"Grandfather Sage, my father, your king... what kind of man is he?..."
"Shaokang, I have neither the right nor the ability to judge your father. There are too many contradictions in him that are hard to understand, and too many unimaginable miracles... He is like the mist of the Smoking Mirror, and like the riddle of fate..."
"If there is anything in him that is unchanging, anything I can judge... it is that he has an incomparably clear path! Very few people can be as utterly certain of the future as he is. It is as if he has a pair of Cloud God's eyes, able to see through the fog of fate and time... That is why every step he takes is incomparably resolute, and, beyond my expectations, he is often right..."
Crisp copper bells rang softly high in the Palace of Wind. Soundless footsteps moved through the depths of the palace. When the heavy stone door was pushed open by the guards, the inherited mural panels once again shone in the long-sealed stone chamber. And one old figure and one young figure slowly walked inside like that, as if walking into vanished history, and as if walking out of a future soon to be engraved.
"Father's path... Grandfather Sage, then what is your path?..."
"Me? My path... I had barely taken a few steps before I had already reached its end. So, ah, there's no need to speak of it..."
Sage Jatiri bent at the waist, as old as a wrinkled ancient tree. Slowly, he lifted his head, like an old tree gazing up at The Sun he could not see. He stood in the inheritance stone chamber where he had stood countless times, as though seeing the years that had passed away here—his youth, his middle age,