Split Destiny

Chapter 1 Cleft Town The border of the Eastern Region, the end of the vast wilderness. There is a scar in the sky. That's not a metaphor. If you stand on the top of the tallest clock tower in Cleft Town and look up, you can clearly see that in the northeast sky, the star-woven dome has a crack, as if something has torn it apart from the outside. The crack was about three hundred feet long and less than ten feet wide. The star pattern on the edge flickered on and off, like a circle of festering wounds. Through the cracks, one can vaguely see the world on the other side - there is no sun, moon, or stars, only an endless billowing gray-blue mist. That is the ancient wilderness. The traces left by the catastrophe of the Sky Split three thousand years ago. The Sky Mender sealed the sky with his destiny, but there were always some cracks that could not be completely healed. This is why Cleft Town got its name - it is the closest human settlement in the Eastern Region to the crack in the sky, so close that the children in the town can see the scar since they were young. So close that every late night, the low whimpers coming from the cracks can penetrate the window and get into the dream. Silence has been listening for seventeen years. Early in the morning, the blacksmith shop on East Street in Split Town. "Ding-dang-" The sound of hammers echoed rhythmically in the cramped shop. The fire reflected a young face - an angular jaw, a high brow bone, slightly deep eye sockets, and a gaze that was so calm that it didn't look like a seventeen-year-old boy. Shen Mo was shirtless and helping Qin Bo pull the bellows. He doesn't have much fat on his body, including his ribs.