The Mistaken "Young Master"

On the other side.

Yun Jingheng got up from the grass, panting heavily.

Although the 0.5 seconds of invincibility saved his life, the speed at which he was thrown back did not decrease upon landing.

The effort he made to sit up from the grass aggravated at least seven or eight wounds all over his body, with his left shoulder being particularly painful; he must have landed on his left shoulder first when he landed.

Yun Jingheng gritted his teeth, used his right hand to support himself on the ground, and slowly sat up against a rock about half his height.

His left hand hung down at his side; his fingers could still move, but his entire arm was numb. The bones probably weren't broken, but the joint was definitely dislocated.

He placed his left hand on the rock, gritted his teeth, and twisted his body sharply to the right. With a click, his joint returned to its original position.

The pain instantly broke out in a cold sweat on his forehead, the sweat sliding down his nose and dripping onto the silvery-white grass.

He didn't cry out, but just closed his eyes and took a few breaths before opening them and reaching for his waist.

The Storage Soul Tool is still there.

There's an extra crack on the casing, but it functions normally.

He breathed a sigh of relief, his fingers sliding across the surface of the Soul Tool until he found the one he needed: a crystal pillar the size of a thumb, containing a milky white light, like a drop of sunlight frozen in amber.

That was given to him by Ya Li; it contained her eighth Soul Skill, Dance of the Archangel.

He gripped the crystal pillar tightly, found the trigger point at the bottom with his fingers, and pressed it down.

Milky white light poured out from the crystal pillar.

The light fell on his hands, without warmth or weight, but his hands began to heal in that light. The wounds from the rubble closed, scabbed over, and fell off at a visible speed, revealing pink new skin underneath.

The light flowed from his hand to his arm, to his shoulder, to his chest, and to his entire body.

He felt as if he were being immersed in warm water, and all the pain was fading away, being peeled away layer by layer.

The light converged above his head, forming a blurry outline.

It wasn't humanoid, but it resembled one; it was like a giant shadow made of light and feathers, with outstretched arms embracing him.

Does that shadow have a face?

He couldn't see clearly.

He could only see two beams of light, like eyes, or like two stars, quietly watching him from above.

Silvery-white, translucent, and slightly trembling wings of light stretched out in all directions from behind the shadow, with tiny specks of light drifting down from the edge of each wing, as if someone had scattered a handful of stardust from the sky.

The light fell on the grass, and the silvery-white blades of grass began to glow.

The sunlight fell on the tree trunk, revealing silvery-white patterns on the brown bark.

A point of light fell in the night sky, momentarily dispelling the darkness and revealing the true, dazzling Milky Way behind the clouds.

Yun Jingheng's wound is healing.

It wasn't just the external injuries; the internal organs damaged by the shockwave were also recovering. He could feel the cracks in his liver, spleen, and lungs rapidly closing, the stagnant blood being reabsorbed, and the broken capillaries reconnecting.

His Soul Power was also recovering, slowly climbing from less than 20% to 30%, 40%, and 50%.

The Soul Power that had been excessively depleted was like a dried-up riverbed being refilled with water; although it was still not full, at least it was no longer dry.

He closed his eyes, feeling the light and shadow swirling around him.

It was silent, but he could feel a rhythm similar to a heartbeat emanating from the light and shadow, blending seamlessly with his own heartbeat.

That wasn't Ya Li's heartbeat; it was the heartbeat of the Soul Skill itself, a wisp of her own aura left inside when Ya Li sealed Soul Skill.

Yun Jingheng suddenly felt a lump in his throat.

He misses his mother.

The light and shadow slowly dissipated.

Spots of light drifted down from the sky, landing on his hair, shoulders, and the back of his hands, as if someone had covered him with a thin layer of starlight, and then those spots of light slowly faded away.

Yun Jingheng opened his eyes, moved his left shoulder, and found the pain was gone.

He stood up, jumped a couple of times, and his limp was gone.

He took a deep breath, and the tightness in his chest eased.

He looked down at his hands; the wounds on them had completely healed, leaving no scars, only some dried bloodstains still stuck to his skin, proving that he had been injured there.

He held the crystal pillar up to his eyes.

The milky white light inside had disappeared, the crystal pillar had become a transparent shell with several cracks on the surface, and it would crumble with a gentle squeeze.

The fragments slipped through my fingers and fell onto the grass, mingling with the silvery-white blades, making it impossible to distinguish which were crystals and which were grass.

"Mom is still the most reliable..."

Yun Jingheng patted the dust off his pants.

He took a deep breath, chose a direction, and took his first step.

He stopped after walking less than a hundred steps.

He saw light in the distance.

Those were lights, warm yellow, dense, and in large swaths of light, stretching far into the distance to form a winding ribbon of light, like a galaxy flowing across the ground.

The edges of the light strip have brighter spots of light, spaced at intervals, like streetlights or lights on a watchtower.

Deeper within the band of light, there are even higher light sources, their color not warm yellow, but rather whitish and brighter, like giant pearls embedded in the darkness.

That was a city.

Yun Jingheng stared at the lights for a few seconds, then quickened his pace, almost running towards them.

I need to go to the city to borrow a Soul Guidance Communicator to contact Aunt Cai, otherwise they'll worry.

He crossed the forest clearing, stepped over the silvery fallen leaves, went around the thick tree trunks, and squeezed between two old trees that were close together.

He ran for about five minutes, and finally the forest came to an end.

The trees became sparser, the gaps between them widened, and the canopies were no longer as dense as before. Starlight poured down from above, casting dappled shadows on the ground.

Then he saw the fields.

The fields were very irregular; some plots were large, some were small, some were planted with tall crops, and some with short crops. The crisscrossing ridges cut the land into countless irregular geometric shapes.

The crop planted in the field was not one he was familiar with, but a plant with silvery-green leaves and drooping spikes like foxtail grass.

The tassels swayed gently in the night breeze, making a soft rustling sound, unlike the sounds in the forest, which are as crisp as wind chimes, and the sounds in the fields, which are as soft as whispers.

Yun Jingheng stood beside the last tree at the edge of the forest and slowly walked into the field.

The ridge between the fields was narrow, only a foot wide, with silvery-green crops on both sides that reached above his knees. Dew clung to the leaves, wetting his trousers and shoes.

The dew was cool, and the chill spread from his ankles, clearing his somewhat throbbing head a little.

Yun Jingheng walked along the ridge for about ten minutes, and when he reached the center of a relatively flat field, he saw a person.

An old woman was squatting on the edge of the field.

She was wearing a grayish-white coarse cloth dress, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing a section of her wrinkled, tanned arm.

Her hair was completely white, snow-white, shining brightly under the starlight, like an upside-down porcelain bowl on her head.

Her face was covered with deep wrinkles, stretching from the corners of her eyes to her temples, like a dried-up riverbed, but her eyes were bright, a brightness unlike any he had ever seen in any other old woman.

It is not a murky, serene clarity that comes with the passage of time, but a vibrant, lively brightness, like that of a young girl.

The old woman was loosening the soil with a small shovel in her hand.

Her movements were slow and meticulous; she dug neither too deep nor too shallow with each shovel, and then crushed the clods of soil with her fingers and spread them evenly around the base of the crops.

Beside her was a bamboo basket containing a bunch of silvery-green seedlings, their roots still covered in damp soil, clearly something she had just dug up from elsewhere to transplant.

Yun Jingheng stopped on the edge of the field.

He didn't speak, nor did he continue walking forward; he simply stood there, watching the old woman loosen the soil.

The old woman seemed to sense that someone was watching her. She paused in her shovel, then looked up in Yun Jingheng's direction.

She saw a young man, about seventeen or eighteen years old, wearing a thin black jacket over a gray crew neck shirt. The jacket was covered in dust and grass juice, and there were several tears at the collar.

His hair was a little messy, and the stray hairs on his forehead were damp with sweat and stuck to his forehead.

His face was pale, his lips were chapped, and his eyes were slightly red, as if he had just cried or hadn't slept all night.

He stood there, his posture casual and relaxed, but his back was very straight, and his whole being exuded a calm and composed demeanor.

The old woman's gaze moved from his face to his chest, lingering there for a moment.

Her eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, as if trying to identify something, or perhaps confirm something.

Yun Jingheng noticed that the old lady's squinting was different from that of ordinary people; she wasn't straining to see, but rather adjusting her focus.

Just like when a person shifts their gaze from something near to something far away, their pupils naturally dilate and contract.

Her gaze was sharp, so sharp that Yun Jingheng felt as if he had been cut by a blunt knife. It didn't hurt, but he could clearly feel the thin layer of pressure.

The old lady stood up.

When she stood up, Yun Jingheng realized that she was very tall, not much shorter than him, and her back was even straighter than his, like an old tree that hadn't fallen even after being blown by the wind for eighty years.

She tucked the small shovel into her belt, patted the dirt off her hands, then bent down, picked up the bamboo basket, and walked towards Yun Jingheng.

She walked up to Yun Jingheng and stopped about two steps away from him.

She didn't speak, but just looked up at him. She was indeed very tall, but Yun Jingheng's height of 1.8 meters still forced her to look up.

She tilted her head back, looking him up and down with her bright, unusually elderly eyes.

"Child, do your family know you ran away?"

Yun Jingheng opened his mouth, wanting to say, "I didn't run away," but he swallowed the words back.

He did indeed escape, he escaped from Star Luo City, he escaped from the encirclement of those men in Black-Robed Figure.

Although the method was completely different from the old lady's understanding of "running out," it seemed to be roughly correct.

He paused for a moment, then chose to answer a question that wouldn't reveal too much information.

I'm lost.

The old woman smiled, and all the wrinkles on her face smoothed out, like a crumpled piece of paper being smoothed out again.

Her smile was heartfelt, sincere, and conveyed a sense of "I understand you."

"You're quite something to have gotten so lost all the way here."

She switched the bamboo basket to her other hand and pointed with her free finger towards the lights in the distance. "There's a small town over there. Do you know the way?"

Yun Jingheng looked in the direction she was pointing, and the lights were still shining in the distance, their warm yellow glow spreading across the night sky.

He shook his head. "I don't know him."

"Then I'll take you away."

The old woman picked up her bamboo basket, stepped over the edge of the field, and walked up to Yun Jingheng. "Let's go, we can talk as we walk. What's your name?"

"Yun Jingheng".

"Cloud?"

The old woman paused for a moment, then resumed her normal pace. "There aren't many people with the surname Yun."

Yun Jingheng followed behind her, stepping on the bent grass she had trampled, his shoes remaining dry.

A night breeze blew by, lifting and lowering the old woman's snow-white hair, a few strands of white hair fluttering in the wind like dandelions scattered by the wind.

"Grandma, I'd like to ask where I can find Soul Guidance Communicator around here? I'd like to borrow one to let my family know I'm safe."

The old woman stopped walking.

She turned to look at Yun Jingheng, and a look that Yun Jingheng couldn't understand flashed in her bright eyes, which didn't look like those of an old man.

"Soul Guidance Communicator?"

The old woman repeated the word, as if to make sure she hadn't misheard, "Child, you're not from the Outer Circle. Outer Circle people aren't qualified to access Soul Tool."

Yun Jingheng stopped in his tracks. "Not qualified?"

The old woman looked at him for two seconds, then sighed softly.

The sigh was very soft, almost as soft as if it would be blown away by the wind, but Yun Jingheng could hear the weight in it. It was a sigh from someone who was powerless to change, yet unable to accept, some kind of unreasonable rule.

"Outer Circle people can only use the most basic things: plowing the fields with oxen, fetching water with their hands, and relaying messages with their legs. Soul Tool belong to the gods; if Outer Circle person touches one, they will be punished."

Yun Jingheng remained silent.

He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what the Outer Circle and Inner Circle she was talking about were, what the rules were, or what the consequences would be if he spoke.

What he needs to do most right now is not to explain his origins, but to find his way back.

To find the way back, the first step is to enter that city and find a way to contact Cai Yue'er.

"Let's go, let's enter the city first."

The old woman turned around and continued walking. "There's an old post station in town with messengers who can deliver your messages. It's slower than Soul Guidance Communicator, but it's still better than you running around aimlessly."

Yun Jingheng followed in her footsteps, and the two walked along the ridge of the field, one in front of the other.

The old woman walked ahead, her steps quick, not at all like someone in her eighties. Her cloth shoes made a soft thumping sound on the ridges of the fields, each step steady and firm.

The starry sky is above, the fields are on both sides, and the city lights in the distance are getting brighter and brighter, and closer and closer.

The gravel crunched underfoot, the sound carrying far in the quiet night.

In the distance, the city's outline finally became clear, and Yun Jingheng saw the city walls, city gates, city towers, and the huge crescent moon hanging above the city towers.

He paused for a moment.

He couldn't say what material the crescent moon was made of.

Yun Jingheng stared at the crescent moon for a few seconds, then lowered his head and continued walking forward with the old woman.

He didn't notice that while he was looking at the moon, the old lady was also glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

The corners of her mouth curved slightly.

At the end of the gravel road, the city lights drowned out the starlight.

The city gate was in sight, and inside the gate were two armored guards holding long spears, the tips of which gleamed coldly in the lamplight.

As the old woman led Yun Jingheng near the city gate, one of the guards reached out and stopped them.

"Tian Apo, why are you going into town so late?"

The guard spoke in a gentle tone, clearly recognizing the old lady.

"Take care of a lost child."

The old woman turned to the side, allowing the guard to see Yun Jingheng.

The guard's gaze fell on Yun Jingheng.

He looked for two seconds, then suddenly stood up straight, his spear changing from a horizontal block to a vertical one, the tip pointing towards the sky.

His expression became solemn and respectful, as if he were standing at attention in front of some important person.

The guards beside them did the same, their bodies taut and their eyes filled with an almost worshipful reverence.

Yun Jingheng:???

The old woman didn't look at them and walked straight into the city gate.

Yun Jingheng followed behind her, walking between the two guards.

He felt their gazes following him, glued to his back, like two heavy stones scorched by the sun.

Once inside the city, the streetlights became brighter.

Torches and oil lamps flickered in the night wind, casting long shadows of people and buildings.

The streets were paved with stone slabs, which were worn smooth and reflected the firelight and water.

Most of the shops along the street were closed, but a few still had their lights on.

The old lady led Yun Jingheng past the shops and stopped at a fork in the road.

"The inn is just ahead; you can stay there tonight."

She pointed to a narrower alley on the left, "Go to the end of that road, turn left, and walk another two hundred steps. That's my workshop. Come to the workshop tomorrow morning, and I'll take you to the Inner Circle."

Yun Jingheng looked at her. "Why did you take me to the Inner Circle?"

The old lady smiled.

"Because you don't know the way, young master."

She picked up the bamboo basket, patted Yun Jingheng's arm, and said, "Go on, go to sleep early. I'll cook porridge for you tomorrow morning."

After she finished speaking, she turned and walked into the narrow alley, her gray-white coarse cloth clothes quickly blending into the darkness deep within the alley.

Her footsteps echoed through the alley for a few moments before being carried away by the wind.

Yun Jingheng stood at the crossroads, looking in the direction the old woman had disappeared, and stood there for a long time.

"... Young Master?"