People say a person’s fate is written among the stars.
In the Province of the Nine Skies, that isn’t just a saying. Every cultivator dreams of awakening an Astral Soul from the endless constellations above, because a single moment beneath the right star can separate an unknown youth from someone destined to stand above thousands. Families wait for it, sects search for it, and entire futures are decided by it.
Qin Wentian is never expected to have that chance.
Born with crippled meridians, he spends most of his childhood being reminded of what he cannot do instead of what he might become. Strangely enough, he never argues. While everyone else reaches their own conclusions, Qin Wentian quietly follows the teachings of an old mentor whose methods make very little sense to anyone watching from the outside. Years go by like that. Nothing spectacular happens. At least, that’s how it looks.
The first crack appears where nobody expects it.
Helping his fiancée awaken an extraordinary Astral Soul should have been a happy occasion, yet it ends up showing Qin Wentian something far more valuable than gratitude. Status changes people. So does sudden power. Faces he has known for years begin looking unfamiliar, conversations take on different meanings, and promises that once sounded unbreakable suddenly feel surprisingly fragile.
By then, cultivation is no longer the only thing on his mind.
Every place he visits seems to have its own rules, every powerful family guards secrets behind polite smiles, and every opportunity carries a price that is rarely mentioned until it’s time to pay it. The farther Qin Wentian travels from home, the less certain the world becomes. Old inheritances start surfacing, strange experts appear without warning, and the constellations hanging over the Nine Skies begin to feel connected to something much older than anyone cares to explain.
He doesn’t have the easiest beginning, or the strongest background, and he certainly isn’t handed a smooth road. Most of the time he’s simply trying to keep pace with a world that keeps changing around him, learning a little more each time he gets knocked down. Before long, the young man everyone overlooked finds himself walking toward places he never imagined, following a path that seems to have been waiting for him long before he ever looked up at the stars.
