Cultivation System: Elder Edition

Chapter 303

Silent Sage (VI)

Lu Yuhan leisurely grabbed toward a porcelain bowl sitting on the table, taking a single blood-red cherry from it and popping it into his mouth, biting down hard enough to tear through the seed.

His lazy eyes wandered from the city over to the edge beyond the border, where he noted the crowd gathering a few moments back.

What for?

A fight, most likely.

It wasn't a rare occurrence--every year, he'd bear witness to hundreds of fights like these, where the opponents swore up and down that one duel would decide who was the rightful owner of whatever garbage they managed to unearth from the lake. It rarely ever ended the dispute, though at least the show they'd put on would occasionally be fun.

This time, though, it looked unlikely; the challenger was some brat in the Foundation Realm, and his opponent looked to be in the Revolving Core Realm.

"Father," the doors to the room swung open as his light came through, his expression immediately alighting.

"Ah, Yawen, come, join your father for a drink." He sat up and plumped the few cushions on the long sofa rammed against the wall. She nodded faintly and sat down while he poured them both some red wine into gilded, golden goblets. "What did the Shaman say?"

"No changes," she said. "None of the Words revealed anything."

"Tsk," Lu Yuhan clicked his tongue; he didn't expect much, yet was still disappointed nonetheless.

"It's still early," she comforted, though didn't sound particularly confident either.

It made sense--he'd been trying for almost four hundred years to discover the 'Guardian's' identity. He'd invited array masters, alchemists, formation experts, and even a Senior at the Nirvana Realm, but it was for naught. None were able to find anything out of the ordinary within the lake.

The 'treasures' themselves and their origin were easily discerned--seven rivers wash down into the Moon Lake in total, though only one of them mattered: Time River. It was a split of the massive, area-spanning Void Abyss River, and whatever treasures came into the Moon Lake came that way.

It wasn't odd; he himself had once discovered a divine Phoenix Plume in the Void Abyss River, as whoever dared actually enter it had a good chance of finding something. The issue was surviving and getting out.

The treasures themselves were inconsequential; even an occasional higher-tier piece wasn't enough to stir anything within him, but the Guardian's identity... it kept him up.

His last resort was summoning a Shaman--it was beneath him, as he considered the wretched things subhuman, resorting to inscribing Will of the Heavens onto the piece of paper, an act so sacrilegious they were deemed heretics among his brethren. And yet, he was that desperate. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

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"What's happening over there?" Yawen asked.

"What always happens," he said, taking a sip of wine. "Pride got in the way of wisdom, and now somebody was going to die."

He was happy when people died--of course he was. After all, with each death, he was coming closer and closer to paying off his sins; if he somehow did manage to grow the Black Vine from infancy to full bloom, there was a good chance he would be Reborn.

"A kid is fighting?" Yawen said, prompting him to glance at her; he loved her dearly, but his daughter was not made of his kin. He had no heart to drag her into the other matters, as he fully intended to leave her the city once it was time to go, but he did wish she was at least a bit more... callous.

"Do you plan on stepping in?"

"... shouldn't I?"

"All cultivators write their own stories, Yawen," he said. "That boy chose to fight--for what reason, we do not know. But he chose it of his own will."

"That doesn't mean he needs to die. I've made many mistakes before, too, Father, and I was always saved."

"..." He didn't want to argue with her, as it was an argument he would never win. Not because he was wrong, but because Yawen was thrice as stubborn as her mother, a woman who chose death over staying silent.

"They're starting." She stood up, Qi pooling underneath her feet.

Lu Yuhan lazily glanced over toward the field, wanting to see just what gave the boy courage. Almost immediately, his mind froze.

While his opponent(s) (as it turned out, six men attacked him all at once) flashed forth like a bolt of lightning, he unsheathed the sword from the scabbard with such weight that Lu Yuhan himself felt the blade's resonance all the way here--spacetime around him crashed and crumbled as the sword fell... except it didn't.

It fooled even his eyes, though just briefly--for his attackers, though, it was akin to cleaning their necks and accepting their doom.

The sword strike fell like a bolt, and it poured out such immeasurable quantities of the purest Sword Qi Lu Yuhan had felt in over a thousand years that he shot up to his feet, too.

The array of energy carved out a gash over a mile long, decorated with the blood and shattered bits and pieces of six men who attacked him. It was so impossibly mind-altering that his heart stopped; it wasn't possible. He refused to believe it.

"What... just happened?" Yawen uttered what he was thinking, as she appeared even more flabbergasted than he was. "Did... did that boy just kill them all?"

No. He didn't just kill them. He annihilated them.

He frowned, realizing something--looking back at his own journey of cultivation, he realized he would have had to reach Void Transformation Realm just to endure that attack.

Against some brat in the Foundation Establishment Realm.

Heaven's Chosen!

It was rarer than most other things in the world, especially here; Heaven's Chosen were as vaguely defined as anything else, but his Master's words deeply resonated within him:

"You will see something that will not make sense in any capacity, yet it will be more real than all your other experiences combined."

As the dust settled and the gash became even more apparent, the sound of the boy putting away the sword into the scabbard was so loud it echoed throughout the entire city.

... no, it wasn't the sound that was loud--it was that the city was so silent, it was as though there was nothing and no one in it. It felt as though everyone present held their breaths in a collective prayer and a plea that they not be the next target of it.

"Wow," Yawen exclaimed; the light in her eyes were that of stars, and Lu Yuhan immediately realized she had fallen for the boy.

Yawen had fallen for a lot of men and women in the past, but none of it ever amounted to much, as she would crush them all without breaking a sweat.

Except, Lu Yuhan knew better than anyone that if that boy used that attack--or gods forbid, an even stronger one--on his daughter... she would be bedridden for months after.

"Father," she turned toward him, beaming. "I wish to meet that boy, no matter what. Please, make sure to protect him while I investigate who he is!"