The Last "Bright Yang Child": The Value of a Top-Grade Pseudo Spirit Root
"I am Mingyan. Today, at [Bright Court], I have proved my Dao and attained 'Bright Illumination and Expanding Earth Unite in Virtue'-"
"I claim the Fruit of [Bright Yang] and ascend to the position of True Lord!"
"Brightness is the glory of fire; yang is what the earth bears."
"Brightness comes from fire, and yang emerges from the earth. To illuminate without bearing is to leave expansion and acquisition without a foundation; to bear without illuminating is to leave the road ahead beyond sight."
"The Dao of Bright Yang lies in illumination, in expansion, in knowledge, and in acquiring beforehand. It can be a mirror, a sword, a book, a technique, a scene of radiance, and the overseer of heavenly light."
"Body and mind are already bright; let the road ahead be illuminated. Cause and effect have appeared; all paths can be revealed."
"Borrow fire to illuminate causes; bear earth to unfold effects. Radiant Heavenly Sun, Ten Directions Bright!"
Even now, whenever she took out the sole surviving fragment of the "Bright Yang Law Treasure" diagram left in her hands, its mysteries long gone...
Li Yelan would always recall that afternoon four hundred years ago, when her grandfather, still alive then, had told her about the scene when her great-great-grandfather attained the Dao.
Back then, although the megacorporation [Ten Directions Bright] was still young, it was at the height of its power.
Including her great-great-grandfather, the megacorporation had five Golden Cores and one Dao Embryo, placing it in the upper middle ranks among the megacorporations of the Corporate Alliance.
Thus, it had seemed as though everything was surging upward...
Grandfather always said those were the best hundred years-
Yes, unlike the present, so weighed down by decline, the megacorporation had advanced every single day during those times.
The True Lord's cultivation had also risen steadily with the passing years.
Heavenly light shone through the ten directions, and everyone, whether from the upper or lower levels, devoted themselves to that great golden age.
They created untold value for it.
Purple Mansion True Persons were everywhere, and the company treated them all equally, regardless of their first academic qualification.
The Dao of [Bright Yang], too, gradually reached its height.
As her great-great-grandfather's research grew ever more profound and mysterious, the technological patents earned the megacorporation greater and greater value...
His authority had come to stand below only that of that lord-
Later, the megacorporation formally announced the "Bright Yang Child," an achievement capable of bearing the mysteries of the Dao lineage and glimpsing and extrapolating the future as it unfolded below the level of a Golden Core True Lord.
On the day it had acquired the capacity for mass production...
The entire megacorporation had cheered for him, and all their clansmen had believed that the Li clan would reach unprecedented heights.
Grandfather had been very happy that day too. He said that, at that moment, it almost felt like living in the first glorious age of cultivation punk.
But as time passed and circumstances changed, the future they had envisioned never arrived.
True, hundreds of "Bright Yang Children" could see every future within the megacorporation that was not influenced by a Golden Core True Lord...
But when corporate war broke out, everything the "Bright Yang Children" knew would vanish like smoke beneath the might of Golden Core and even Dao Embryo True Lords.
And for that very reason, even [Bright Yang] at its greatest height would one day fall.
Li Yelan could no longer remember clearly what had happened during the two hundred years that followed.
The faces of the family members who had calmly taken their own lives amid pain and madness had also gradually blurred in her memories.
All she knew now was that she had requested a transfer down alone and eked out a living in the Lower City, and that she was now the last glimmer of the [Bright Yang] Dao lineage.
With things as they were, she should have done her utmost to make a gamble. Failing that, she should at least have done something, trying to leave hope for the [Bright Yang] Dao lineage and await those who came after.
Yet Li Yelan had always known that the Five Dharmas were beyond her reach. Relying on herself alone, even if she fought to the death, she could never complete [Bright Yang] and ascend to its position-
And she herself, once a "Bright Yang Child," had lost her mysteries with the disappearance of the [Bright Yang] Dao lineage, leaving her only madness and unrest.
Never mind leaving hope behind; not ending her own life as her family had was already the limit of what she could manage.
And so, immersed in this desperate struggle to stay alive...
For the past hundred years, Li Yelan had lived alone in the Lower City, slowly fading into darkness by herself as she waited for the day she would fall.
For a long time, she had believed she would go on repeating such centuries, slowly withering away...
Until she had no value left, her lifespan ended, and she rotted.
But not long ago, the mysteries of the "Bright Yang Child" had abruptly returned for a brief moment, interrupting her helpless wait for death-
In the scene she had witnessed during that extrapolation, which was also her last,
Li Yelan, lonely for a hundred years, had finally seen, amid boundless despair, the first light brought by that figure who accompanied her...
It had made her heart, long since dead, beat as it once had.
"And that was all because of you..."
At the top of [Bright Yang Tower], Li Yelan bent over and gazed at Lü Yuan's face. Emerging from her memories, she murmured those words to herself in her heart.
After that last extrapolation, restored six months ago, had given her memories of the future-
No one knew better than she did that, unless a Golden Core True Lord forcibly stopped or interfered,
This child before her, who still looked so young...
Was destined to become her student, subordinate, and husband in turn, as well as the last hope for the resurgence of the broken [Bright Yang] Fruit Position.
"It's just a pity that it's still too early, and you're still too young..."
To Lü Yuan's immense relief, Li Yelan withdrew her hand and thought to herself.
In theory, they should not have met this early.
According to the future she had experienced in the extrapolation, Lü Yuan would at least have to reach Foundation Establishment before he qualified to come to the top of [Bright Yang Tower] for an audience-
Just like his senior, the girl who had now reached Purple Mansion with one Divine Ability.
That was when they should have met.
But she could not wait. She simply wanted to see him; these past days, she had missed him so much she had nearly gone mad.
In fact, if not to avoid interfering too much and affecting his future,
She would not have wanted to wait even a moment. Six months ago, she would have gone to the nursery as a child trafficker and abducted him.
And why was that?
As Lü Yuan looked on in confusion, Li Yelan kept her gaze fixed on him. "Because you are mine, the [Bright Yang] that belongs to me-"
Lü Yuan knew nothing of any of these causes and consequences. From beginning to end, he had found the whole thing baffling.
First, he had arrived at the top of [Bright Yang Tower], overwhelmed by the honor, only to be asked several deadly multiple-choice questions in a row.
Just as he had nearly concluded that the person before him was a pedophile, he was told she had been teasing him...
How am I supposed to believe you're not a pedophile when you're looking at me exactly the way I look at Spirit Stone Vouchers...?
Lü Yuan silently grumbled to himself. As for those complaints, he naturally did not worry that the person before him would hear them.
The Immortal Book surely would not be so unreliable as to let that happen.
It would be one thing if harmless thoughts were overheard, but the Immortal Book would probably automatically block thoughts like these, which could harm him if heard, right?
But after all that, I almost forgot what my two reasons for coming to [Bright Yang Tower] were...
Lü Yuan felt somewhat helpless and deeply worried.
Just as he was agonizing over what to say next and how to ask about the things that puzzled him without giving offense,
Li Yelan spoke first, as though she knew what he was going to say.
She straightened up, leaving Lü Yuan able only to look up at her and see half the ceiling.
In a deliberately lukewarm, even tone, she said:
"That day at the awakening institution, after you asked Qin Huai, he told you that when you came to see me, I would give you the answers to the questions in your heart."
"Now that you have come to [Bright Yang Tower] with questions in your heart, why are you silent instead?"
"Will you not speak?"
"Do you not want to ask why a mere pseudo spirit root would make even me willing to condescend to receive you-"