Chapter 113: It’s Been Two Hundred Years Since Anyone Noticed

The rain was still falling when Zhì Yuǎn tucked the dark jade seal at his waist and left the room.

He did not call Hāi’na in the smaller courtyard, nor did he seek any of the other maids Lī’ya had placed at his disposal. Walking alone through the internal galleries he had already mapped during the past month, he followed the inclination of the wider veins of the floor until he reached a high arch of dark wood, guarded by two sentinels.

It was enough for Zhì Yuǎn to raise the seal to chest height for the veterans to look away from the fox mask on his face and clear the passage.

Beyond the arch, the corridor did not end in a closed room. The interior of the trunk opened into a monumental cylindrical void that rose through seven floors carved directly into the heart of the branch.

Roots as thick as bridges crossed the empty space in a spiral, linking one level to another without need of columns or stone stairs. Along the curved walls, thousands of natural niches in the living wood held the clan’s collection—not in fragile paper scrolls that would mold with the humidity of the woods, but in thin blades of petrified bark, wide bones engraved by fire, and plaques of jade and translucent amber where ancient diagrams shone.

Throughout the entire past month, whenever he walked the galleries near that sector, Zhì Yuǎn saw disciples passing at any moment with piles of bark and tomes under their arms. Now, however, the seven floors were completely empty, although the small burners on the side workbenches still released the last thread of smoke from recently extinguished incense.

The only sound on the ground floor came from a straw broom sweeping dry leaves near a low root table.

An old man with a slightly bent back and a linen tunic without insignia gathered the dust in a corner with slow movements. His face was covered in wrinkles, his sparse hair entirely white, and two soft, drooping ears—similar to those of an old forest dog—swayed lightly with each pass of the broom. There was not a single trace of Qi leaking from his body, which, for one who already felt no Qi at all, said little.

When Zhì Yuǎn’s boot stepped on the edge of the hall, the floor yielded that silent fraction under the weight of his flesh.

The old man did not look at his feet, but stopped the broom at once, leaning the handle against the wall before turning with a serene smile.

"You can put that stone in your sleeve, boy," the old man said. "Anyone who enters through that door wearing that mask on his face does not need to show the seal of the girl Lī’ya. And anyone who needed to show the seal would not have the courage to wear that mask."

Zhì Yuǎn stopped three steps from the table and tucked the seal back into the fold of his tunic.

"The guards outside seemed to insist on seeing the jade," Zhì Yuǎn commented.

"It’s their job," the old man said, wiping his hands on a cloth tied to his belt. "I am Mū’en. I’ve been taking care of the dust of these seven floors for longer than I like to count. Did the girl send you to fetch the containment arrays of the sixth floor or the vein notes of the fifth? She always thinks my legs are too slow to climb up there."

"She didn’t send me to fetch anything," Zhì Yuǎn answered. "I came on my own. And I intend to start on the first floor."

Mū’en’s ears moved lightly and he tilted his head, looking at the mask with curiosity.

"The first?" Mū’en ran his eyes over the lowest shelves around them. "Down here there are only the breathing techniques of children who are still shedding their teeth and the old chronicles of when the branches were opened. The youths who come up to this sector usually pass straight by me as if the first floor had some contagious disease."

"I don’t know anything about this tree beyond the corridor where I live, Elder," Zhì Yuǎn said, looking at the bridges that rose to the distant ceiling. "And I doubt that the floor where the guardian of the building chose to place his own table is the least important."

Mū’en stopped his hand on the back of a bench, measuring the man before him with greater care.

"And what makes you think I am the guardian of this place, boy?" Mū’en asked. "I’m only the old man who oils the barks so they don’t crack in the rain. You yourself must have noticed that I don’t even have the strength to chase a bird from the window."

"The entire clan is covered by surveillance arrays and protection formations, but in here there are seven floors of secrets of a hegemonic lineage without a single lock on the shelves," Zhì Yuǎn answered, glancing at the recently extinguished burner on the neighboring workbench. "Besides that, I spent the past month seeing disciples enter and leave at any moment of the day, but now the entire place is deserted, the incense has just been put out, and you stopped the broom at the exact instant I stepped inside. If this hall has no formations, it is because its own owner guards it... and, if I were suspicious, I would say he sent everyone out just to speak with me alone."

Mū’en remained silent for an instant before releasing a short laugh, striking his hand on the tabletop.

"It’s been at least two hundred years since any brat of this branch noticed that the shelves have no locks!" the old man said, pulling a second bench with his foot. "And I confess that I sent the youngsters to study outside as soon as I realized you were coming this way. Sit there, sit there. It’s been far too long since someone appeared who uses their eyes for something other than looking for mystical techniques."

Zhì Yuǎn walked to the table and sat on the bench.

Mū’en took a jade pot warmed on a sap stone and poured two bowls of a tea that smelled of honey and dry bark, pushing one toward Zhì Yuǎn before sitting on the other side.

"When the guards commented that the Patriarch’s youngest had left the den with a human without cultivation wearing her mask, I thought it was just another tantrum to irritate the suitors," Mū’en said, blowing on his own tea. "Then that grumpy Vhōl came down grumbling that you had held the recoil of a pillar with only your hand and that your excuse was dealing with heavy work. Now that I see you up close, even I became curious to know where you came from. No man from the human families of the plain carries bones like yours, much less speaks this way."

"My family always lived isolated inside a pocket world," Zhì Yuǎn answered, taking the bowl. "We grew up under ancient methods that demanded forging the body from the cradle, with no contact at all with the lineages outside. When I was expell... left there, I suffered the accident that locked my foundation and ended up falling into your forest. Since we had never seen half-humans up close, nor a structure like this tree, I wanted to know the history here from the root before touching cultivation."

Mū’en arched his brows and nodded slowly.

"A closed domain from the ancient eras, is it?" Mū’en said. "There are still some of those fragments hidden in the folds of the continent. No wonder a young man coming from a place like that knows how to wait before taking the next step. But if you came to me for our history, where do you want to begin? With the divisions of the lands or with the founding of the tree?"

"With the very branch where I am living," Zhì Yuǎn said. "I walked through this sector during the past weeks. Lady Sī’vra mentioned that she had many sons and daughters throughout the ages, but the main corridors are always empty. In more than a month here, I have not seen a single brother or sister of Lī’ya, not even in the rounds or the internal courtyards."

Mū’en’s expression softened. The old man lowered the bowl to the table and looked at the high cracks of the ceiling, through which the gray light of the rain entered.

"You did not see them because time does not forgive even those born at the top of this tree," the archivist said, voice soft. "The people down below look at the dome and think that being born of the blood of two Immortals guarantees eternity in the cradle. But the blood only provides a longer walk. The final barrier is still solitary and charges a high price."

Mū’en ran his thumb along the rim of the bowl.

"I saw all of them grow," the old man continued. "They were good boys and girls. Some had their father’s calm temper, others took their mother’s sharp tongue. They lived a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years trying to accumulate strength to take the final step, but... one by one, over the years, we had to take them down below and return them to the earth among the main roots. That is why the quarters of this floor are so silent. The Patriarch and Lady Sī’vra never wanted to hand the empty rooms to the secondary branches."

"The Lady said that most did not manage to cross the barrier," Zhì Yuǎn observed. "Then there was one who managed."

Mū’en’s eyes shone again.

"You really do pay attention to words, eh?" He leaned his body forward, animated. "Yes, there was one. Only one before our Lī’ya was born. Their firstborn, Kī’ra. It has been tens of thousands of years since that happened, but even today, if you shout her name near the older elders of the Five Hegemonies, half of them are likely to feel their necks ache."

"Did she govern the clan?" Zhì Yuǎn asked.

"Govern is far too mild a word for what that girl did," Mū’en said, shaking his head. "In that time the Red Leaf was already strong because of the Patriarch and Lady Sī’vra, but the five great lineages of pure Spiritual Beasts had their noses too high. They looked at us, who carry mixed blood of human and beast, as if we were second-rate half-breeds. They lived testing our borders, and the Patriarch always held his hand to avoid an open war that would unbalance the world."

The old man pointed to one of the enormous dark bone plaques fixed on the third floor.

"Only Kī’ra did not take her father’s patience," Mū’en recounted. "On the day she crossed the bottleneck and stepped into the Immortal Realm, she did not even wait for the celebration feast to end in the dome. Without taking a single guard, she went to the territory of the Sovereign Thunder Tigers. Their ancestor at the time thought he could roar thickly at a newly Immortal, but in the end Kī’ra tore one of the fangs from his mouth, carried the bone on her shoulder, and used it to drive the warning into the gate of the other four Hegemonies."

Zhì Yuǎn glanced at the bone high above.

"During the following years she governed this entire world with an iron fist," Mū’en said, taking another sip of tea. "She subjugated the Five Hegemonies one after another until not a single lineage leader remained who dared raise his voice in front of a Red Leaf tail. This meeting happening up there right now, where the beast chiefs and the human representatives come to our tree to settle the rules before the gathering of young talents? She was the one who imposed the custom before she left."

"And where did she go?" Zhì Yuǎn inquired.

"Up," Mū’en answered, pointing his chin upward. "After she placed the prestige of our clan so high that no one else had the courage to face her shadow, she found this world too small and dull. She gathered all her strength on a stormy day, forced the sky open in the middle of the Tribulation, and ascended to the higher planes. We never had news again, as always happens with those who ascend."

The old man set the bowl on the table and released a long sigh.

"The tens of thousands of years of peace made the younger ones of the five lineages forget the pain of that era and return to walking with chins raised along the walkways," Mū’en continued. "But the old ones up there still remember. When Lī’ya did not yet reach my knee and we discovered that her natural talent was greater than her older sister’s... greater than that of any being who has ever breathed in this world since the Sky-Tree sprouted from the ground... the beast chiefs nearly lost their fur from fright. If they live pushing their heirs onto her today, it is out of dread that another demon like Kī’ra may arise and her blood not be bound to theirs."

"And none of them tried to cut her before she grew?" Zhì Yuǎn asked. "Where I came from, when someone is born capable of overturning the table in the future, the other sides rarely wait for the child to have age to raise a hand."

Mū’en opened a half-smile and shook his head.

"That closed domain of yours must have been a very lively place," the old man commented. "But out here the knife does not run loose like that. It is not only because the Patriarch and Lady Sī’vra would turn the continent inside out if anyone touched a single hair of hers. It is because of the very balance that the Laws of this world impose on those who sit up there."

The archivist set his index finger on the wood, tracing a slow circle around the bowl.

"Road fights and deaths among the younger ones happen every day, of course. But the Hegemonies have not entered a real war for a long time. This entire world has already been measured and divided between our tree and the five lineages for many eras. When the board is already settled like this, no old one up there can simply come down to kill the neighbor’s heiress without breaking his own roof."

Mū’en laughed low, waving his hand in the air.

"In truth, the only ones who still run somewhat loose outside that account and could bring some instability to the ancient division would be the human clans... but, let’s be honest, that would never happen."

Zhì Yuǎn kept his face motionless behind the mask.

"And even with the five lineages fearing another Kī’ra, Lī’ya preferred to study," he said.

"She preferred!" Mū’en agreed. "Instead of wanting to break the world in half like her sister, this girl grew up without patience for disputing territory. She only wants to know about formations, arrays, and hiding in her room far from the crowd."

The archivist rested his arms on the table and lowered his voice a little.

"Do you know why I emptied the hall to speak with you today, boy?" Mū’en asked. "Because the two of you carry unique physiques that this world almost never sees, and she seems to truly like you. That girl spent the entire last four weeks sending her little rabbit to fetch piles of writings about unique physiques and sealed cores here with me. After seeing her locked in her own ideas for so long, it gladdens me to see her so dedicated to someone besides herself."

Zhì Yuǎn inclined his head lightly.

"I am flattered by the Elder’s words," he answered. "I owe my life to Lī’ya. She has her own ideals about what she expects for herself, and I would never do anything to harm her."

Mū’en released an amused breath through his nose, shaking his head.

"Ideals do not usually hold up in the face of a woman’s emotions," the old man said. "I am sure that a man like you is quite... skilled, and that sooner or later even our little fox will end up falling for your sweet talk."

Zhì Yuǎn let the provocation pass and looked once more at the roots rising through the seven floors.

"Elder Mū’en," Zhì Yuǎn said. "In the ancient records of my family, and in the closed domain where I grew up, the rule was always hard: when a cultivator takes the step beyond Immortal Establishment in a place devoid of Immortal Qi, the space cannot bear the weight and expels him. But out here Lī’ya’s sister remained for entire years governing the continent after becoming Immortal, and her parents have walked freely for hundreds of thousands of years. Even the leaders of other powers..."

Zhì Yuǎn lowered his gaze to the thin smoke rising from the pot.

"I have been breathing the air of this world for almost two months. It is much denser and more alive than that of the place I left, but it does not have the weight of the Immortal Qi I have already felt in ancient ruins. What makes the laws of these lands so different as to sustain Immortals without the energy that should feed them?"

The smile on Mū’en’s face faded little by little. He studied the dark slits of the mask in silence, without the earlier playful tone.

"For someone who came looking for children’s techniques on the first floor, your questions live quite high up, boy," Mū’en murmured.

The old man rested his hands on his knees and stood, taking the pot by the handle.

"Come with me and bring your bowl," Mū’en called, walking toward the first ramp that rose to the upper levels. "What you want to know is on the fourth floor, and it does not appear in any catalog."