Panicked, Song Yi reached down to grasp his most powerful weapon — the obsidian axe. But the axe wasn't there. His body was no longer incorporeal, but it seemed that, aside from his clothes, he had no other possessions within this space.
Multiple thoughts flashed through his mind. Had he been kidnapped while he was sleeping? Drugged and brought to this prison? There were plenty of people angry with him, but he didn't believe any of them to be influential enough to do such a thing.
Besides, that couldn't account for the disappearance of the monarch.
But there was one other place where he could not contact the monarch: In the world of Qi.
Which meant that, most likely, this place had something to do with the meditative state he'd been in only moments prior. But if he were simply meditating, then why was he incapable of connecting with his true body and waking up? There were far too many unknowns.
On instinct, he checked his surroundings.
He was in a wide hallway, with plenty of room to maneuver. The cell he'd come out of was the dead end of the hallway. There were no other cells visible.
At the far end of the hallway was a wooden gate. Written on this gate in red paint was the character for "person."
Aside from this, he could see nothing else. The source of the voice from earlier wasn't clear. There were no other life forms present.
Gathering some Qi into his hand, Song Yi struck the wall with an open palm.
Slap!
Nothing happened. Not a single stone showed any signs of movement.
Behind him was a cell. To the sides were immovable walls. In front lay a mysterious gate.
It seemed as though there was no option but forward. Staying vigilant, Song Yi walked down the corridor. When he walked, his footsteps made no sound. This had nothing to do with the nature of the hallway, but rather Song Yi's history of thievery.
As he walked, he began to hate the feeling of being trapped. The hall was spacious, but he felt claustrophobic nonetheless. The corridor felt as though it were spinning, the walls closing in.
By controlling his breathing, he managed to push the sensation away. He continued further.
There was something he was forgetting. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite place what it was. It frustrated him that he couldn't even recall why it was important.
Song Yi looked at the door in the distance. It didn't feel as though it had come any closer. He simply continued to put one foot in front of the other.
Was there some kind of trick? There had to be. Some sort of Qi was creating an optical illusion that was blocking him from moving forward, maybe. But it was a straight corridor. It wasn't like he was walking in circles — he was certainly moving forward.
He took one of the torches from its socket on the wall as a test, carrying it with him as he continued.
What must have been hours later, the torch he held flickered out. Those still attached to the walls, though, continued to burn brightly. He never again encountered the empty socket he had left behind.
He began to feel light-headed. His body was weary, exhausted. How long he had been walking, he couldn't tell. Clearly, though, it had taken its toll on him. Deciding to take a rest, he sat down against the wall.
Still wary, he refused to sleep, and instead attempted to meditate. Perhaps there was another way out of this situation.
The meditative state was quickly interrupted by a sharp pain.
His palms hurt. They were bleeding. Somehow, he had dug his nails into his palms without realizing it.
But why? He hadn't done it intentionally.
A tear rolled down his face. Before he could brush it away, though, he froze. Looking at his hand, he saw it was skinny and wrinkled. One could be forgiven for thinking this was the hand of someone who had died decades prior.
"What's going on?" he asked aloud.
His voice sounded strange to him. He didn't recognize it. It contained none of the youthfulness that it usually did. Now, it was old and feeble.
"Who am I?"
----------
In a dimly lit corridor, a figure sat in a fetal position up against the wall. This person did not move. In fact, they hadn't moved in so long that they may have forgotten how.
Their facial features were hidden in shadow, difficult to see save for two dull eyes that shone in the torchlight.
They did not know how long they had sat against the wall. They could not remember.
They knew, at least, that it had been so long they'd forgotten their name.
They couldn't remember what had come before this hallway.
Perhaps they were born here. They would surely die here.
Sometimes, they spoke to themselves. They didn't always understand their words, but they spoke them nonetheless. It simply felt right.
"Hey, Old Man, are you there?" they asked.
The crackling of the mounted torches was all that answered the call.
The figure laughed. It was a dry, raspy chuckle.
"Of course not. The only old man here is me, after all…"
The laughing turned into feeble coughing. His body felt weaker than ever. The end was nearing, and he knew it.
"All this time, and I still can't find my purpose. Perhaps this is how it was meant to be."
He began to hum a tune to himself. The melody started out happy. It was bright and bouncy, flitting from one place to the next, unable to settle down. But hidden beneath those notes was an underlying somber. A solitude that was evidenced only in the absence of certain notes.
The pace of the song quickened. It became urgent, imploring. And then quiet.
With the quiet came a hallowing verse that echoed through the hall, enough to chill any living creature to the bone.
Finally, silence.
"I don't know how this song ends…" the figure muttered almost inaudibly. "But I know this can't be it. Perhaps there's still time to find one."
He didn't understand what motivated him. This tune was not one he had sung before. But the question that had been on his mind so long had finally been answered. He had found his purpose: To finish this song.
With bones that groaned with the pain of countless years of catharsis, the old man stood up.
Directly in front of him was a giant wooden gate, embellished with the character for "person."
"Hello, old friend. Would you please open up?"
He raised his hand to touch the door. His skin was so thin that the bone beneath was visible.
In response to his touch, the white paint on the door shifted. The "person" character was pushed to the side, accompanied by the character for "mountain."
Together, they made the character for "immortal."
This character, too, faded away as the door swung open slowly.
The walls began to shake.
"The Gate of Man has been opened." It had been a long time since the old man heard a voice other than his own in this corridor. It shook him to the core.
Still, he stepped through the gate.
When he did, he saw a grassy glade. Next to a lake was the body of a young man, unconscious.
The old man noticed this young man wore the same clothes as him. By now, he'd connected the dots.
The old, incorporeal Song Yi stood over his real body, ready to merge back into it once more.
Before he did, though, he saw another person standing nearby.
It was another old man, though this one wore much more fanciful clothing. His robe was exquisite, multi-layered and a perfect mix between fashion, comfort and practicality. He had a head of long, gray hair, atop which rested a simple golden crown.
His features were hardened, yet kind. In his eyes could be seen profound sorrow and weariness, but also determination. For a moment, Song Yi was stunned at the sight of him. Such a man might be seen no more than once in a lifetime.
Song Yi still had not regained his memories, but he could sense a deep connection to this fellow senior. He bowed.
The other man bowed back. "What happened?" he asked.
"My life lacked purpose, so I died."
The other man smiled. "You've found your purpose, then?"
"Yes."
"Then be reborn once more."
Song Yi laid down, the old version of him superimposed on top of the young.
His eyes opened.
The instant they did, the memories of his life lived in the corridor entered his mind.
"Was that you?" he asked internally.
"Yes."
"What was that place?"
"It's called the Gate of Man. As for what you experience within, it varies from person to person. For some people, it takes only a few minutes to traverse the corridor. For you, it seems to have taken a lifetime."
"If I hadn't left…" He let the question hang in the air.
"You would've died. Many do."
Song Yi didn't respond, so the monarch continued.
"But you didn't die. You opened the gate on your own. You've taken your first true step into the world of cultivation, kid. Good job."
Looking up to the sky, Song Yi could see the moon exactly where it had been when he began to meditate. It seemed that, even though so much time had passed for him, it had been no more than a few minutes within the real world.
With a distant look in his eyes, Song Yi wondered how Fang Li, Zhi Yue and Zhang Bo were doing. Had they seen the Gate of Man yet? For that matter, he didn't even know if Su Bai had.
He hadn't known them long. Aside from Su Bai, he'd scarcely interacted with the others, but they'd joined the sect through the same examination. He felt that had to count for something.
One could only sit and ruminate for so long. Eventually, as the sun began to rise over the horizon, Song Yi stood up and made his way back home.
By now, he figured the mob would have dispersed. Still, he wasn't about to risk it. He might be more powerful now, but he wasn't confident in taking on an entire horde of cultivators on his own.
Therefore, he took the scenic route — looping through one of the smaller cities. Lying in the north, this city was named Changshu. Out of the six cities on the ninth land mass, it was the second smallest.
The largest city, Nanchao, was a city to the far south of the land mass.
Song Yi reckoned that, given the direction that Zhang Bo, Fang Li and Zhi Yue walked in, they had most likely gone to a village near Nanchao. This was also the city that contained the Ninth Elder's residence.
As he made his way through the streets of Changshu, he found that the initial shock he'd experienced when he first saw the sect still hadn't worn off. Forget the grand and resplendent spire, even the mortals in the smaller cities enjoyed privileges that mortals in regular cities could never imagine.
For example, around the city could be seen small enclosed boxes, large enough to fit a few adults. When Song Yi had first seen someone enter one, he'd been curious and had decided to enter his own. Within, he'd seen a glowing ball of lightning-essence Qi that miraculously spoke to him.
After some tinkering, and not without some assistance from the monarch, he figured out that these boxes were built atop veins of metal-essence Qi that ran under the ground, all over the thirteen land masses. Using them allowed one to communicate vocally with someone inside a connected box. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before.
Another example was a metal box for holding food. The bottom of the box had a small tube at either end which met in the middle, connected by a complicated circle of runes. When he asked about it, Song Yi had been told that if water-essence Qi were put into one end, and wind-essence in the other, the formation engraved would combine it into a basic ice-essence Qi that could keep the box cool for weeks.
And such inventions weren't limited to just these. To describe them all, though, could take days.
Of course, these gadgets cost many sect credits. There were few to no novitiates who could afford such luxury.
Song Yi, however, was not like most novitiates. He was exceedingly rich at the moment, and as such had to force himself to keep his eyes from wandering.
It scared him when he realized that, upon seeing a shiny that caught his fancy, his first instinct was to actually pay for it rather than steal it.
Had his experiences at the Gate of Man changed him that much?
Feeling the sect credits in his holding bag, he chuckled. It wasn't the Gate of Man, but rather the age-old influencer: Money.
Sure enough, he soon came across one shiny that he couldn't pass up. It was at a good price, too.
"Storage Rings for sale — as cheap as 10,000 sect credits!"
Looking at the shiny rings in the window, he wondered, not for the first time, how there were mortals in the lands below who could get their hands on such artifacts. After all, they utilized a space-essence Qi formation that one could only power with Vital Qi.
The Vital Qi cost wasn't much — perfectly within an acceptable range, even for a mortal. But regardless, the mortals outside the Blue Moon Sect should have no knowledge of Qi in general.
Song Yi didn't ponder on the topic too long, though. After all, he'd left the mortal world behind him.
Five minutes later, he had a newly acquired spatial ring. He'd bought the cheapest one he could find, and had even managed to haggle the price down to 8300 sect credits. He may have become a moneybags, but he was aware that that had its limitations, and wasn't a recurring resource at the moment.
The ring was a simple silver band, decorated only by the spatial formation engraved within. Sending some Vital Qi into it, a small vortex opened up. Closing one eye so he could peek inside, he saw a dimly lit space, 125 cubic metres in size. This was something unique about space-essence; it held the power of the fourth dimension.
Grinning with youthful excitement, he put the sack he'd been carrying inside the space. As it neared the vortex, it began to contract, expanding once more when it reached the other side.
"It's depressing to see how far society has regressed…" Emperor Wang muttered.
Song Yi was taken aback. Regressed? Wasn't all this stuff groundbreaking? Incredible? When he asked for more info, the old man continued.
"When I reigned, storage rings of much higher quality than this one were as common as grains of sand. As for those other toys, while they may be novel to you, to me they're just poor imitations of what my imperial scholars developed."
Song Yi had long ago become accustomed to the monarch's arrogant tone. It no longer fazed him. While another man insulting his new home may have irritated Song Yi, Wang Anzhou was actually qualified to speak such words. Much to Song Yi's chagrin, he couldn't help but feel some measure of reverence for the old man. This was especially so after seeing his true appearance.
Therefore, when he heard these words, his reaction was one of fascination. He wanted to hear more.
Before their conversation could continue, something else caught his eye.
It was none other than Su Bai, who was walking down the street. She didn't seem to have noticed him. Remembering Wang Anzhou's advice to give her space, he was about to branch off and take a roundabout route home; but he stopped himself.
Su Bai was entering a large building, along with quite a few other novitiates. The sign above the building read: "Changshu Lecture Hall."
In truth, Song Yi had been curious about these lectures since he had joined the village and first heard about them. On a few occasions, he had considered attending. What stopped him, of course, was the monarch. He didn't refuse to let Song Yi go, but with him around, there wasn't much point in Song Yi's attending.
That said, Song Yi's intrigue hadn't been sated, and now that he was already here, it was an ideal opportunity.
Most importantly, with so many people entering, it would be easy to keep out of Su Bai's sight.
So, knowing there was no better time than the present, Song Yi merged into the crowd and entered the hall.
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