
Xuanxi—no, he wasn’t Xuanxi anymore. He tried to raise his hand, but only saw a small hand. Very small, small enough to curl into a fist and fit into an adult’s mouth.
The skin was not pure white, but mixed with a faint ink-blue, like some ancient jade. There were tiny scales on the fingers, shining with a cold luster in the dim light.
He was stunned. This world didn’t seem like his original world.
That huge black shadow wasn’t an illusion—it was a dragon. Ink-blue scales, golden eyes, body folded up like a mountain crouching in front of him. The dragon’s claws held a piece of cloth, stained with blood—her blood, flowing from her newborn body.
“This child…” The dragon’s voice was very, very low, like the rumbling of the earth, “is the last direct descendant of my Canglong Clan.”
Xuanxi couldn’t understand these words. Despite his strong soul, his body was still too small. His brain hadn’t fully developed. His memories fell like a shattered mirror, piece by piece.
He remembered being Xuanxi, remembered being a web novel author, remembered readers urging updates, remembered that river. But those memories receded like the tide, replaced by new ones—warm wind, unfamiliar language, light he had never seen before.
Then he heard a voice. Not from outside, but from deep inside his body, like a heartbeat, like breathing.
“Ying.”
One word. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it should be his name. His new name.
The dragon’s claws gently closed, wrapping the cloth a little tighter, and lifted him to her chest. The warmth came through the gaps between her scales—steady and warm.
The dragon stood up, blocking the sky. Then she took off without wings. No turbulence, no weightlessness, like a leaf carried by the wind.
He lay in her palm, watching the sky change from light blue to deep blue, from deep blue to night. Stars lit up one by one, like someone had scattered a handful of crushed diamonds across the sky.
He closed his eyes. The person Xuanxi was no more. Now alive was a female dragon infant named “Ying,” just born, held in the palm of a strange, enormous dragon.
What he didn’t know was that before taking off, that giant dragon lowered her head and gently touched his forehead with her nose.
“The bloodline of the Canglong cannot end in my generation,” the dragon said, so softly only she could hear. “I will take you to a safe place.”
With a shake of her body, she disappeared into the twilight.
***
Some unknown time passed—maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe longer. The dragon landed on a barren plain. Under the moonlight, the outline of a border town appeared faintly.
She gently placed the baby in her arms at the entrance of a blacksmith’s shop on the edge of town, wrapped in a clean white cloth. On one corner of the cloth was embroidered a line of small characters.
Then she took off. She didn’t look back.
Early morning. The blacksmith’s door opened. A middle-aged Western dragon person with gray-brown scales stood at the door, looked down, and saw the cloth bundle on the ground.
He crouched down, lifted a corner of the cloth, and saw a note. It said the baby girl in the bundle was entrusted to him.
He looked further down and saw only a small face—ink-blue newborn hair, amber-gold eyes, and two dark-golden patterns below the right eye.
The baby looked at him. Not crying. Not smiling. Just looking.
The blacksmith Helasi had never seen such a beautiful child. But he wrapped the cloth a little tighter, picked her up, and went inside.
“From today, you shall be called Xuanxi,” he said.
The baby didn’t respond, but her little hand grabbed Helasi’s finger. Very small, very light, but she held on tight.
Helasi’s eyes reddened. He was a rough Western dragon, a blacksmith his whole life, no good at taking care of children. But he knew one thing: he had a child now. This child, from today on, was his daughter.
Under the moonlight, the blacksmith’s chimney puffed wisps of cooking smoke. In the distance, on the mountain peak, that ink-blue dragon stood watching the smoke rise for a long, long time.
Then she turned and disappeared into the twilight.