Heart of Order, Grandmaster Realm

Days passed one after another.

Every morning, Xu Wuyi rose and practiced a set of punches in the courtyard, then went out to buy groceries.

At noon, he cooked himself a meal. In the afternoon, he sat beneath the old locust tree in a daze, or returned to his room to meditate. At night, he went to bed early, then continued the same routine the next day.

He did not watch the news, pay attention to what was happening outside, or contact anyone. He had tossed his personal terminal into a drawer and had not opened it in a long time.

Sometimes, he wondered whether, if this went on forever, he might truly become an ordinary person one day.

But he knew he would not.

Because the blue great sun deep within his sea of consciousness changed every day.

The changes were subtle, almost imperceptible at first. But as time passed, they became increasingly obvious, increasingly profound.

At first, it was a change in color.

The blue had originally been very pale, so pale it was nearly transparent.

But as time passed, it grew richer and deeper, shifting from pale blue to sky blue, from sky blue to deep blue, then from deep blue into a color difficult to describe.

It was not simply blue. Rather, it was blue taken to its utmost extreme, as though it contained every color in the world.

Then came the changes in form.

The great sun had originally been round, but as time passed, its shape grew increasingly irregular, and blurred phantoms began to emerge around its edges.

Those phantoms changed continuously. Sometimes they resembled mountains and rivers, sometimes flowing rivers, sometimes cities, sometimes crowds.

Finally came the change in position.

The great sun had originally floated deep within the dark-golden Great Marsh, but