Deep in the Great Wilderness, Stone Village. The night was as dark as ink, with lightning and thunder overhead.
At the village entrance, the village’s guardian spirit, the only surviving tender branch of an old, charred willow tree, swayed in the wind. Tonight, no one in the village could sleep.
The old clan chief, Shi Yunfeng, furrowed his brow as he gazed at the infant in his arms. The child neither cried nor fussed. His crimson eyes simply stared silently at the thunderbolts in the heavens, as if resonating with them.
He had been born here three years ago, alongside a blood-red meteor that streaked across the night sky. At the site of its impact, plants withered and all living creatures fell silent, yet the infant alone emerged unharmed. Because of the ominous sign that flashed across heaven and earth at his birth, the village chief named him Shi Sha.
“This child’s fate... is it auspicious or ill-starred?” Shi Yunfeng murmured.
Suddenly, the charred willow tree began to glow faintly, and a gentle will entered the clan chief’s mind: “Protect him. His arrival is no coincidence. The balance of the Great Wilderness has already changed because of him...”
