The halo at the seventh stage of the Vajra Platform gradually stabilized, transforming into an ancient wooden door left slightly ajar.
The door opened soundlessly, and an old monk walked out.
The old monk looked seventy or eighty years old. He was withered and thin, dressed in a faded gray cloth monk's robe, barefoot, with a little dust clinging to his feet.
His face was ordinary, wrinkles crisscrossing it like gullies. His eyes were slightly narrowed, as though half-awake and half-asleep. Not a trace of aura leaked from his body; he was as unremarkable as any old farmer in the mountain wilds.
He stood there, utterly plain, three paces before Chen Qing. Pressing his palms together, he gave a slight bow. "Benefactor, please sit."
As his words fell, two cattail mats appeared out of thin air upon the stone platform between them, one old and one new.
Chen Qing's heart tightened slightly. This old monk had appeared without the slightest warning; he had not sensed any spatial fluctuations or traces of true essence in motion.
"This junior is Chen Qing. Greetings, Master." Chen Qing put away his spear and bowed, then sat cross-legged upon the newer cattail mat as instructed.
The old monk sat on the cattail mat opposite him. His posture was casual, yet it carried an indescribable harmony, as though he and this Vajra Platform, and this very heaven and earth, had always been one.
Outside the Vajra Platform, most of the watching crowd wore puzzled expressions once they saw the old monk clearly.
"The seventh stage... is just an old monk?"
"He looks completely ordinary. I can't even sense a shred of cultivation from him..."
"Could it be a discussion of Buddhist doctrine and debate over scriptures? Chen Qing is a martial artist—what would he know of