Chapter 442

Silver-white light surged from the fragments—this was the primal energy of order sealed within the core for countless years, now bereft of its vessel and pouring outward in all directions.

It was like a prisoner long confined, straining to escape. It rushed to the temple's dome—where the dome's residual law crystals, struck by the light, finally shattered completely, sending rubble plummeting from above, disintegrating mid-fall.

It struck stone and rebounded—on the rebound, it had already dispersed into finer threads of light. It raced to the walls—where the silver-white wall surfaces began to peel in large flakes, like old wallpaper blistered by water and pulling away from the brick.

It struck stone and rebounded—the peeling wall fragments collided in midair, shattering into ever-finer powder. It reached the ground—where the ground's veins still pulsed faintly, the last physiological reflex of the Lord of Order.

The silver-white light drilled into the veins, lighting them one by one—then extinguishing them one by one.

Each rubble fragment glowed briefly in the afterglow of its extinction, then turned utterly gray. The presence of the Lord of Order lay scattered in every corner of the temple. He was no longer "he"—he was "it." It was ash, it was dust, it was nothing.

The eternal void seal also shattered. This was the divine ability cast by the Shadow—-not today, but long ago. On that day in the Chaos Immortal Palace, she had infused the void law into the fragments to seal the order shards, prevent their return to the temple, and protect Wang Ping—using her own existence as the lock.

She locked the fragments' vitality, locked the regenerative capacity of the order remnants, locked the last possibility of the Lord of Order's revival. And she locked herself as well.

Between her and the fragments lay a bond woven of void law—-if the fragments remained, the seal held; if the seal held, she could not depart her shadow form.

From that day in the Chaos Immortal Palace, she had lain in slumber from excessive expenditure, until awakened by Wang Ping's voice summoning this mass of shadow. This lock had been turning within her all along, binding her and also binding a fragment of the Lord of Order.

Now it shattered. Not by Wang Ping's sword—his blade struck the fragments themselves, not the seal. The seal was a product of void law, uncuttable by sword, for it was "nothing"—void itself lacks form and cannot be sliced by a blade.

It was shattered by the death-shock of the Lord of Order. The lock's other end was the fragments; when the fragments utterly perished, the lock lost its anchor. With no anchor, the lock unfastened of its own accord.

The seal's fragments drifted in the void—when void law shatters, it does not become dust like order law, but remains as "shards."

One shard after another, thin to near-zero thickness, like glass—glass edges are sharp, leaving in the void a trail of ultrafine black traces. Like crystal—crystal fragments refract seven colors in light, each shard reflecting an angle of the Shadow.

Like ice—ice melting from the edges, thinning bit by bit until only a water film remains, which the void blows apart.

Each shard reflected the Shadow's face. This one showed her face curled for thirty thousand years in the depths of the Gui Xu cave—sunken eye sockets, protruding cheekbones, lips devoid of color.

That one showed her face learning to stand on rubble—-that day she had bloodied her legs from a fall, Wang Ping crouched to ask if it hurt, she said no, he didn't believe her, she rolled up her pant leg to show the scars already scabbing, saying: See, it really doesn't hurt— they've long grown used to it.

This one showed her face when hearing Yu Liuli play the zither—-that night Yu Liuli played a piece for her, and midway through she suddenly burst into tears.

That one showed her face when she had just said "big brother" in his embrace—chin slightly lifted, lips moving minutely, the shadow's edge indistinct, yet his face reflected in her pupils. Those shards drifted slowly in the void, like joss paper tossed at a funeral, shattering into ever-smaller pieces before touching ground.

Wang Ping gazed at the shards. Every face on each shard looked at him— thirty thousand of her faces, one and the same. He reached out—his palm still stained with his own blood, chaotic-hued droplets hanging in the void, not falling, but suspended around his knuckles as a tiny ring of light points. He caught one— as it drifted to him, it nicked his tiger's mouth, not deep, just breaking the skin. The seeping drop of blood stained it half-transparent, half-chaotic. The shard dissolved in his palm into water—void shards cannot linger, dissolve in no law, only in chaos. His palm held chaos light, which enclosed the shard, turning it from solid to liquid within the glow. Water slipped between his fingers—not downward, but upward. Above the back of his hand, it condensed into a minuscule bead, within which still gleamed a face of the Shadow—she was smiling. Then the bead evaporated, and the face scattered.

The Shadow lay on the ground. The shards still drifted slowly above her. Her shadow remained—-not the earlier contracted "shadow form." The seal was broken, she was no longer the lock, she was free. Her body emerged from the shadow. Not condensed from void—-but slowly rising from the shadow's depths. The shadow was her vessel; formerly she used void law with the shadow as medium to manipulate mirror projections. Later her body became light, she retracted into the shadow, leaving only a curled black mass. Now the black held other hues—from black to gray, gray to light gray, light gray to bone-white.

Like a tree sprouting from soil—first came the roots. The roots were his heartbeat, which he had long pressed to her frequency, sustained so long it became the rhythm of her rebirth. The roots took hold in her shadow's depths, causing it to heave faintly—not a tremor, but a "breath." Then came the sprout— the sprout was her foot, emerging from the shadow tiny and white, like an infant's foot. Toes still translucent, the lunar white on the toenails not yet fully grown—-that was the part still uncondensed when she first touched Wang Ping's fingertip in the ancient mirror.

Then came the stem—shin, knee, thigh, waist. The vertebrae emerged from the shadow one by one, accompanied by a faint clicking of joints, not pain, but "in place." Then came the branches and leaves—chest, shoulders, collarbone, neck, head. Her hair was drawn from the shadow's depths, blackening from the roots—-not jet black, but dark gray with a hint of the faintest azure. That was the trace of void particles still mingling with chaos light.

She rose to sit from the shadow. Not the difficult sit-up of one just recovering from grave illness, nor a ghost's drift—-but an "awakening." Like one just waking, rubbing her eyes. She lifted her hand—fingers not yet fully solid, edges still bearing a film of shadow. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand—no tears in the sockets, yet she rubbed, for this gesture is etched deep in the body, remembered even after thirty thousand years as a shadow in darkness. Her eyes were black—-not chaos-tinged gray, not void black, but human eyes. Black and white distinct, the white still tinged with the mist just risen from the shadow's depths. The mist dispersed, pupils slowly focused, locking onto him.

She gazed at Wang Ping, Wang Ping gazed at her. He stood in the void, robe-less—his robes turned to ash, hair still drifting faintly, skin laced with the desiccation cracks from moments before, some still oozing ultrafine threads of chaos light. She sat on the ground—just emerged from the shadow, her body also bare, a film of shadow still clinging to the surface. The shadow-film began to recede in the light, from shoulders downward, revealing the skin beneath—pale, the white of void law recondensed, so pale as to reveal the fine blue veins underneath.

They spoke not—no need. Wind blew in from the temple's cracks—-not a void storm, but the turbulence of laws ebbing after Wang Ping's "slash" shook countless fissures in the outer wall, drawing the last vestiges of primordial chaos from the order domain back in. The wind was light, carrying a faint earthy odor. It stirred her hair—hair black as ink, as night, as a starless sky. Strands lifted in the wind, brushing over her forehead, over her brows. The tip of her left brow bore a minuscule mole, previously unnoticed by him, for before her body was condensed void law, not yet fully her own.

She reached out, touching Wang Ping's face. Her fingers fully emerged from the shadow-film—-pads no longer cool void-texture, but warm and soft. Her fingers glided lightly over his cheekbones, feeling the desiccation cracks—skin at the crack edges slightly lifted, hard, like a scab over a wound. Her fingers slid slowly down the scab to his chin—chin bearing unshaven stubble, within which lay a few grits of stone dust, ground in when he knelt on the rubble holding the shadow. She picked out the grits one by one with her fingertips. Then her hand moved upward, palm pressed to his cheek, thumb pressing gently on the split in his lips.

He had grown thin. Not from this battle—his face had begun thinning before this fight. Emerging from Xiao Han Mountain, he bore a youthful roundness; leaving Gui Xu, his cheekbones protruded; with the emergence of the immortal palace fragments, his eye sockets began to hollow; midway through the war against order, the flesh on his jaw could no longer hold. Now his face was reduced to bone—brow ridge, nasal bridge, cheekbones, jaw, every bone edge laid bare.

Her voice was light, light as wind through leaves. The wind still blew, the leaves—-there were no leaves in the temple, only her hair, its ends brushing his wrist like a dry leaf's final scrape against a trunk before falling. Wang Ping took her hand. That hand still rested on his face; he covered it with his own, enclosing her hand in his palm. She was small—her body, grown from the shadow, was slightly smaller than before, void law overconsumed forcing compression of her existential scale during condensation. Her hand too was one size smaller, fitting snugly into the deepest lines of his palm. Her palm was warm. Not sun-warmed, not spirit-warmed, but the heat of living blood flowing—-pumped from the heart, through the subclavian artery, into the brachial, then radial and ulnar, to the superficial and deep palmar arches, finally into the capillaries of the fingertips. He turned her palm over to read her lines. Her emotion line, below the ring finger, also bifurcated—-just like his. That branch dove into the palm toward him, also pointing his way.

She pressed his hand to her face for a long time, letting him feel her warmth. Not body temperature—body temperature is a dead number, thirty-seven, a few degrees above ambient. She wanted him to feel the "living" warmth—blood flowing, heart beating, exhaled breath hot in the nasal passages. He felt it, radiating inward in layers from his palm. Then she withdrew her hand—-not pulling away, but sliding gently from his palm. Her fingers threaded through the gaps between his fingers, like water through fingers, but not flowing away, resting at the distal phalanges. Then she lifted her hand, placed it to her lips. With her tongue tip she touched the back of her hand—where lay the tears he had just shed. Salty, as before. On the rear slope of Xiao Han Mountain she had first seen him cry, that drop landing on her hand, she had tasted it thus. He was there, he had not changed.

Cang Xuan turned away, not looking. He turned sharply—-a sword cultivator's turn as clean as his draw: heel grinding the ground, waist rotation swinging the body, back to Wang Ping and the Shadow, facing the far end of the temple ruins. His sword lay quiet in its sheath—-not silent, but "still." Silence is forced stillness; stillness is natural quiet. The battle ended, the foe dead, the friend lived, it was time to return. The sword spirit angled the blade's reflection to darkest—-as before, not shining on her. Once she feared light, now she did not, but the spirit kept its habit. He stepped forward, walking toward the passage.

Yu Liuli cradled her guqin, following behind. She rose from the rubble, the bruise on her knee from striking the qin's face now congealed into a dark red stain. She carefully coiled the broken string she had removed, stowing it in her storage bag—-not because she hated to discard it, but because these strings are her master's relic, and even broken, they remain relic fragments. She held her qin, following two steps behind Cang Xuan, neither fast nor slow. Her strings remained unchanged, the broken ones stored in her bag, the qin body still bearing the ultrafine vibration cracks pressed by Wang Ping's dao light. She did not replace them—-she did not wish to, for this is the final imprint of the battle. The battle ended, the strings too should rest.

The Shadow rose from the ground. Not by leaning on his hand—-she rose herself. She braced one hand on the ground, slid her knee from the rubble, extended the other hand forward, fingers making a grasping motion in midair. Wang Ping reached out, she took hold, but not for leverage—-just a clasp to confirm his presence. Then she rose on her own. Her legs trembled—-not from fear, but from prolonged lying. Her legs were newborn, muscles just grown from the shadow-film, fibers unused, first contraction somewhat raw. She leaned on his hand awhile, then lowered her gaze to her feet. Her feet pressed on the rubble, aching slightly. Pain was good—shadows feel no pain, people do. Pain meant she had truly returned.

Once her legs ceased trembling, she released his hand. She knew he would support, but she did not wish to lean constantly. In the ancient mirror she had curled alone for thirty thousand years; emerging, she had been escorted by Wang Ping for so long; now she wished to walk herself. She took a step forward, her sole contacting a shard of law crystal, slipping, wobbling, then regaining stance. After steadying, she glanced back at him—-meaning I can manage. Wang Ping did not support, merely stepped half a pace aside, keeping within reach should she stretch out a hand.

They still spoke not. Some need constant chatter to confirm each other's presence. They two did not—-the back of his hand still held her finger-warmth, her palm still held his tear.

The armies of the Ten Thousand Realms Alliance swept the battlefield in the temple ruins. Though the Lord of Order was dead, his remnants lingered. Those Divine Transformation cultivators—-not thirty, the main field still held scattered late-stage Divine Transformation, plus three Unity-stage cultivators tasked with patrolling the temple outskirts, whose domains were shattered by the Heaven-Cleaving remnant waves, plunging them into loss of control. Also the Order Apostles—-cultivators twisted by the Seeds of Order into executioners. Also the battle puppets—-metal frames inlaid with law crystals, insensate to pain, unwilling to surrender.

After their master's death, they ran about like headless flies. Some fled to the primordial chaos sea—-where remnants of the Purification Court's facilities still operated, automated law factories still running, still spitting out puppet embryos. Some fled to Gui Xu—-where deep within lay abandoned Purification Court outposts, left from the order war thirty thousand years past, which they instinctively identified as safe havens. Some fled to the fringes of the Ten Thousand Realms—-where laws are thin, pursuit difficult, hiding there not easily detected.

The Ten Thousand Realms Alliance pressed the victory, pursuing for half a year. In that half-year, Wang Ping brought Cang Xuan, Yu Liuli, and the Shadow, chasing those remnants over countless miles. Some were overtaken in the void—-where no cover exists, the apostles' silver-white gleam is a natural bullseye; within a thousand miles, Chaos Immortal Lightning locks and detonates. Some were surrounded on planets—-on that abandoned mineral star hid over a hundred puppets; the alliance's Divine Transformation cultivators laid a Star-Dou formation without, Cang Xuan drew from the formation's eye and pierced the core law seals of three hundred puppets with one sword.

Some were blocked in the rifts—-that a narrow void fissure, narrow enough for only one to turn sideways through, where apostles lined up in a line to flee outward, were circled by the Shadow using void escape to the exit, then sealed off one by one from outside in, each seal extinguishing one silver-white lamp in the apostles' eyes, like streetlamps in a night switched off from the farthest inward.

None escaped. The Purification Court's forces were utterly cleared. Not by slaughter—-but by extracting every Seed of Order from within each apostle, after which the twisted lifeforms began to revert upon seed removal—-some died midway, their flesh long parasitized, their law inscriptions long devoid of self. Some reverted and lived, yet no longer knew who they were. They were sent to the Celestial Mechanism Clan's resettlement zone, where specialists aid them in recovering memory. The notion of order remains—-it will not vanish, for order is part of the Ten Thousand Realms' laws; where laws exist, order exists. But no one builds temples for it anymore, there are no executors, no Seeds of Order, no Purification Court, no great army marching to unify the world in silver-white order. The notion is mere empty talk.

The silver stone gate appeared again. Not in the Spirit Realm, but in the temple ruins. Precisely where Wang Ping had stood swinging his sword—-his footprints still in the rubble, the print edges still bearing traces of chaos-light filaments slowly fading. Silver-white light seeped from the rubble seams—-fine, like groundwater finding a crack in strata. The light filaments grew more numerous, denser, self-weaving in the void into a gate shape.

The gate was silver-white, but not the order kind—-order silver-white absorbs light, makes hearts palpitate, oppresses you on the law level. Transcendent silver-white differs—-it does not absorb light, coexists with light; does not oppress people, merely stands quietly before you. Like a river thawing in March—-ice remains, but beneath one can already hear the water's flow, the surface begins to show ultrafine cracks. The gate's patterns glowed—-not engraved, but grown from within. Those patterns are heaven-born law trajectories, recording the primordial dao traces left when the Chaos Immortal proved the Dao. Like tree rings—-one ring after another, dense and tight. Each ring is a layer of the transcendent dao, countless layers radiating outward—-leading back to that primal gate.

The stone gate opened a slit. Not pushed by anyone—-it moved itself—-not mechanical motion, but it sensed a condition. The gate's interior has no hinges, no bolts, no physical structure. It is a manifest law-gate, opening or closing based on one thing—-whether the Lord of Order has utterly perished. He has utterly perished, the law-level obstruction vanished, the gate naturally opened.

Light shone from the slit. The silver stone gate, yet the light pouring forth was not cold metallic gold—-but warm gold, pale gold, like autumn afternoon sunlight slipping onto a quiet pond. It fell on the ruins—-the law-crystal fragments eroded by order power for tens of thousands of years began, in the gold light, to shed their surfaces, silver-white husks flaking off in pieces to reveal the long-sealed granite beneath. Rubble in the light grew warm. Dust in the light grew still. Corpses in the light grew peaceful.

The Transcendent emerged from behind the gate. Not a person—-not like a cultivator with body, meridians, dantian. Nor was it a scattered, free-floating energy state, but a stable, humanoid-shaped light-form. His body was condensed from gold light—-denser than the light that had seeped when the gate first opened—-steady brightness, not glaring. Bright as the sun—-the sun is the mother of light, the source of all visible light. Like stars—-stars are distant suns, countless suns greeting each other in the dark. Like hope—-hope has no shape, yet when one sees it, the mind instinctively gives it form.

The face was indistinct, because it was too bright. But the facial structure was still recognizable—not the face of any specific person, but the face of a "person." The features were faintly discernible in the golden light—high, straight brow ridges, deep-set eye sockets, a straight nasal bridge. This was the face of the Chaos Immortal Venerable before attaining the Dao. He projected his last lingering remnant, left behind in the Transcendent Immortal Realm, from the golden radiance, standing outside the stone gate, standing on the ruins, gazing upon this temple that had just ended its war. His voice could still be heard—very soft, very distant, like a temple bell echoing in the morning. It was the moment the wooden mallet had just left the bell's rim; the bell still vibrated, its afterwaves rolling one after another, from the mountain gate to the hall, from the hall to the monks' quarters, from the monks' quarters to the mountain forest.

"The Immortal Realm is open; those with affinity may enter." Not a command, not a summons, but a "notification." Informing everyone on this ruin—the Immortal Realm is open; those who wish to come may come. The luminous form of the Transcendent stood beside the gate, no longer speaking. His hand—or if that more condensed golden energy could be called a hand—lightly pressed against the edge of the stone gate, like a guide in the night holding a paper lantern, its light sufficient only to illuminate the threshold and the toes of those approaching. He held the gate, keeping it open.

The stone gate fully opened when he spoke his final word. Beyond the gate was golden light—not the faint light that had just seeped through the crack, but "full." The golden light poured out from the doorframe, flooding the rubble, dust, and remnants before the threshold. Within the light were mountains—these mountains were not solitary peaks piercing the heavens, but continuous low ridges, their ridgelines undulating gently, the mountain bodies half-shrouded in a layer of pale golden clouds and mist, revealing only the blue-stone moss at their feet and the snow line at their summits. There was water—a river winding from the mountain base, its surface narrow, its waters so clear that every grain of rounded stone on the riverbed could be seen. The river flowed extremely slowly, as if still hesitating whether to flow into the mortal realm.

There were clouds, there was mist—the clouds were golden bands floating on the mountainsides, the mist was a sheer gauze drifting slowly across the water's surface. Cloud shadows fell upon the slopes, darkening those patches of terrain. There were immortal palaces, there were divine halls—these palaces were not the cold, hard geometry of the Hall of Order, but corridor-style buildings built into the mountains, with flying eaves and upturned corners, beneath which hung extremely thin jade bells that chimed softly at the slightest breeze. The jade bells did not sway in the wind; only when the bell's core was stirred by air currents did they emit an extremely fine, pure tremolo. There were immortal trees, there were immortal springs—the leaves of the immortal trees were not green, but pale gold and semi-translucent, their veins flowing with extremely fine luminous fluid. The immortal spring welled up from beneath the trees, like a pool of sunlight-warmed hot spring, its surface exhaling the thinnest mist.

This was the Immortal Realm. The true Immortal Realm. Not fragments—Immortal Realm fragments are merely small pieces torn from the main body, floating in the Return to Ruins, sustained by the roots of the Fusang tree. They lack the completeness of law, lack the complete Dao transmission of the Transcendent Path, possessing only ruins and remains. They are merely a sealed gate and a monument spirit guarding the ruins. But beyond the gate lies the entire Immortal Realm—awakened from thirty thousand years of slumber. At the moment the Lord of Order perished, for Order was its shackle. That silver stone gate was the embodiment of that shackle—the Chaos Immortal Venerable sealed the stone gate with his own Transcendence as payment, while the Lord of Order maintained the seal with his own existence as payment. Now both prices have been paid, and the gate opens.

Wang Ping stood before the stone gate, gazing upon that expanse of golden light. The light fell upon his face—the desiccation cracks on his face began to heal in the golden light, not vanishing instantly, but the skin cells at the edges resuming division, the stratum corneum filling the cracks layer by layer from within outward. He was recovering. But his cultivation was declining—he had shattered the core of the Lord of Order and the Eternal Void Seal with a sword forged from his Chaos Dao Foundation, and also severed his own Mid-stage Spirit Transformation realm. He had fallen from Mid-stage Spirit Transformation to Early-stage Spirit Transformation, and from the edge of Early-stage Spirit Transformation was still slowly slipping downward. The Chaos Immortal Stele within him slept—its rotation slowed, slower than before the great battle, like an ancient clock wound down, its pendulum still swinging but with ever-decreasing amplitude.

The eyes of the monument spirit closed. His gray robe no longer fluttered slightly in the Chaos mist as before, but hung straight at his sides, still as a sculpture. After accompanying Wang Ping through these three steps, he truly rested—not eternal sleep, but recuperation. Just as he himself had once said—when Wang Ping needs him, he will awaken. Not awakened by sound, but awakened by heart. As long as Wang Ping's heart still beats, the monument spirit will remain alive.

He paid the price for that sword. The stele is his sword, the sword is his Dao, the Dao is his fate. Fate can be abandoned, but she cannot be.

Youming stood beside him. Her hand gripped his, very tight, tight enough to whiten her knuckles. The hand she had just extended from the shadows was still tender, her joints not fully hardened; gripping so hard would hurt her finger joints. But she did not loosen. She gazed at the stone gate, at the Immortal Realm beyond. In her eyes was longing—not a longing to go to the Immortal Realm, but a longing to "take a glance." She was of the Return to Ruins clan, and before the fall of the Celestial Observers of Myriad Phenomena, her clan had been among the earliest to make contact with the Immortal Realm. She had never seen the Immortal Realm; when she was born, the Celestial Observers of Myriad Phenomena were already gone, and the Immortal Realm had been sealed for tens of thousands of years. Yet her clan had passed down through generations by word of mouth—the Immortal Realm still exists, on the other side of the stone gate, on the other side of the impossible. Now she had seen it. The mountains, waters, clouds, mist, immortal palaces, divine halls, immortal trees, immortal springs beyond the gate—this was the place of legend.

She wanted to go. Not to ascend, not to gain longevity. Just to take a glance—to see what the story passed down for tens of thousands of years in her clan truly looked like. Her hand moved slightly in Wang Ping's—not pulling away, but her fingertips lightly brushing his palm. That was the same motion she had made the first time she touched his fingertip in an ancient mirror, so light it was almost nonexistent. But Wang Ping felt it.

He lowered his head to look at her. She was a head shorter than him; the body she had extended from the shadows was now slightly smaller than before, and when she looked up at him, her eyes reflected the golden light spilling from the stone gate and that continuous expanse of pale golden mountains. He needed not ask; he already knew.

"Want to go?"

She nodded. Not a forceful, large nod, but a slight dip—her chin slightly tucked toward her chest, then lifted again as she continued to meet his eyes.

He took her hand, walking toward the stone gate. Not a big stride, but a slow walk—his legs still trembled, for the sword swing earlier had drained not only spiritual power, but also a great deal of his own vitality he did not even know he possessed. Each step sent a faint tremor through his knees; she too felt her legs tremble, two people with trembling legs supporting each other, walking unevenly, but no one stopped.

Cangxuan did not follow. He stood at the edge of the ruins, hand on his sword hilt, watching the two figures sway as they walked toward that golden light. His Dao was not in the Immortal Realm, but in the sword. Whether the Immortal Realm had sword gods, sword Dao, or stronger sword arts—it did not matter. He needed no stronger sword art. The Spirit Realm still held his disciples, his Dao transmission, his sword tomb. That was the only place he wished to return to after all these years of swording.

Yuliuli did not follow. She stood one step behind Cangxuan, holding in her arms a bald guqin. Her Dao was in the qin; perhaps the Immortal Realm had more celestial silk strings, perhaps strings that could be played for ten thousand years without breaking. But she did not want them. "Strings that never break"—she had tried them, made of silkworm silk. Her master said they were unbreakable, but later they were shattered by the pressure of the Lord of Order. Broken strings, then, are the true strings. Her qin should sound in the Spirit Realm—the sky of the Spirit Realm has not yet fully returned to blue, but it is no longer gray. There are birds calling, insects chirping, wind blowing from the back mountain carrying the scent of thawing earth. Her qin should resonate in such a place.

Only Wang Ping and Youming entered that expanse of golden light. The light was not blinding—it stretched his shadow long, dragging it behind him, across the rubble and dust. Her shadow also extended from her feet in the light, the two shadows walking shoulder to shoulder, close together. Their silhouettes in the light grew ever fainter—from clear to blurred, from blurred to semi-transparent, from semi-transparent to mere outlines. Like a painting soaked in water, the ink bled, lines lost their sharpness, facial features merging into the paper fibers. Yet the painting had not vanished—the paper remained paper, the ink remained ink, merely transformed into another form. Finally, they could no longer be seen.

The stone gate slowly closed. Not with a bang—but extremely gently, extremely slowly, like an elder closing a book he had read for a long time. The door panels first closed to leave only a slit, through which a bit of golden light still leaked, illuminating the rubble before the threshold. Then the slit vanished, the light cut off. The golden turned to silver-white—the stone gate resumed its original color, a silver-white stone gate standing in the center of the ruins, the patterns on its face still slowly rotating in circles. Silver-white turned to gray-white—the stone gate began to dematerialize, no longer solid, the edges of its frame growing indistinct, its face becoming transparent. Gray-white turned to non-existence—the stone gate vanished where it stood, as if it had never appeared. The ruins remained ruins, the rubble remained rubble, the dust remained dust.

Cangxuan stood afar, watching the place where the stone gate vanished, gazing for a long time. His thumb rubbed back and forth on the sword guard—not anxiously, but to "remember." Sword cultivators inscribe important matters on the sword guard—just now that position was where Wang Ping last stood before swinging his sword with his left hand, his footprints still on the rubble. Cangxuan engraved those coordinates inside the sword guard with his sword heart. Then he turned and walked toward the passage.

Yuliuli followed behind him. She re-secured the ancient qin in her arms; the fine cracks on the qin's body, shaken out by Wang Ping's Dao light, emitted an extremely faint gray light in the lightless environment. She walked steadily, her legs no longer trembling, the bruises on her knees long dried. The qin made no sound—because she was thinking. She thought of Wang Ping, wondering whether he would return after entering the Immortal Realm. She wondered whether time flowed differently in the Immortal Realm compared to the Spirit Realm—whether one day in the Immortal Realm equaled many years in the Spirit Realm. She wondered whether, if he returned, he would still be the same him—the power of the Immortal Realm she had sensed just now through the stone gate was a little, but it was denser, purer, closer to the Dao itself than Spirit Realm power. If he stayed long within, would he change? Would he no longer be the Wang Ping who crouched to be eye-level with Jiu'er, who kept watch for Youming, who blocked the sword qi coming for Cangxuan?

What if he would not come back—the Immortal Realm is too vast, too beautiful, too complete; perhaps after entering he would not wish to leave. Perhaps he would find a mountain peak with Youming within, build a wooden cabin, behind it a spring, before it a tree, each dawn Youming sitting on the threshold watching clouds, he standing in the courtyard practicing his fist art that can never be fully mastered. Would he forget the Spirit Realm? Would he forget Jiu'er? Jiu'er had not yet awakened—still asleep in the Fusang tree trunk, her heartbeat still once per minute. When she awakens, the first thing she must see is her elder brother. If the elder brother does not return, how will she explain it to her?

Her tears flowed down. Not weeping—the tear glands merely drained what her heart could no longer hold. Her tears fell upon the qin's body, tracing the curve of the soundboard downward, until they reached the edges of those few fine cracks shaken out by the Dao light, where the patterns intercepted them, drawing them into the patterns, which, once moistened, became extremely fine silver threads. The qin made no sound. Because it too was thinking.

Cangxuan walked ahead, not looking back, but he heard the qin's silence. When a qin cultivator weeps, the qin does not sound—the qin heart is too chaotic, the qin stays silent. He slowed his steps by half a beat, waiting for Yuliuli to catch up and walk beside him. He still spoke no words, but his hand left the sword hilt for an instant, lightly patted her shoulder, then withdrew. That was the best comfort Cangxuan could offer. She held her qin, keeping pace with his steps. The passage lay ahead, light points still flashing—those were the anchor points left by the tips of the Fusang tree's roots. The anchor points lead to the Spirit Realm—there the sky is still gray turning to blue, Jiu'er still asleep, the mountain gate not yet rebuilt, they have not yet returned home.