Go On

"Leave?" Luo Tianshen looked at him. There was no surprise in those cloudy old eyes, only the calm of someone who had expected it all along. "When?"

"Once my condition is a little more stable," Xiao Yan said. "Three to five days, I think."

Luo Tianshen nodded. He didn't try to make him stay or ask any more questions. He simply rose and walked toward the door with his hands behind his back. At the doorway, he paused and looked back at Xiao Yan. "Before you leave, come to the stone platform in the middle of the lake."

Xiao Yan kept himself busy over the next few days. First, he went to the Luo Pill Pavilion. Elder Qin's internal organs had been injured by a single glance from Xue Ku that day, but fortunately, the injuries weren't too severe. Luo Su had given him medicine, and with the two Fire Pattern Pills Xiao Yan had left behind, he was already able to get out of bed and walk around after a few days, though his face was still a little pale.

When he saw Xiao Yan enter, the old man who had spent a hundred and twenty years refining pills seized his hand and looked him up and down for a long while. His lips trembled, and only after a long moment did he manage to squeeze out a sentence. "You brat, your life is tougher than a pill furnace."

Xiao Yan smiled and helped him sit down, then took a jade slip from his robes and placed it before him.

"What is this?"

"The recipe for the Fire Pattern Pill," Xiao Yan said. "And the improved medicine for treating Blood Erosion Powder. The ingredients, the heat, and the Spirit Marks are all in there."

Elder Qin's hand trembled at once. "Th-this... you're giving this to me?"

"To you, and to Senior Luo Qing too," Xiao Yan said. "The Blood God Clan won't let up in the future. More and more people will be injured by the Blood Fiend Palm. The Luo God Clan needs people of its own who can refine a batch of these pills."

Elder Qin held the jade slip for a long time, a mist gradually gathering in his old eyes. He had refined pills for a hundred and twenty years, and he knew all too well how much this jade slip was worth. A pill recipe like this, in any faction on the Western Heaven Continent, would be locked in the deepest part of the treasury and passed down to sons but not daughters. "You're just giving it away like this?"

"Hehe, I am," Xiao Yan said with a smile. "It's not as if I can't refine them myself." Elder Qin stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. As he laughed, he began coughing, his face turning red. He pointed at Xiao Yan as he coughed, unable to get a word out.

The Abyss Scale Flood Dragon's core still lay quietly on the corner of the table. Elder Qin had kept it in the Luo Pill Pavilion ever since the Blood Domain descended that day. Xiao Yan didn't take it back this time either. He only asked Elder Qin to use it as the main ingredient to refine a batch of Cold-Dispelling Meridian-Mending Pills for the children whose meridians had been injured in the Luo River Abyss, following the approach they had discussed that day. Elder Qin pounded his chest and agreed, saying that even if he had to stake his old life on it, he would refine that batch of pills.

Luo Qing came the next day. The chief pill master, his face as stern as ever, walked into Xiao Yan's courtyard without a word, holding the jade slip Elder Qin had passed on to him. He stopped in front of Xiao Yan and stared at him for a long while, then swept his robes aside and knelt ramrod straight in the courtyard.

Xiao Yan jumped in fright and pulled him up at once. "Senior Luo Qing, what are you doing?!"

"On the path of alchemy, the one who has attained mastery is the teacher," Luo Qing said stiffly. His face remained stern, but the tips of his ears were bright red. "You deserve that bow."

"I don't deserve it." Xiao Yan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I still need to ask you about the third transformation of the Yin-Separating Mark, Senior."

Luo Qing glared at him and held himself back for a long while. Finally, the face that had been stern for decades could hold out no longer, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly. That was the first time Xiao Yan had seen Luo Qing smile.

On the fourth day, Xiao Yan went to the Luo God Clan's ancestral graveyard. It lay on a small hill north of Luo Shen City, covered in pines and cypresses that stayed green through all four seasons. Graves built of bluestone rose in tiers along the slope. At the very top were the tombs of the Luo God Clan's successive patriarchs. At the bottom lay the Luo Shen Guards who had fallen in battle and the clan's children who had died young. Luo Shi and Luo Wen were buried halfway up the hill, their two fresh graves side by side. The bluestone markers before them bore their names, their birth years, and the years they had died. They had been nineteen and twenty-one.

When Xiao Yan arrived, someone was already there before the graves: Luo Feng. He knelt before the two graves with two jars of wine and two bowls in front of him. The bowls had already been filled. He knelt there without moving, and there was no telling how long he had been there.

Xiao Yan walked over and knelt beside him. Luo Feng turned his head and glanced at him but said nothing. He simply pushed an empty bowl in front of him, then picked up a wine jar and filled it for him. Facing the two fresh graves, they each raised a bowl and slowly poured the wine onto the earth before them.

"Luo Shi loved practicing with his sword more than anything," Luo Feng said softly after a long while. "He wasn't much good at it, but every day, before dawn, he'd be out on the training ground swinging it until he was drenched in sweat. Luo Wen didn't talk much, but he was thoughtful. Before entering the Luo River Abyss, he left all the Spirit Coins he'd saved over three years to his mother." Xiao Yan listened quietly.

"I was the leader." Luo Feng's voice was a little hoarse. "I should have protected them."

Xiao Yan was silent for a moment before he said, "That day in the ice cavern, Xue Shi struck you with his palm. Your left shoulder had turned black, but you still propped yourself up on your sword and stood again. You protected twenty-one of them."

Luo Feng said no more, but the knuckles of the hand gripping his wine bowl gradually turned white. On their way down, they met a woman carrying a bamboo basket at the foot of the hill. She was Luo Shi's mother. She recognized Xiao Yan and stood on the mountain path looking at him for a long time before bending deeply at the waist. Xiao Yan stood there and accepted her bow, but his heart felt heavier than it had when Xue Ku struck him with that palm.

At dusk on the fifth day, Xiao Yan went to the stone platform in the middle of the lake. Luo Tianshen was already there. Dressed in the same drab gray cloth robe, he stood at the edge of the platform with his hands behind his back, gazing at the calm lake. The setting sun cast its light over the water, turning the entire expanse of jade green into a sea of shattered gold. Xiao Yan walked over and stopped behind him without saying much. He knew this platform all too well. Here, he had been sent flying by a single touch more than twenty times. Here, he had comprehended the third layer of the Reverse Scale. Here, he had practiced the method of borrowing momentum again and again for a month.

"Sit," Luo Tianshen said. The two sat down at the edge of the platform, with the lake of shattered gold at their feet. Luo Tianshen took two things from his sleeve and placed them before Xiao Yan. The first was a jade scroll, green throughout and about a foot long.

Xiao Yan picked it up and slowly unrolled it. A map gradually spread out before him, its mountains and rivers, cities and ancient roads all etched in exquisite detail. At the center, three characters were engraved on a small city: Luo Shen City. South of Luo Shen City lay a crimson wasteland, with a city at its far end. Farther south was a vast, boundless marsh filled in with dark green ink. At its center, three more characters were engraved: Ten Thousand Serpents Marsh.

"A map of the Western Heaven Continent," Luo Tianshen said. "Every place I traveled to in my youth is on it. That marsh in the south is the Xuanming Serpent Clan's territory. The serpent clan is hostile to outsiders, and its Serpent Emperor is at least as strong as that old ghost Xue Ku, if not stronger."

Xiao Yan's finger paused briefly over the words "Ten Thousand Serpents Marsh." Cai Lin's mark was in the south.

"I won't ask what you're going south for," Luo Tianshen said calmly. "I'll only give you one warning: that place of the serpent clan's is easy to enter, but hard to leave."

"I'll remember." Xiao Yan solemnly rolled up the jade scroll and put it into his Storage Ring.

The second item was a white jade token the size of a palm. One side was carved with a goddess holding a sword, the other with an ancient-looking character for "Luo." Xiao Yan was slightly taken aback as he looked at it. The token looked exactly like the one Luo Tianshen had thrown toward the river when he opened the Luo River Abyss that day, only a size smaller.

"A Luo Shen Token," Luo Tianshen said. "It can't open the Luo River Abyss or command the Luo Shen Guard. It isn't much use, save for one thing."

He pushed the token toward Xiao Yan. "From now on, wherever you go, no matter whom you offend, if one day you find yourself with nowhere left to turn, take it and come back to Luo Shen City. Its gates will be open to you."

Xiao Yan looked at the token for a long while without reaching for it. A breeze rose over the lake, wrinkling the expanse of shattered gold and scattering it into millions of wavering pieces.

He remembered that late night when he had first arrived at the Luo Shen Residence. He had just woken from unconsciousness, and a gray-robed elder in the shadows by the window had asked him calmly, "From a Lower Plane?" He remembered that night when the elder had taught him the Reverse Scale Spirit-Guiding Method at his bedside, saying, "You can't block it, and you can't let it loose. You can only guide it."

He remembered Xue Li's claws reaching toward him in front of the Luo Shen Residence, and the words that had come from afar: "A guest of my Luo God Clan is not yours to demand, Blood God Clan." He remembered the long street burned into lava, and the bloody palm suspended three feet in front of him, held in place by a ring of light. He remembered this elder keeping watch by his bedside for three days and three nights, putting his meridians in order once every two hours. This elder had never once spoken a pleasant word. Not once.

Xiao Yan reached out, picked up the Luo Shen Token, and held it in his palm. A trace of warmth from the elder's hand still lingered on the white jade. Then he stood, stepped back three paces, and straightened his clothes. Facing the drab old man sitting at the edge of the stone platform and gazing at the lake, he bent in a deep bow. "Elder Luo, I, Xiao Yan, will remember your kindness."

Luo Tianshen did not turn around. He merely gazed at the shattered gold on the lake, rippled by the wind. There was no expression on his deeply wrinkled face. After a long while, he raised a hand and waved it gently behind him.

"Go on."

Xiao Yan straightened and looked at his back for a moment. Then he turned and walked away, step by step, along the stone bridge leading to the shore. He did not look back, and so he did not see the drab old man finally turn his head after he had left. As Luo Tianshen watched the thin figure recede into the distance, a faint light shone in his cloudy old eyes, impossible to tell whether it was relief or reluctance to part.

The sun sank, and the shattered gold on the lake gradually faded into a deep, somber blue. Luo Tianshen sat alone on the stone platform in the middle of the lake and did not rise, even after the stars had climbed into the sky.

"Silly boy," he said softly. "That fellow who lost his way back then has finally found his way out."