Worldly Spellcasting

"Comrades!"

No one could imagine the weight those two words carried as they echoed through the spiritual world of another age—not even the person who spoke them or the people who heard them.

This world had its laws, and words had weight, too. Yet it seemed that all the words in the world, put together, could not match the weight of those two. And so, in the deep, dark silence, a soundless wave seemed to rise.

A long, long, long time passed.

Someone seemed to be softly sobbing. Someone let out a low, drawn-out sigh. Someone slapped his thigh hard, grinding his teeth.

Someone else suddenly laughed in relief, then answered in the softest voice, with the words that carried the greatest weight:

"All right!"

"..."

In that instant, Hu Ma seemed to be enveloped in an unexpected sense of relief. Even his tense back finally relaxed.

He couldn't describe the tangled feeling. He wanted to cry, yet he also wanted to laugh.

Because Old Lord's Eyebrow had given him that gift, he had long since accepted that he was a person from a past life. He had accepted all those memories and beliefs. But when he was suddenly told who he truly was, he had felt a distance open up between himself and them.

He knew the power those two words held, but when he spoke them, he had felt a quiet sense of shame, afraid he had no right to say them.

That earlier resolve—to travel from Old Yin Mountain to the capital, take up the people's cause, face the National Teacher, and seize the ten pillars of incense—

It had seemed unbreakable, but he knew how much of it he had only been pretending to feel.

He had kept repeating, "What I see is what I think;