Free Web NovelAutumn wind swept fallen leaves across the official road, horse hooves striking the packed clay with a monotonous clack.
Three days later.
The capital’s towering gray walls reappeared on the horizon. Su Ming led a rented nag by the reins, blending with merchants and displaced people entering the city, and slowly moved toward the gate with the crowded flow.
He still wore that washed-out gray long robe and a bamboo hat. But any sharp-eyed high-level cultivator would notice that after returning from Qingshi Town, something in Su Ming’s aura had undergone an extremely subtle transformation.
If the Su Ming from before was a sword kept in its scabbard yet still leaking traces of sharpness from time to time, then now he was like an ancient well, bottomless and unfathomable.
All the mundane anxieties, the worries for his family, the killing intent toward the Yongchang Marquis Manor — they had dissipated with the dawn mist after those three knocks that morning at the Su family old residence. His aura had retracted to the utmost, as if he had finally shrugged off a weight he had carried for five years. Even his footsteps on the bluestone slabs were light, as if dropping a single feather.
Past the bustling market, Su Ming returned with practiced familiarity to the secluded courtyard the External Affairs Office had arranged in the city’s eastern district.
He had barely pushed open the gate when Zhou Tong, the junior clerk from the External Affairs Office, came forward to meet him.
"Senior Su, you're back. The room has been cleaned every day. Hot water and spirit tea are ready."
Su Ming nodded slightly, voice gentle. "Thank you, Clerk Zhou. I need to meditate these days. If nothing urgent comes up, do not let anyone disturb me."
At dusk, the setting sun ran red across the sky.
Su Ming had just gone through a full cycle of the Like Water Art in the room, sealing the faint spiritual energy stirred by travel. A subtle green stream of light slipped silently through the window lattice and hovered before him.
It was Elder Qingquan’s communication talisman.
"Come to the main hall for tea."
Those five terse characters carried the casual familiarity unique to an elder.
Su Ming smoothed his robes and stepped out.
The External Affairs Office’s main hall was spacious and bright, four stout hundred-year-old nanmu pillars supporting a lofty dome. Elder Qingquan did not sit at the high seat. Instead, he had pulled a low tea table close to the open hall doors and sat cross-legged facing the few wind-tossed, withered lotus in the courtyard.
On the low table sat a small red-clay brazier with embers glowing strong. The water in the zisha kettle had boiled, gurgling as steam made the lid hop slightly, releasing a refined tea fragrance. Two plates of long-established capital pastries lay casually on the table.
Su Ming approached the low table and respectfully performed a junior's bow.
"Disciple pays respects, Master."
Elder Qingquan kept his head down, focused on wiping a white porcelain teacup with a square of cotton cloth.
"Back?"
Elder Qingquan’s voice was calm, like a family elder asking a nephew who’d just returned from market how he fared.
"Back." Su Ming sat cross-legged opposite the low table.
Elder Qingquan lifted the zisha kettle, wrist lightly poised, and poured the scalding water into the white cup with the precision of a silver thread. Tea leaves rolled and unfurled in the water.
"Is everyone at home well?"
"They are." Su Ming nodded. His voice carried a sense of released calm.
Elder Qingquan pushed the brewed tea toward Su Ming and gave a soft "hmm," asking nothing further.
For cultivators who had seen the world’s vicissitudes, knowing the outcome was "well" was enough.
Su Ming raised the cup and took a small sip. The tea slid down like a warm current of spiritual energy through his meridians, dispelling the chill of a late autumn evening.
Elder Qingquan also lifted a cup. His gaze swept over the courtyard wall toward the capital’s distant, endless palace eaves.
"You've been in the capital for a while now. Have you ever been to the Lantai Secret Garden?"
Su Ming paused slightly.
Lantai Secret Garden? Of course he remembered that name. When he had been a low-level compiler at the Hanlin Academy, colleagues had mentioned that place — a site the court listed as an absolute forbidden zone. Vice Director of the Imperial College Liu Wenyuan had even sternly warned him never to go near it.
Su Ming had always assumed it was merely the imperial family's private repository for top-secret archives or some royal treasure vault.
He put down his cup and shook his head obediently. "Disciple has never been there."
Elder Qingquan smiled, that smile carrying traces of years and experience. He set his cup down and produced from his sleeve a fragment of some unknown material, idly turning it in his hand.
"You think that’s just the Great Xing Emperor’s private vault? That’s a relic left behind by the Great Yan dynasty."
Elder Qingquan’s voice echoed through the open hall with a weight of time.
"Great Yan was the previous dynasty of Great Xing. In its day, it was a true immortal-cultivating dynasty."
Su Ming’s pupils contracted slightly.
An immortal-cultivating dynasty? In this age of Severing Heaven from Earth, where mortals are strictly prohibited from touching cultivation, those words sounded like a fairy tale.
Elder Qingquan did not notice the ripple in Su Ming’s heart; he continued to recount that blood-soaked history hidden by time.
"Three thousand years ago, there wasn’t an absolute boundary between the mundane and the immortal. The royal family and officials of the Great Yan dynasty cultivated techniques. They replaced walls with formations and armed their armies with talismans. Back then the capital’s spiritual energy was so abundant it condensed into mist."
A complex emotion flickered in Elder Qingquan’s eyes — respect mixed with derision.
"But mortal greed and ambition are never satiated. The last emperor of Great Yan was an extraordinarily talented and ruthless ruler. He attempted to turn against the sects, trying to gather a nation’s fortunes and forcefully build a colossus to rival the great sects. He even attempted to drive Cloud Hidden Sect out from the Northern Frontier."
At that, Su Ming’s breath stuttered.
He suddenly understood something.
There is no absolute right or wrong in this world, only different stances. What the Great Yan emperor sought for his people and dynasty — independence and dignity — might look like a heroic reign to mortals. To the sects, it was usurpation, it was suicide.
"And the result?" Su Ming asked softly.
"Result?" Elder Qingquan sneered. "A mere dynasty dares to cross the sects’ line? Cloud Hidden Sect personally dispatched three Nascent Soul cultivators. The Great Yan emperor died before the Hall of Golden Chimes. A million-cultivator army turned to ash. The entire capital was flattened under the supreme might of Nascent Soul cultivators."
Elder Qingquan lifted his cup and drained the now-cooling tea.
"After Great Yan's fall, Cloud Hidden Sect raised a pliant family from the ruins to found Great Xing and established one iron law with millions of corpses as foundation: mortal dynasties — their civil and military officials, imperial relatives — none may touch cultivation. Violators would face extermination of nine clans."
"This," he continued, "is one origin of the Chasm Between Immortals and Mortals."
