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uds pressed heavily on the mountain range, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, foretelling a long-brewing storm.
Yun Zhongjun tightened the worn, blue cloth bundle slung over his shoulder. Inside were a few hard biscuits, a small pouch of salt, a well-honed dagger, and an object wrapped in layers of oilcloth, cold to the touch—the Dragon-Seeking Compass, an heirloom of the Yun clan for generations. His footsteps crunched softly on the leaf-strewn mountain path, a solitary sound in the silent valley.
He was tall and lean, with refined features that held a quiet, scholarly air uncommon among hunters, despite his coarse hunting attire. Yet, beneath his calm demeanor, his deep eyes churned with a heavy, age-inappropriate anxiety and a flicker of near-fanatic intensity. He was searching for a dragon—a creature said to slumber deep within the most treacherous part of Zhongnan Mountain: the heart of White Dragon Ridge.
This was no mere legend or delusion. The Yun clan had lived hidden in Zhongnan since the previous dynasty, calling themselves "Dragon Seekers," guardians of an ancient secret and an even older duty. Yun Zhongjun's grandfather, a man who spent his life trekking these mountains only to die coughing blood, had gripped his hand on his deathbed, his clouded eyes flaring with final fervor: "Jun'er... White Dragon Ridge... Not dragon... Not demon... It's 'It'... Find 'It'... Only then... can you lift... the century-old curse... upon our Yun clan..."
The "curse" his grandfather spoke of was the bizarre fate entwined with the Yun bloodline. Every other generation, men in their prime would suddenly fall into a deathly slumber. Their bodies would become rigid and cold as forged iron, while their consciousness seemed trapped in endless, agonizing nightmares, wasting away over months or years until death claimed them. No cure existed, no solution—only the grip of an invisible affliction. Yun Zhongjun's own father had collapsed when he was ten, lying like a living corpse in their ancestral home deep in Zhongnan, sustained only by ginseng broth administered by his mother and loyal servants.
The only clues were his grandfather's fragmented words and this cold bronze compass. Its surface was neither metal nor jade, etched with dizzyingly complex star charts a
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