Wonderful Brush Scholar staggered toward the Spirit-Testing Stele, his hands clamping onto its icy surface like eagle talons.
In the flickering candlelight, his bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the unresponsive stele, the veins at his temples bulging like writhing earthworms.
"Just... just a little longer..." His hoarse voice carried the last of his desperate conviction, his nails scraping harshly against the stone.
Jing Wen stood with his hands behind his back, his black robe stirring without a breeze.
He watched the scholar's frenzy with cold eyes, while his divine sense quietly examined every groove of the Spirit-Testing Stele.
He knew little about the Spirit-Testing Stele himself and harbored a trace of anticipation, curious whether it might produce an unexpected result.
Three quarters of an hour passed, yet the stele remained as still as death.
At last, Wonderful Brush Scholar sank to his knees in despair, as though his spine had been pulled from his body, his twenty-year obsession collapsing with him.
"No spiritual root..." Blood seeped from his cracked lips.
"Who said you cannot cultivate without a spiritual root?" Jing Wen's voice was like the deep waters of an icy pool.
"Seize a blood relative's spiritual root, and you can defy heaven and change your fate."
Wonderful Brush Scholar snapped his head up, a startling gleam bursting from his clouded eyes.
Then his throat bobbed violently, and pain surfaced in his gaze.
He remembered how his eldest son had loved curling up in his arms as a child to listen to tales of the martial world, pointing chubby fingers at the stars and asking, "Daddy, can you pick one for me?"
When his twin daughters were five or six, they had secretly hidden his wolf-hair brush inside a pillow, just to make him play with them a little longer.
And