"Heh heh... hic..."
High above, that swaying figure took another great gulp of fine wine. Wine trickled from the corner of his mouth and soaked his robes, but he remained utterly oblivious.
His eyes were half-open, yet through their drunken haze shone a light that seemed to see through everything.
He murmured under his breath, his voice so very soft that it was like a passing breeze, inaudible to anyone.
"Fellow Daoist Zhen Yuanzi, be patient a little longer. There is no need to show yourself just yet!"
Had the Buddhist School disciples charging so aggressively into Wuzhuang Temple below heard those words, they would probably have been frightened out of their wits on the spot, convinced they had walked into a trap. But now, the words simply drifted away on the wind, unnoticed.
Indeed.
It was not that Zhen Yuanzi was absent from Wuzhuang Temple.
Quite the opposite: he was right there inside.
Deep within the old well beneath the Ginseng Fruit Tree, in a hidden space veiled by the dust of ages, Zhen Yuanzi sat upright on a meditation cushion. Dao rhythm flowed ceaselessly around him, his expression as still and grave as deep water.
His divine sense had long since enveloped all of Wuzhuang Temple. Everything happening outside, from Qingfeng sending Sanzang flying with a palm strike to Ksitigarbha, Maitreya, and the other two forcing their way in together, was perfectly clear to him, down to the smallest detail.
Yet he had never shown himself.
Not because he could not, but because there was no need.
For not long before, a strand of divine sense had pierced layer upon layer of space and silently entered his sea of consciousness, carrying only a single, simple thought-or rather, an instruction.
He was to watch how things unfolded, without rushing