Xuan Xi never thought he would end up this way.
As a web novel author, his life could be summed up in four words—write words, get hounded.
His readers called him the “Pigeon King” because his updates were so slow they suspected he’d already abandoned the story.
Today was Saturday. The sun was nice. He’d planned to sleep in, but his phone started vibrating at seven in the morning.
“Bro, update today?”
“Author, did you go back to the palace again?”
“If you don’t update, I’ll send you a knife.”
Xuan Xi pulled the blanket over his head, but the phone kept vibrating.
He sighed, climbed out of bed, turned on the computer, and stared at the blank document.
Inspiration was like summer cicadas—they screamed loud enough to drive you crazy, but when you went looking for them, not a single one was left.
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 computer, put on his jacket, and went out.
As he left, his phone vibrated again. “Bro, are you running away again?” Xuan Xi didn’t reply.
He walked along a path by the river. The autumn wind blew off the water, carrying the fishy smell of weeds and the smoky aroma of a distant barbecue stall.
He thought of his novel’s protagonist—a nobody struggling to survive in another world, with no cheat abilities, no system, only a heart that refused to give up.
His readers said he was too cruel, that he gave the protagonist too much suffering.
But he believed real growth was never a smooth path.
It was those twists and turns that made the story compelling.
The path by the river grew narrower.
He looked down at his phone and opened the reader group. Messages had already hit 99+.
He scrolled through a few—all “update requests.” He sighed and typed a few words: “No update today.” Then he sent it.
The group exploded immediately—
“I knew he went back to the palace!”
“Pigeon King confirmed!”
“Count how many chapters you owe us!”
Xuan Xi smiled, about to type something else, when his foot slipped. It had rained yesterday; the ground by the river was still wet, as slippery as ice. Before he could react, his whole body lost balance. The phone flew from his hand, tracing a parabola in the air. The screen was still on. The last message was: “Author, be careful not to fall—”
The water was cold. Not the cold of autumn, but a bone-chilling, needle-like cold.
And he couldn’t swim. Water poured into his nose, mouth, ears. He heard his own heartbeat turn into a muffled drum underwater.
Before his consciousness faded, his last thought was: ‘If only I’d written that chapter, I wouldn’t have gone out.’
Darkness. A very long darkness.
No sound. No light. No temperature. He didn’t know how long it lasted—maybe an instant, maybe forever.
Then he heard a voice, very close, like a vibration carried through water.
“He’s breathing!”
“It’s a girl.”
Girl? Xuan Xi tried 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 wouldn’t respond.
Then he felt the cold.
Not just the river’s cold, but another cold seeping in from outside his skin, carrying a strange smell. Earth, grass, and something he’d never smelled before—like resin, like perfume.
He struggled to open his eyes.
The sunlight stabbed them shut again, so he could only squint through the slits and see vague shapes—a massive black shadow covering the sky, like a cloud, like a mountain, like something that shouldn’t exist in the real world.
The shadow lowered its head, and two eyes glowed in the darkness like lanterns.
“It’s a girl,” the voice said again.
Xuan Xi—no, not Xuan Xi anymore. He strained to lift his hand, but all he saw was a small hand, so small it could be clenched into a fist and stuffed into an adult’s mouth.
The skin wasn’t pure white; it was tinged with a faint ink-cyan, like some kind of ancient jade.
Tiny scales covered his fingers, gleaming with a cold luster in the dim light.
He froze. This world didn’t seem to be his original world.
That huge black shadow wasn’t an illusion—it was a dragon.
Ink-cyan scales, golden eyes, its body folded like a mountain squatting before him.
The dragon’s claws held a piece of cloth, and the cloth was stained with blood—her blood, from the body she was just born into.
“This child…” The dragon’s voice was very low, very low, like the trembling of the earth. “Is the last direct bloodline of our Azure Dragon Clan.”
Xuan Xi couldn’t understand the words.
Though his soul was strong, his body was far too small. His brain hadn’t fully developed.
His memories fell away like pieces of a broken mirror, one by one.
He remembered being Xuan Xi, remembered being a web novel author, remembered readers demanding updates, remembered that river.
But those memories receded like an ebbing tide, little by little, replaced by new ones—warm winds, unfamiliar languages, light he had never seen.
Then he heard a voice, not from outside, but from deep within his body, like a heartbeat, like breath.
“Ying.”
One word. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was his name. A new name.
The dragon’s claws gently closed, wrapping the cloth a bit tighter, lifting him to her chest. Between the scales there was body heat, warm and steady.
The dragon stood up, blocking the sky.
Then, without the aid of wings, she took off. No jolt, no weightlessness—like a leaf lifted by the wind.
He lay in the dragon’s palm, watching the sky change from pale blue to deep blue, from deep blue to night.
Stars lit up one by one, as if someone had scattered a handful of crushed diamonds across the sky.
He closed his eyes. Xuan Xi, that person, was no more.
Now alive was a baby girl named “Ying,” a newborn dragon held in the palm of a strange giant dragon.
What he didn’t know was that before taking off, the dragon had lowered her head and gently touched his forehead with the tip of her nose.
“The bloodline of the Azure Dragon cannot end in my generation.” The dragon’s voice was very soft, soft enough that only she could hear it.
“I will send you somewhere safe.”
With a shake of her body, she vanished into the dusk.
After an unknown amount of time—maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe longer—the dragon landed on a barren plain.
In the moonlight, the outline of a border town appeared faintly in the distance.
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 small line of text.
Then she took off without looking back.
In the early morning, the blacksmith’s door opened.
A middle-aged Western dragon with grayish-brown scales stood in the doorway, looking down at the cloth bundle on the ground.
He crouched, 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 a tiny face—ink-cyan baby hair, amber-golden eyes, and two dark-gold lines below the right eye.
The baby stared at him. Didn’t cry, didn’t smile. Just stared.
The blacksmith, Hellas, had never seen such a beautiful child.
He wrapped the cloth a little tighter, picked her up, and walked into the house.
“From today on, your name is Xuan Xi,” he said.
The baby didn’t respond, but her small hand grabbed Hellas’s finger. Very small, very light, but tightly held.
Hellas’s eyes reddened. He was a rough Western dragon who only knew how to forge iron his whole life, not how to raise a child.
But he knew one thing: he had a child now.
This child, from today onward, was his daughter.
Under the moonlight, the chimney of the blacksmith’s shop sent up wisps of cooking smoke.
In the distance, the ink-cyan dragon stood on a mountaintop, watching that smoke rise.
She watched for a long time.
Then she turned and disappeared into the twilight.
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