The southern mountain pass of the Grand Desolate Forest was bathed in the mellow amber haze of late afternoon.
Along the rugged granite defile where the Clear-Stone River cut through the bluffs, the newly fortified gateway of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall stood tall and proud. Built from massive blocks of dressed gray slate and heavy with Tie Shan’s refined star-iron brackets, the gate was imposing enough to turn aside a marching army.
Yet unlike the grim castle gates of the human empires or the bone-strewn barricades of demonic territories, this gateway carried an air of quiet, bustling domestic life.
Beside the heavy iron-oak gates sat a sturdy wooden registration arbor roofed with split wooden roof shingles. A cheerful badger clerk wearing brass-rimmed glasses sat behind a polished pine desk, dipping an ink brush into a stone well while registering incoming wagons from Patriarch Lu Feng’s merchant network. Outside the booth, two young earth-bear sentries in bronze-studded leather tunics leaned comfortably against their tower shields, chatting amiably with a mortal wagon driver who was adjusting the harness on his spirit-oxen.
Hanging directly above the arched gateway was a sign carved from golden cedar wood, lacquered against rain and inscribed with neat, welcoming characters:
“All Who Enter in Peace Shall Find Welcome. Register for Tea at the Desk.”
Down the dusty road that wound through the lower pine woods, a lone figure shuffled toward the gate.
He looked like the very definition of a wandering vagabond who had spent thirty years sleeping in dry ditches. His coarse green daoist robes were faded to the color of dried moss, patched at both elbows with gray hemp, and frayed to strings along the lower hem. A bird’s nest of wild, uncombed gray hair was bound at the crown of his head with a brittle piece of dry mountain straw. His calloused, bare feet were strapped into grass sandals with frayed bindings that slapped softly against the stones with every step.
Tied to the hemp rope around his waist was a huge, dried bottle gourd, its pale yellow surface polished satiny-smooth by decades of affectionate handling. In his right hand, he carried neither a glittering flying sword nor an ancient spiritual magic charm. He merely swung a flexible, three-foot branch plucked from a roadside weeping willow, peeling off leaves with his thumb as he walked.
He stopped ten paces from the wooden registration desk, lifted his head. Then he flared his nostrils.
Sniff. Sniff.
The old wanderer closed his eyes, his wrinkled, leathery face softening into an expression of near-religious ecstasy.
“Mother of Heaven...” the old man rasped, his voice sounding like dry river pebbles rolling underfoot. “That bouquet. Crisp mountain peach, cold rock-underground water bed water, three seasons in fragrant cedar casks... And not a single grain of sulfur or bitter potion-made residue. Forty years I’ve wandered from the Eastern Sea to the Western Barrens, drinking horse-piss wine sold by greedy sect elders... And the greatest vintage on the continent is sitting in a forest full of badgers.”
He unhooked the hollow gourd from his belt, shook it upside down, and peered inside.
Drip.
A single, miserable drop of sour millet liquor fell onto his dry tongue. The old man grimaced, smacking his chapped lips with deep disgust.
“Empty,” he muttered, tossing the willow branch from hand to hand. “Fully, tragically empty. A crime against the heavens, a disaster of the Dao.”
The old man took another step toward the archway. Then, the heat around the gate suddenly plummeted.
The crickets in the roadside weeds fell silent. The draft oxen hitched to the merchant wagons ceased chewing their cud, their ears pinning flat against their skulls as an instinctual, primal terror gripped their animal hearts.
From the shadow beneath the stone gate arch, twelve feet of midnight black glass detached itself from the wall.
Xiao Hei stepped into the sunlight.
The sky moon-wolf king moved without displacing a single grain of dust. His jet-black coat seemed to swallow the surrounding sunlight, silver star-pattern runes blazing with sharp lunar clarity along his flanks. He didn’t growl. He didn’t bare his fangs. But the sheer, hungry gravity streaming from his frame was heavy enough to crack the flat stone slabs beneath his claws.
Behind the desk, the badger clerk dropped his brush in shock. The two bear sentries right away dropped into low defensive stances. Their hands gripped the handles of their broadswords.
Xiao Hei ignored his sentries. His burning ruby eyes were locked with laser-like intensity upon the ragged old drunkard in grass sandals.
An apex sky beast bound to Lin Xiao’s core. Then, Xiao Hei possessed an instinct for spiritual power far sharper than any mortal fortune-telling mirror. Beneath the threadbare green robes, beneath the uncombed gray hair and the dusty feet, Xiao Hei sensed a deep pit.
It wasn’t the noisy, roaring aura of a demonic elder like Han Gu. It was something infinitely more terrifying: a vast, bottomless void of pure, formless sword intent. It felt like standing on the edge of a bottomless canyon during a silent hurricane, where a single unseen breath could sever a mountain range in two.
Xiao Hei lowered his snout by two inches, his silver-tipped tail rigid as a spear.
“Identify yourself, traveler,” Xiao Hei sent, his mental voice cold and sharp as frozen iron. “State your sect, your intent, and why a Late Nascent Soul grandmaster approaches our gate dressed as a beggar.”
The old man didn’t flinch. He didn’t reach for a hidden weapon.
Instead, he slowly raised his right hand, holding the green willow twig before his chest.
With a languid, feather-light flick of his wrist, the old man drew a small, lazy circle in the empty air with the tip of the twig.
SHIIIING.
The sound was not loud. But it was so pure, so exactly total, that every sword, dagger, and iron plowshare within three hundred yards shook in sympathetic deep ring.
The circle of formless sword intent didn’t strike Xiao Hei. It merely hung in the air between them. A flawless, semi-clear barrier that fully isolated the old man from Xiao Hei’s lunar gravity field. A dry pine needle falling from a branch above drifted into the circle. Instead of being shredded, the needle floated down in slow motion, cut cleanly into two matching halves along its natural cellular grain.
“Good wolf,” the old man chuckled, his squinted gray eyes crinkling with genuine, appreciative mirth. “Fine star-pattern runes, pure lunar bloodline, and reflexes like cold starlight. If you were raised by those hypocrites in the Heavenly Sword Manor, they would have locked you in an iron cage and forced you to pull their grand elders’ golden war chariots. But here you stand, guarding a wooden gate with your head held high.”
The old man lowered the willow twig, resting his weight against it as if it were a walking staff.
“Old Gu has no sect,” he said, scratching his unwashed chin. “Threw that garbage away three hundred years ago. And as for my intent...”
He held up his hollow gourd, shaking it so the dry seeds inside rattled pathetically.
“My gourd has been bone-dry for three days, my throat feels like someone rubbed it with dry river sand. Your valley smells like peach heaven. I came for a drink. That’s all. Just one decent flagon of wine before my old bones turn to dust.”
“Host alert,” the Dao Spirit’s voice echoed with urgent clarity within Lin Xiao’s mindscape. “Entity confirmed as Gu Qingfeng, known in land-wide records as the Wandering Sword Saint. Training sits at Peak Late Nascent Soul, possessing Ninth-Tier Formless Sword Intent. Target is capable of bisecting an entire mountain volcano bowl with a common branch. However, hostility index registers at total zero. Subject’s mental centers are entirely focused on obtaining ethanol.”
From behind the registration arbor, the screen of hanging willow fronds parted.
Lin Xiao stepped out onto the gravel path, dressed in his cloud-gray scholar robes. His dark hair was tied loosely with an azure ribbon. His hands were tucked comfortably into his wide sleeves. He took in the wild gray hair, the threadbare green robes, and the willow twig with a calm, discerning gaze.
Xiao Hei stepped back half a pace. He fell into position at Lin Xiao’s right shoulder, though his ruby eyes remained vigilant.
Lin Xiao smiled, offering a polite, relaxed bow with hands clasped together—the respectful greeting of a junior scholar welcoming a quirky mountain traveler.
“Senior Gu,” Lin Xiao said, his clear deep warm and untroubled. “Traveling forty miles through dry pine dust with an empty gourd is a terrible hardship for any lover of vintage. A man of your refined palate shouldn’t have to drink sour millet wash.”
Gu Qingfeng’s eyes widened slightly. He looked the eighteen-year-old youth up and down. He felt the subtle, impossible depth of the nine-colored Ancient Chaos Core hidden beneath those gray robes.
“You’re the blue blob,” Gu Qingfeng observed bluntly. He pointed his willow twig at Lin Xiao’s chest. “The one who ate Han Gu’s five-hundred-foot demon pot like a bowl of cold dumplings.”
“I’m Lin Xiao,” he replied with a modest chuckle. “And that pot was far too greasy to eat every day. But our peach wine, on the other hand, is quite pleasant. Would Senior care to step into the shade and try a cup?”
Gu Qingfeng stared at the smiling youth for three full seconds. Then, a wide, gap-toothed grin split the old swordsman’s leathery face.
“Boy,” Gu Qingfeng said, tucking his willow twig into his belt, “you just said the magic words.”