Symbiosis

Life in the stone house was simple and quiet.

During the day, Long Tian went into the mountains to gather firewood and fetch water. In the evening, he taught Yu Jin a simplified tempering method in the clearing before the house. At night, they took turns keeping watch or joined their Qi. For the first few days, their breaths met somewhat awkwardly when they joined Qi. By the fifth night, their dantians could form a circulating loop on their own with almost no deliberate guidance. Long Tian's Origin Return Pearl made a revolution, drawing out a stream of grayish-white Qi that seeped deep into Yu Jin's dantian, nourishing the gold-and-black core extending its roots there. Yu Jin's core trembled and returned a wisp of pure origin Qi, which flowed into the walls of Long Tian's meridians to reinforce the pliancy they had gained through tempering. The pulse passing back and forth between their dantians was as natural as two stretches of the same river, the water flowing out and returning in a tireless cycle.

On the seventh evening, after they finished joining Qi, Yu Jin suddenly said as he withdrew his power, "Something new has grown in my dantian."

Long Tian leaned closer to look at his open palm. Yu Jin brought forth the mass of gold-and-black light and shadow, and the rootlike threads of Soul Power inside the core had knotted into an extremely fine ring-shaped pattern at its base. The pattern was still faint, its color an almost transparent gray, but it was unmistakably the outline of a complete circle, like an embryonic Soul Ring.

"The Soul Ring grew on its own?" Long Tian stared at the transparent gray ring. Yu Jin had never hunted a Soul Beast before; this ring pattern had been formed entirely by his dantian, with no Soul Power infused from outside.

"Maybe it's because..." Yu Jin looked down at the gray ring growing clearer in his palm. "You join Qi with my core every day, and some of the patterns from your Soul Rings seeped into it. My core absorbed the pattern template from your Soul Rings and grew a shell of its own."

Long Tian was silent for a while. He raised his right hand, and four Soul Rings lit up beneath his feet in succession, their mingled black-and-white halos flowing in the twilight. He pointed to the nascent patterns on the inner wall of the fourth Soul Ring. "These patterns-every layer is a bridge that grew on its own in my dantian after light and darkness were tempered. My Soul Rings have bridges, and your core has grown a shell."

Yu Jin closed his palm and withdrew his origin, and the gray ring vanished into the depths of the core. He looked up at Long Tian, a thoughtful expression floating in the light of his eyes. "You said the Origin Return Pearl was the residue left by tempering. My core absorbed your residue and digested it into something new. The two of us... might have been nourishing each other all along."

Long Tian withdrew his Soul Rings and sat on the stone house's threshold, gazing at the distant silhouettes of the mountains. A thin layer of lingering snow covered the Heavenly Wolf Mountain Range in winter, and the folds of the mountains spread in overlapping layers toward the horizon in the twilight. He thought for a long time, then suddenly stood and turned to Yu Jin. "Tomorrow, let's go deeper and see if there's a Soul Beast suited to you. If the shell on your core can attach itself to a proper Soul Ring, your cultivation will be able to take a leap."

Yu Jin nodded. They turned in early, and the hearth fire burned especially brightly that night, dispelling most of the chill in the stone house.

At daybreak the next morning, the two set out for the middle reaches of the mountain range. The trees grew denser along the way, and thick white snow lay piled between their roots, deep in some places and shallow in others underfoot. Long Tian led the way with Shadow Vision active, while Yu Jin followed behind him, the gray stone pendant around his neck swaying gently inside his robes. When they reached a shaded mountain hollow, Long Tian suddenly stopped. Beneath an old pine a dozen or so zhang ahead, a grayish-white thing lay curled in a hollow among the roots. It was about a chi long, its body coiled into a ring, with a row of fine, closely spaced dark markings along its back.

Long Tian signaled Yu Jin to crouch and tread softly. Using the trunks for cover, they slowly approached and got a full view of the creature: a small grayish-white lizardlike beast with short, blunt limbs. The dark markings along its back shimmered faintly in the morning light with interwoven gold and black. It lay motionless in the hollow among the roots, surrounded by an extremely faint, two-colored mist in which light and darkness slowly flowed.

"A Stone-Patterned Lizard. It lives in rock crevices and among tree roots, and feeds on the tiny motes of Soul Power found among mountain rocks," Long Tian said in a low voice. "Its Soul Ring has both light and darkness attributes, and it's around four hundred years old. It should match the template of your newly formed gray ring."

Yu Jin stared at the little beast curled into a ball. It seemed to sense something; its coiled body shifted slightly, and the dark markings on its back flashed for an instant. The mass of gold-and-black light and shadow surfaced in Yu Jin's palm of its own accord, without his control or active prompting, reaching outward as though drawn by some force.

Sensing the presence of the gold-and-black light and shadow, the little beast abruptly uncurled and turned its head toward Yu Jin. Rather than flee, it moved its limbs slightly and edged half a cun toward him. The fine light flowing through the dark markings on its back resonated in some way with the light and shadow in Yu Jin's palm. The closer they drew, the more naturally the thin mists of light and darkness blended.

Watching this, Long Tian formed a conjecture: the Stone-Patterned Lizard might have an innate ability to sense Soul Power of the same origin, and to it, Yu Jin's light-and-darkness origin was not a threat but one of its own kind. He gave Yu Jin a look. Yu Jin understood and slowly crouched, extending his empty left hand toward the little beast. The Stone-Patterned Lizard crawled over slowly and reached out a foreclaw to rest it on Yu Jin's fingertip. The dark markings along its back flared the instant they touched, and interwoven gold-and-black light spread up from Yu Jin's fingertip, merging into the mass of light and shadow in his palm.

Yu Jin did not kill it.

Starlike points of interwoven gold-and-black light began to appear on the Stone-Patterned Lizard's body, starting at its tail, like a lamp being lit from the bottom up. Its body gradually dissolved amid the points of light, without struggle or pain. Its curled form slowly became a complete black-and-white Soul Ring, which floated docilely above Yu Jin's palm.

The gray ring shell in Yu Jin's dantian flared to life, like a door being pushed open. He sat cross-legged and drew the Soul Ring into his body. Black-and-white light flowed through his meridians into his dantian, without collision or resistance, like a stream running into a riverbed already dug out for it. The gray ring shell broke apart and merged into the inner wall of the new Soul Ring. Amid the interweaving light and darkness, the two sets of patterns slowly meshed, grew, and stabilized.

The whole process took less than half a shichen. When Yu Jin opened his eyes, a black-and-white Soul Ring lit up beneath his feet. Its colors were slightly paler than those of Long Tian's first ring, but its flowing halo was exceptionally gentle and lingering, like a newborn beast adjusting to the light after opening its eyes. He looked down for a long time, opening and closing his palm. When the mass of gold-and-black light and shadow floated out of it, a faint ring-shaped shadow encircled it.

"It worked." Long Tian crouched beside him, watching.

Yu Jin withdrew the light and shadow from his palm, stood, and brushed the dirt and fallen leaves from his knees. He looked at Long Tian, and the gold-and-black embers in his eyes were bright and steady, as if a fresh handful of firewood had been added to them.

"Around four hundred years," Long Tian said. "A good deal stronger than the shell your core grew on its own. Once you've gotten used to it, we'll go looking for a second ring. The way you absorb Soul Rings by merging origins, you might not need to wait until your Soul Power reaches its limit to add a ring. As long as your core is stable, you can take in a new one anytime."

Yu Jin touched the gray stone pendant around his neck, then the old bundle at his waist. The two left the mountain hollow and retraced their route. The sun had climbed a little higher, and the snow shone dazzlingly in its light. Behind them, two lines of footprints stretched all the way back in the direction of the stone house.

After a few steps, Yu Jin suddenly spoke. "Long Tian. The man who gave me water in that dark room, Shen Mo. Why did he help me?"

Long Tian thought for a moment. "He used to be on the same squad as my father. After the Seventh Squad broke up, he kept investigating what happened, for seven years. He helped my father pass the loose end of the thread to me, and he also helped you hold on for a few more years in that dark room. Maybe he thought one person wasn't enough, and he needed to bring more people in to shoulder it together."

Yu Jin walked with his head lowered for a stretch, his boots making a series of soft crunches on the frozen earth. The wind blew over from the ridge, lifting his hair and letting it fall again. He was silent for a long time before finally saying softly, "Then I can't leave him to shoulder it alone either."

Long Tian turned his head to glance at him. Yu Jin did not look up; he simply kept walking. They crossed the snow between the pines side by side, their footsteps falling left and right to the same beat in the silent forest, one deep and one shallow, one heavy and one light, wrapped in the wind and carried into the increasingly dense mountain forest.

In the distance, a gray-feathered tit perched on the tip of an old pine. It tilted its head to look at the two figures walking away, shook the snow from its wings, and flew up over the branches, disappearing into the gaps between the trees higher up.