"Elven stone carvings. The words on the spine of that fifth-tier sea beast. They were for giving directions, and had no technical content in themselves."
The third finger.
"A great magister's manuscript. In the basement of that private collector in the Free City-State. I spent eighty Gold Coins to read it for an afternoon. The conclusion was that spiritual roots are an innate gift and cannot be replicated later in life."
The fourth finger.
"Golden Vinewood." He glanced at the cultivation box. "The closest we ever got. Plants can absorb aether, output it, and form symbiosis. But they lack the bridge at the soul layer."
All five fingers were lowered.
"We've gone everywhere we could go." Su Li placed his hand on his knee, palm down.
Only the sound of waves striking the beach remained in the room, one after another, like someone slapping the wall outside the door with their palm.
Elonore closed her eyes for a while.
When she opened them again, her gaze fell on Su Li's face. That face was exactly the same as it had been two hundred years ago. The contours of a man in his twenties, without a single line.
"Without spiritual roots, is it truly impossible to live a long life?"
Her voice was very soft when the words left her mouth, like a breath she had been saving for a long time, exhaled all at once.
Su Li looked at her.
He wanted to say, "There will be a way." Three hundred years of experience at the bottom told him that at times like this, people needed to hear something nice. Even if it was false.
But she was not someone else.
She was the person who had counted two hundred and eighty-eight failures with him. Lying in front of her