He waited quite a while, but no one came. His Divine Sense instinctively reached outward, only to be pushed back by a gentle force after extending a few dozen yards.
"Hmm?" Qing Chen's interest stirred.
There was no one in the hall to guide him, yet for some reason, looking at the deep corridor ahead, he naturally found a thought rising within him-walk forward.
Qing Chen took a deep breath and walked forward. Murals lined both sides of the corridor, and at first, the paintings seemed fairly ordinary.
The first depicted a Daoist lying beneath a pine, his head pillowed on a fragmentary scroll of scripture.
The Daoist slept soundly. A wisp of azure smoke rose from his body, and within it, mountains, rivers, and a walled city faintly appeared.
Inside the city, human figures swarmed like ants. Some farmed, some studied, some were appointed to office, and some lay dead on battlefields.
The mortals in that little city within the smoke were not motionless.
At first, there were only mortal farmers marrying and having children. Later, their descendants multiplied, and lineages rose and fell.
Then a young man picked up a scroll of Daoist teachings in a ruined temple and embarked on the path of cultivation.
But before Qing Chen could examine it further, the little city suddenly dissolved into a wisp of smoke and dust, curling back between the Daoist's breaths.
The Daoist still slept, and the furnace fire still burned, as though that city's century of rise and ruin had been no more than a brief dream of his.
The second painting depicted a boundless hall, with three thousand figures seated within.
There were beggars and Daoists, demons and monsters and emperors, youths and elders... The three thousand figures all had different faces, seeming joyful or sorrowful