After that day’s sparring ended, the sky suddenly began to rain.
It wasn’t the torrential rain common in the Western Dragon Domain, but rather the fine, continuous rain described in books about the Eastern Jiangnan region, falling silently from the clouds, enveloping the entire academy in a thin layer of mist.
Xuanxi stood under the eaves by the Training Ground, staring blankly at the curtain of rain.
Hildegrif also walked out of the Training Ground and stood beside her. The two of them watched the raindrops fall in silence.
“You know, Xige,” Xuanxi suddenly spoke, “when I was in the Border Town, my favorite weather was rainy days.”
Hildegrif tilted her head to look at her. “Why?”
“Because when it rains, everyone stays indoors,” Xuanxi said, reaching out to catch the raindrops dripping from the eaves. “There’s no one on the streets. No one sees me. So no one calls me a monster.”
She said this in a very calm tone, as if talking about something trivial, so trivial that her own heart no longer reacted.
Hildegrif didn’t respond, but she took a step closer to Xuanxi.
Just a small step, but the space under the eaves was already narrow. This step left less than a fist’s width between their shoulders, and Xuanxi could feel the warmth radiating from Hildegrif’s body.
And also the faint scent that she had grown familiar with, wafting from the silver-white hair.
The rain continued to fall.
“Before the class placement battle,” Hildegrif’s voice sounded somewhat muffled in the rain, “I’m going to teach you something new.”
“What?”
“The basic eastern dragon breathing technique.”
Xuanxi turned her head, looking at her in surprise.
“You know an eastern dragon breathing technique too?”
“It was recorded in my great-great-grandfather’s diary,” Hildegrif said, watching the rain without looking at her. “He called it ‘Qi induction.’ He said it was the first and most basic step in eastern dragon cultivation.”
“Have you practiced it?”
“No.”
Hildegrif explained, “I am a western dragon. My internal energy system is different from that of eastern dragons. Forcibly practicing the breathing technique would cause a conflict between the elements and my dragon core.”
“Then why are you teaching me?”
Hildegrif shot her a glance. “Because you can’t keep training the western way,” she said. “You are an eastern dragon. Your body needs an eastern training method.”
The sound of rain filled the brief silence. Xuanxi lowered her head, looking at the small puddle forming in her palm as the rain gathered.
“Xige,” she said.
“Hm.”
“Why are you so good to me?”
She had asked this more than once before. The previous times, Hildegrif had never answered—as if the question had been thrown into a trash can that gave no echo.
But this time, an echo came back from the trash can.
“Because you are the only dragon who came to me without any other motive.”
Xuanxi didn’t understand.
“What?”
Hildegrif turned to face her. Her amethyst eyes gleamed especially bright against the backdrop of rain.
“You were the first person to voluntarily speak to me,” Hildegrif said. “Not because of my bloodline, not because of my family, not for any reason. Simply because we were roommates, and you wanted to be friends with me.”
The rain suddenly became very loud, so loud that Xuanxi could barely hear her own heartbeat.
“So,” Hildegrif averted her gaze and looked back at the rain, “you are not ‘other people.’ You are my best friend.”
Best friend. The word carried a strange weight when spoken by Hildegrif. Not because her tone was particularly solemn—quite the opposite, she said it as if it were something trivial.
But Xuanxi knew that for this S-rank Young Lady, who had been called a “monster” since childhood, the weight of the word “best friend” was different from what it meant for others.
Just like the weight of the word “passing by.”
“You too,” Xuanxi said.
Hildegrif looked at her.
“Me too what?”
“You are my best friend too,” Xuanxi smiled. “The first one in my dragon life.”
Hildegrif stared at her for two seconds, then looked away.
“Hm.”
The rain gradually lessened. A crack appeared in the clouds in the distance, and golden sunlight spilled through the gap, casting a huge beam of light onto the Floating Peaks.
“The rain has stopped,” Hildegrif said.
“Hm.”
“Tomorrow at two in the afternoon. Don’t be late.”
With that, she turned and walked into the fresh air after the rain. Her figure was tinged with a warm color by the setting sun. Xuanxi stood still, watching that retreating back gradually grow distant.
She suddenly remembered the words on that handkerchief.
“Within the seas, there are close friends; the ends of the earth are like next door.”
At this moment, watching the silver-white figure in the sunset, she had a vague feeling.
Perhaps she really had found a close friend.
She slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingertips touching the corner of the moon-white handkerchief, and then she too walked into the sunset.
The next day at two in the afternoon, Xuanxi arrived at Training Ground No. 3 on time, only to find that Hildegrif was already waiting for her.
She stood in the center of the grounds, her silver-white hair tied up high, revealing a slender neckline and sharp jaw.
She wore a form-fitting training uniform, and at her waist hung a dark gray cloth bag embroidered with the House Edstein crest.
“No fighting today,” Hildegrif said.
“Good,” Xuanxi said, flexing her wrist, which was still a bit sore from the lightning shock the night before. “That move yesterday—my arm still hurts a little.”
“That’s because you used the wrong technique to deflect the force,” Hildegrif said expressionlessly. “I’ll teach you later. Today, we’ll start with the breathing art.”
She walked to the edge of the training ground and took something out of the bag. It was a book—a very old book. The cover was dark blue cloth, and the gold-stamped letters on the spine had faded to near illegibility.
The whole book was wrapped in an indescribable aura, the kind of aged, ink-and-time scent found only in ancient libraries.
“This is my great-great-grandfather’s diary,” Hildegrif said, handing the book to Xuanxi. “One volume. I’ve marked the parts about eastern dragons.”
Xuanxi took the book with both hands, not out of politeness, but because it was much heavier than she had expected.
She opened the cover. The first page was a hand-drawn map, depicting the sea between the Eastern and Western Dragon Domains, densely annotated with place names and routes.
The illustrator’s strokes were meticulous—every island and ocean current drawn with painstaking care.
Xuanxi’s fingertips paused on those drawings for a moment, then she turned to the pages Hildegrif had marked.
It was a chapter on the eastern dragon breathing technique.
Not long, but very detailed: from how to perceive the “Spiritual Energy” between heaven and earth, to how to guide it into the body, to how to make it flow along specific meridians—every step was described in words, accompanied by hand-drawn diagrams of human energy channels.
Xuanxi read page by page, the more she read, the more absorbed she became. These words were not entirely unfamiliar to her.
Back in the Border Town, her body would occasionally experience a strange sensation—something flowing slowly inside her, warm and gentle, yet elusive.
She had never paid it any mind, thinking it was a normal reaction of a dragon’s body. Now she knew: that was the so-called Qi, the Spiritual Energy that had always existed within her but had never been awakened.
“Are you done reading?” Hildegrif’s voice came from beside her.
Xuanxi snapped back to reality and realized she had been stuck on the same page for nearly ten minutes.
“Done… reading this page.” Embarrassed, she closed the book and handed it back to Hildegrif.
“Don’t give it back,” Hildegrif said, not taking it. “It’s yours now.”
Xuanxi was stunned. “But this is your great-great-grandfather’s diary…”
“My great-great-grandfather brought this book back from the East, not to let it gather dust on the shelves of the family library,” Hildegrif said flatly. “At the end of the diary, he wrote: ‘This book should be passed to a fated person.'”
She took the book from Xuanxi, turned to the last page, and pointed it out to her.
The characters were written very small, almost needing to be held close to the eyes to read.
“If you encounter a fated person among the eastern dragons, be sure to give this book as a gift.”
Below it was the signature and date of Hildegrif’s great-great-grandfather.
“How do you know I’m that ‘fated person’?”
Hildegrif closed the book and pressed it back into her hands.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But so far, you’re the only one who has any fate with this book.”
“What… does that mean?”
“It means that before you came, this book had been in the library for over a hundred years. No one ever borrowed it.” Hildegrif smiled. “You are the first person to open it.”
Xuanxi looked down at the old, brittle diary in her hands, and suddenly felt her eyes grow hot.
Not because of being moved—well, part of it was indeed being moved. But more than that, it was this indescribable feeling: something ancient had crossed one hundred and fifty years of time, passed from someone in the distant East into her warm palm.
She didn’t know what that person looked like, whether he was happy or sad, or what he had experienced during his travels in the Eastern Dragon Domain.
But she knew one thing—he must have stood on the soil of the eastern dragons, seen mountains and rivers she had never seen, breathed the eastern Spiritual Energy she had never breathed, and then recorded it word by word with his pen, bringing it back to the West.
One hundred and fifty years later, that record was handed to her by his great-great-granddaughter. And she happened to be an eastern dragon stranded in the West.
Were there really so many “happenstances” in this world? Xuanxi didn’t know. She just hugged the diary to her chest and looked up.
“Thank you, Xige.”
“Hm.”
Their eyes met in the air for a moment, then quickly parted.
“Let’s start training,” Hildegrif said, turning and walking to the center of the grounds. “Sit down first.”
“Sit down?”
“The first step of breathing is to calm the mind.” Hildegrif sat cross-legged on the ground, motioning for Xuanxi to do the same. “If the heart is not calm, the Qi does not flow. That’s a direct quote from my great-great-grandfather’s diary.”
Xuanxi sat down across from her, trying to copy her posture.
But she quickly noticed a problem. The western dragon cross-legged posture was different from the eastern dragon’s—Hildegrif’s sitting position was more like a combat-ready stance for quick standing, with the center of gravity forward, the spine too straight, her whole body like a drawn bow.
“I don’t think this is right,” Xuanxi said.
“Then what’s right?”
Xuanxi thought for a moment, recalling the impression she had from the diary, and adjusted her posture.
She loosened her crossed legs, leaned her back slightly, sank her center of gravity, and naturally placed her hands on her knees, palms facing up.
“Maybe… like this?”
She wasn’t sure if she was doing it correctly, but as she closed her eyes and began to try to feel that faint warm current inside her, Hildegrif’s voice came from across.
“Breathe.”
“What?”
Hildegrif opened the diary and read aloud from the text: “‘When inhaling, imagine Qi entering from the crown point at the top of the head, descending along the central meridian to the dantian. When exhaling, imagine Turbid Qi rising from the dantian, exiting through the mouth and nose. Repeat this cycle.'”
Her pronunciation was still not very standard, but she read slowly and earnestly. Xuanxi closed her eyes and followed her instructions.
Inhale. Imagine Qi entering from the crown point at the top of the head—though she didn’t know exactly where the “crown point” was, she imagined a cool breath seeping in from the center of her head, slowly descending along the body’s central axis.
Past the throat, past the chest, past the abdomen, stopping at a spot just below the navel—that spot was probably the dantian.
Exhale. Turbid Qi rises, exits through the mouth and nose. She let out a breath, feeling something heavy being drawn out from deep within her body.
Once, twice, three times. She lost count of how many times she repeated the cycle.
The feeling was strange. She was just sitting there breathing, yet her body was undergoing some kind of change—those warm currents that had long slept inside her began to flow slowly, as if water had returned to a dried riverbed.
The flow was thin and slow, but it was indeed moving. Her consciousness also began to blur.
It was as if she were slowly sinking into water. Everything around her receded: the sound of rain, the wind, the noise from distant training grounds, even the sound of her own breathing. She forgot time, forgot where she was, forgot that someone was sitting across from her.
“Xuanxi.”
A voice came from far away.
“Xuanxi, open your eyes.”
She slowly opened her eyes. Hildegrif’s face was right in front of her, so close she could see her own reflection in those amethyst pupils.
“You just entered meditative absorption,” Hildegrif said, her voice softer than usual. “For a full hour.”
Xuanxi blinked, realizing that the twilight around her had deepened considerably. The setting sun had turned from golden to orange-red.
“An hour?” she said in disbelief. “It felt like… only a few minutes.”
“Eastern dragon breathing techniques are said to have this effect,” Hildegrif said, moving back half an inch to increase the distance between them. “Your sense of time becomes different.”
Xuanxi looked down at her hands. There was no obvious change. No glowing, no increase in strength—even the heavenly fate mark on her hand remained quiet.
But something had changed. She couldn’t say what, but she could feel it—those warm currents that had been scattered and disordered inside her were now circulating slowly along a fixed path, like a river channel that had just been dredged. The flow was small, but it had a direction.
“How does it feel?” Hildegrif asked.
“Weird,” Xuanxi answered honestly. “I can’t explain it.”
“Then we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Hildegrif stood up, brushed the dust off her training clothes, then bent down to pick up the diary from the ground and handed it back to Xuanxi.
“Practice every day,” she said. “Twice a day, morning and evening. Don’t go too long at first—just a quarter of an hour. Once you can maintain the meditative state stably, gradually increase the time.”
“How do you know all this?”
“It’s written in the diary.”
“You’ve read it?”
“I’ve read it,” Hildegrif didn’t deny. “Many times.”
She didn’t say why she had read it so many times, but Xuanxi felt she could probably guess the answer.
She had been looking for a method to teach her.
From the very beginning, Hildegrif von Edelstein was not someone who did things by chance. Everything she did, she had thought through first.
“Xige,” Xuanxi said, standing up, holding the diary to her chest.
“Hm.”
Xuanxi looked at her. “Thank you, Xige.”
The two of them stood on the training ground for a long time in the twilight.
Until the setting sun slowly sank beneath the clouds, and the last streak of orange-red light landed on the edge of the Floating Peaks. The distant sky began to turn indigo, and the first star faintly appeared in a gap between the clouds.
“Still two tomorrow. I’ll come find you,” Hildegrif spoke first. After saying that, she turned and left, as usual, without looking back.
Xuanxi watched that silver-white back gradually merge into the twilight, then looked down at the diary in her arms.
She opened the cover and saw a line of text.
“Dragon calendar year 372, spring. Departed from the Western Dragon Domain, crossed east to seek the eastern dragon race. This journey will take years; I know not when I will return.”
One hundred and fifty years ago, a man set out from the West, crossed the sea eastward, just to find a race that existed only in legend.
He didn’t know if he would find them, didn’t know how long it would take, didn’t even know if he would ever return—but he went anyway.
Fortunately, one hundred and fifty years later, his diary returned to the hands of a true eastern dragon. And the one who passed on this diary was that man’s great-great-granddaughter.
Xuanxi closed the diary and pressed it against her chest. She turned and walked toward the dormitory building.
The handkerchief in her pocket swayed gently with her steps. The diary against her chest, close to her heart, allowed her to feel its warmth and weight.
She walked along the Main Road of the academy. As she passed the Bulletin Board, she noticed the notice that read “Freshman Placement Exam to Be Held This Week,” but her gaze only lingered on it for a moment.
After all, she was no longer the weakling eastern dragon who had just entered the academy.