Zhou Xuan closed his eyes, his fingers resting on his knee, tapping over and over.
Little Monk could not tell what he was thinking.
After a long time, Zhou Xuan opened his eyes.
"Who will serve as the model?"
Little Monk's fingers stopped.
"You."
Zhou Xuan's expression changed.
It was neither anger nor resistance.
It was a complexity impossible to put into words.
"What we plant won't be a specific person."
Little Monk finished explaining before he could speak.
"Not your face, not your name, not anything a Mortal could recognize."
"It will be a vague presence with no visible face. Hazy, immense, untouchable."
Little Monk gestured before him, as though describing something distant that filled the entire sky.
"Like the heavens overhead. No one questions why the sky is above them, because it has always been there."
"But at the core of this presence..."
Little Monk lowered his voice a fraction.
"There must be a real soul serving as its anchor."
"Otherwise, the vow power won't find a foundation to resonate with. It won't last long before scattering on its own."
Zhou Xuan stared at him.
"Why can't you do it yourself?"
Little Monk shook his head.
"My soul is already bound far too tightly to the rules of vow power. If I put myself into it, the Mortals won't become believers. They'll become puppets."
"No joy, anger, sorrow, or pleasure. No passions or desires. Walking corpses, no different from those mimics in the Kui Capital back then."
Zhou Xuan remembered that eerie paradise from three years ago, an entire city of people wearing identical smiles, mechanically sweeping, planting flowers, and bowing to one another.
His stomach churned.
"Only someone like you, whose soul is powerful enough, yet who still keeps a distance from vow power..."
Little Monk paused,