Dragon Emperor
Three more days passed, Long Tian did not deliberately activate the Sixth Ring again.
Every morning, he would perform a cycle of breath circulation as usual—not cultivation, but more like a routine check. The new core remained stable inside the Origin Return Pearl, and the joint between the two was now seamless, as if cast as one piece. He guided the breath from the first ring to the Sixth Ring, through the Origin Return Pearl, through the new core, through its grinding, and back into his meridians, completing the entire Return to Origin path. Once he finished one cycle, he would stop. The double-headed Dragon Shadow would rise automatically from behind him at the last moment of his breath circulation, hover for a moment, and then dissipate, neither preceding nor delaying, like a fixed time difference between a shadow and the body.
On the morning of the fourth day, after completing his routine on the hillside, he opened his eyes and found that the Dragon Shadow had not disappeared.
It remained in place longer than usual. The layer of light on the edges of its scales was thicker than before, revealing a deeper dark pattern beneath the gray-gold background, like the weave of an old silk quilt turned inside out. Its two heads and four eyes stared in the same direction—directly in front of Long Tian —not focusing on any specific object, but simply looking at the extension of his gaze. After about seven or eight breaths, the Dragon Shadow dissipated. When it vanished, the edges of its scales did not disintegrate into light dust, but rather faded entirely, like a piece of paper soaked in water fading evenly from the edges to the center, finally disappearing completely without leaving any particles.
Long Tian stood up and stretched his numb legs, taking a few steps down the hillside before stopping—he felt something on his back moving in sync with his movements. It wasn't the sensation of scales rising to the surface, but a deeper, more synchronic feeling seeping from between his vertebrae. He took three steps, and a vertical line on his back moved forward with him; he turned to the right, and the line turned to the right as well. He stopped, and the line stopped too. It followed his body's movements with a constant, rhythmic motion, like a shadow reflected from the ground, only in the opposite direction.
When he returned to the stone house, Yu Jin was chopping wood in the open space in front of the door. Seeing Long Tian walk down the hillside, Yu Jin finished chopping the wood in his hand, straightened up, and looked at him for a few steps—then stopped. He saw something slowly taking shape in the air behind Long Tian, incomplete, only revealing a partial outline, like looking at the direction of a mountain ridge through the morning mist. That outline extended down the lines of Long Tian's shoulders and back, converging into an arc at the tailbone, the edge of the scales at the end already discernible in its specific shape.
"It followed you down by itself." Yu Jin leaned the axe against the stake.
Long Tian himself sensed it. The silhouette remained behind him, not as a result of any manipulation, but simply maintained its presence as he walked down the hillside. He tried taking a few steps, and the silhouette followed in sync; he stopped, and the silhouette stopped too; he tilted his head to the side, tentatively shifting his shoulder, and the silhouette's head turned in the same direction at the same angle, like a living mirror reflecting all his movements with his spine as the axis. He could feel a stable connection between it and the Origin Return Pearl, maintaining its presence without requiring additional Soul Power, and its operating consumption was lower than he had expected.
That silhouette followed him all day. It waited for him in the open space outside when he sat on the threshold eating lunch; it turned in sync with the angle of the door frame when he got up to add firewood; it hung low at the same curvature about a person's height above the water when he squatted down to wash his hands. As dusk approached, Long Tian stood in the open space in front of the house and raised his hand—and for the first time, the silhouette behind him solidified completely. The two-headed Dragon Shadow appeared completely in the air behind him, its posture identical to when Long Tian stood, its heads lowered, its four eyes half-closed, and its scales covered with a layer of restrained dark light. It no longer floated in an independent position as before, but maintained a fixed distance between itself and Long Tian's spine, like another layer of skin on the back of his body that had been pulled out but had not yet detached from the main body.
When Long Tieshan came out of the house and saw this scene, he stood at the door for a long time. He looked at the two-headed Dragon Shadow that perfectly matched the outline of his son's back, and then at his son's hands hanging at his sides and the fingers that had gradually lengthened over this time. He did not comment on the light and shadow, but he stood there with his hands hanging at his sides, his gaze slowly sweeping from the head of the Dragon Shadow to its tail, as if watching something he had been waiting for a long time finally take shape.
That night, after Long Tian lay down, the Dragon Shadow didn't follow him into the house. It vanished the moment he stepped over the threshold, leaving no trace. In the darkness, Long Tian stared at the roof beams, feeling the texture of the scales on his back linger on his skin for about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea before completely fading. He turned over to face the wall, placing one hand under his pillow. The Origin Return Pearl rotated steadily in the middle of his chest, the new core continuously outputting the point of each pulsation at its center, like the water level at the bottom of a well stabilizing after continuous flow, never to recede again. He closed his eyes, and in the darkness, he saw the outline of the two-headed Dragon Shadow's eyes extinguish one last time—all four eyes closed in turn, like four lamps being switched off one after another on the same wire. In the final moment of darkness, a light different from the previous ones shone for a moment from the center of the Dragon Shadow's forehead, and then it too vanished. In the intervals between his breaths, Long Tian memorized the shape of that light from the center of the forehead—a thin, vertical line, like a closed eye or a crack that had not yet opened. It maintained that shape in the darkness until the very last moment before he fell completely asleep, guarding him in the continuous pulsation of the Origin Return Pearl.
The moon had already risen outside the window, shining through the gap in the mountain wall and casting a thin layer of light on the open ground. There were no lights on in the stone house, and everyone's breathing rose and fell in their own rhythm on their respective beds. The lightest breath lingered for a while after Long Tian fell asleep, as if waiting for the person next to him to fall asleep before sinking into the same silence as him.