The Gray-Robed Elder

When Xiao Yan opened his eyes again, the night outside the window had grown deep.

He lay on a soft bed, covered by a brocade quilt embroidered with silver ripples. The furnishings were simple and elegant, utterly unlike the dilapidated thatched hut in Bluestone Village. A faint medicinal fragrance filled the air, mingled with a crisp scent he could not name. Several gentle forces surrounded the area near his heart meridian, shielding him from the impact of the two energies and finally giving his nearly torn-apart body a moment's respite.

Xiao Yan turned his head slightly and saw Luo Lan sleeping soundly with his head on the bedside. A little drool hung from the corner of the boy's mouth, yet his brows were tightly knitted, as though he was worrying about something even in his dreams. Xiao Yan looked at him, and a smile slowly appeared on his pale face. While unconscious, he had dimly heard that incessant chatter.

This kid...

Without disturbing Luo Lan, the first thing he did was reach into his robes. All four Soul Jades were still there. Xiao Yan sent his soul power into them one by one. Gu Yuan's and Zhu Kun's imprints remained stable. Xun'er's faint, aching tremor seemed a little more pronounced, but was still reasonably steady. Cai Lin's imprint, however... had grown a shade dimmer than it had been a few days ago.

Xiao Yan's fingers lingered on that jade pendant for a long time. He had no idea what that woman was going through at this moment, yet he was lying here, barely able to muster the strength to stand. He closed his eyes for a moment and forcibly suppressed his agitation before sinking his awareness into his body to examine his injuries. The situation was dire.

The impact caused by his failed attempt to inscribe the mark had cracked nearly all the meridians on the left side of his body. If not for the forces sealing off his heart meridian, the impact would likely have rushed straight into it long ago. In that case, even he could only have perished on the spot.

Yet Xiao Yan felt little discouragement. He had taken too many tumbles in his life and had long grown accustomed to finding a way forward in their wake. Besides, that failure had confirmed one thing for him: the Spirit-Guiding Mark worked.

It could indeed guide Spiritual Energy around the source of his Dou Qi. The problem was that he had inscribed only one mark, protecting only one meridian. His body contained hundreds upon thousands of meridians, all interconnected; tug on one strand and the whole body moved. That single mark was like building one stretch of embankment along a river that had burst its banks. The water would flow around it and surge elsewhere, causing an even greater disaster. What he needed was not a single, isolated mark, but a complete set of Spirit Marks: a system that could cover every meridian in his body, allowing the Spiritual Energy surging in to wash over his Dou Qi in an orderly manner while protecting its source.

But with his current, superficial understanding of the path of Spirit Marks in this world, he had no idea where to begin creating such a system. Xiao Yan sighed softly and gazed at the carved roof beams overhead, at a loss for a moment.

"Awake?"

An aged, gentle voice suddenly sounded in the room.

Xiao Yan jolted and turned sharply, only to see a figure standing in the shadows by the window. He had no idea when the figure had appeared. It was an elderly man in a gray cloth robe, with graying hair and a thin face. He looked like an ordinary old man from the countryside, yet though he stood there so quietly, Xiao Yan had not detected his presence until he spoke.

Xiao Yan's heart sank. Even though he was gravely injured and his soul power was far weaker than before, his Emperor Realm Soul still far surpassed that of ordinary people. For the old man before him to conceal himself so completely from his senses, his strength had to be unfathomable.

The gray-robed elder did not approach. He merely stood by the window with his hands behind his back, his seemingly cloudy old eyes watching Xiao Yan calmly in the dim lamplight.

"Senior, you are..." Xiao Yan braced himself against the bed and slowly sat up, his voice a little hoarse.

"Just a good-for-nothing old man," the elder said mildly. His gaze swept slowly over Xiao Yan, as if it could pierce his flesh and see everything inside him. "That power in your body is Dou Qi, isn't it?"

Xiao Yan's pupils contracted sharply. Dou Qi! Someone in this world actually knows about Dou Qi? Stormy waves surged in his heart, but he did his utmost to remain calm. He neither denied nor admitted it, merely looking at the elder in silence.

The elder seemed unconcerned by his silence and continued, "You came from a Lower Plane?"

That question was even more direct than the last. Xiao Yan took a deep breath, knowing that any attempt at concealment would likely be futile before someone like this. He slowly nodded. "Yes."

A faint ripple passed through the elder's eyes, seeming both surprised and wistful. He was silent for a moment before slowly saying, "When I was young, I read accounts of Dou Qi in my clan's ancient texts. They said that, in an exceedingly distant age, several powerful cultivators of Dou Qi broke through the boundary from a Lower Plane. Each was astonishingly gifted, and they made illustrious names for themselves in the Great Thousand World. But that was so long ago that even I thought it was nothing more than a legend. I never expected to actually meet one today."

Xiao Yan's heart shook. Several powerful cultivators of Dou Qi had broken through the boundary... They had to be the Dou Di of the Dou Qi Continent's ancient era!

On the Dou Qi Continent, Dou Di had vanished countless years ago, and their whereabouts had always been a mystery. Even the cave mansion left behind by Tou She Ancient God contained no record of them. And now, that mystery had been casually unraveled by a stranger. So they had all come here.

Xiao Yan suddenly recalled the hollow, silent eyes of the towering stone statue in Tou She Ancient God's Cave Mansion, and the tales of Dou Di that had been passed down for generations on the Dou Qi Continent, yet had never reached a conclusion. Those who had once stood at the peak of the Dou Qi Continent had not vanished into thin air. Like him, they had simply pushed open a door and stepped into a wider world. But no one knew what had become of them afterward, whether they had attained a higher realm or fallen in some corner of this world.

"Judging by the state of you, enduring the Assimilation Tribulation has been a hard struggle, hasn't it?" The elder's voice pulled Xiao Yan back from his shock.

Xiao Yan gave a bitter laugh. "This junior is slow-witted. I still haven't found a way."

"It's only natural that you haven't," the elder said mildly. "Everyone who comes from a Lower Plane has to pass this hurdle. The power you spent your whole life cultivating suddenly becomes an impurity in this world's eyes. It wants to wash you away, and you refuse, so the two of you fight. In the end, either you're washed clean as a blank sheet of paper, all your cultivation is lost, and you start over, or... your meridians give out first, and you die. Fewer than one in ten make it through."

Xiao Yan remained silent. The elder looked at him and suddenly asked, "When you woke just now, were you thinking about Spirit Marks?"

Xiao Yan was taken aback, then nodded. Hiding nothing, he gave a full account of his attempt to use soul power to inscribe a Spirit-Guiding Mark and guide Spiritual Energy around the source of his Dou Qi, as well as its eventual failure. The elder listened quietly, and for the first time, a trace of clear surprise appeared on his face, which had been as undisturbed as an ancient well.

"You used soul power to inscribe a mark in your own meridian?" He looked Xiao Yan up and down again, his gaze a little strange. "You're certainly bold. Even the finest Spirit Array Grandmasters in the Great Thousand World wouldn't dare casually use such a method on themselves."

"This junior had nowhere else to turn. I was merely treating a dead horse as if it were still alive," Xiao Yan said with a bitter smile.

"No, your thinking wasn't wrong." The elder shook his head, a trace of admiration slowly appearing in his cloudy old eyes. "Your only mistake was inscribing just one mark."

He raised a hand and pointed at Xiao Yan's chest. "The Assimilation Tribulation cannot be blocked or left unchecked. It can only be guided. The fact that you thought of guiding it already puts you ahead of ninety-nine percent of people. But you saw only one meridian, not the whole person. The power of this world entering your body is like rivers flowing into the sea. What you must protect is a reef on the seabed, but you can't simply build a wall beside it. You must make the entire sea flow as you wish."

Xiao Yan's breath caught slightly. Those words were almost identical to what he had been thinking before he lost consciousness. But though he had thought of it, he did not know how to do it, while the elder before him clearly did. He took a deep breath, threw back the brocade quilt, and struggled out of bed. Ignoring the tearing pain, he bowed deeply to the gray-robed elder.

"Please, senior, guide me." The elder looked at him but did not answer immediately. The room was quiet, save for the occasional soft crackle of the oil lamp's wick.

Luo Lan, who had been slumped at the bedside, had awakened at some point. He rubbed his bleary eyes and raised his head. When he saw the gray-robed elder standing by the window, he froze for a moment. Then, as if struck by lightning, he sprang from his stool. His knees buckled, and he fell to the floor with a thud.

"G-great-uncle?!"

Xiao Yan's body stiffened slightly. Great-uncle? Luo Lan's great-uncle... Doesn't that make him the patriarch of the Luo God Clan, the one said to be in seclusion...

The gray-robed elder glanced at Luo Lan, who was kneeling on the floor and trembling all over, then at Xiao Yan, who remained bowed but was clearly stunned. A faint smile appeared on the face that had been as undisturbed as an ancient well all this time.

"I am Luo Tianshen."