Opportunity

Shi Taiyi had few belongings left behind.

A little gold and silver, a few ritual implements—all of them Shi Taiyi ignored.

His gaze lowered to the bronze mirror in his hand.

Bronze rimmed the mirror, which was only palm-sized, dull and without luster, its surface rather rough.

Yet it contained not a trace of spiritual resonance; it was merely an ordinary object.

"Why did my elder brother keep this thing on him at all times?"

Shi Taiyi's eyes shifted, and he struck it with a stream of mana.

Strands of pitch-black flame wound around the Bronze Mirror, licking at it without cease...

The Bronze Mirror remained utterly unmoved, as though it were no more than an ordinary mirror.

"Mana cannot refine it; it seems like a mundane object..."

"But how could mere mundane bronze remain perfectly unharmed under the scorching of my spirit-fire..."

Shi Taiyi picked up the Bronze Mirror and stared wordlessly at the Bagua pattern on its back.

"Perhaps... this object is connected to my elder brother's murder? The Nether Bureau's interrogation of a True Spirit may not lack ways to conceal the truth..."

He studied it for a while, yet gained not the slightest clue.

When night fell, he tucked the Bronze Mirror beneath his pillow and slept peacefully...

The Great Void was hazy and indistinct.

Shi Taiyi suddenly started awake and opened his eyes.

Before his eyes, he was no longer in his own room. All around him rolled gray-white mist.

"What True Person is playing such a joke on this junior?"

He was startled within, but his face remained neither servile nor overbearing. He saluted all four directions. "I am Shi Taiyi, grandson of the Emperor of Heavenly Chu and descendant of a True Lord..."

The gray-white mist quietly churned around him, without the