Myriad Rivers to the Sea

The experts stood back up but kept their heads slightly down while the frail old man hobbled forward. The silence in the secluded garden grew heavy as the rhythmic tapping of his wooden cane echoed against the stone tiles. This was Ancestor Guizhong and his presence demanded the utmost respect from every single member of the Worldheart Clan. He looked frail enough to be blown away by a strong gust of wind but the energy humming beneath his aged skin told a very different story.

Guizhong stopped near the edge of the cleansing pool and fixed his sharp eyes on the group of embarrassed experts. He looked at the broken artifacts scattered on the nearby table and then shifted his gaze toward Tielan and Li Yu.

"Why are so many elders gathered in this garden?" Guizhong asked with a raspy voice that grated like two stones rubbing together. "You look like a flock of lost birds staring at a storm. Tell me what is going on here."

Supreme Elder Feng had no reason to hide the truth. Feng respectfully explained the situation regarding Li Yu and detailed the strange invisible barrier hiding a foreign energy within the young man. The elder recounted the failed tests using the Resonant Echo Stone and the unresponsive cleansing pool while emphasizing that their best methods could not pierce the veil at all..

Guizhong listened without interrupting and a dangerous spark of intense curiosity ignited within his aged eyes. He had spent his entire life studying the intricate mechanics of the inner world and an anomaly that could defeat the tools of his clan was a rare treasure in his eyes.

"This situation piques my interest greatly," Guizhong muttered while taking a slow step toward Li Yu. "The tools you rely on are flawed because they lack a true consciousness. I possess a natural affinity for inner worlds and I can detect far more than a simple glowing stone. Allow me to examine the boy closer. I wish to see this invisible barrier that has left everyone stumped for myself."

Supreme Elder Feng looked at Tielan and waited for her permission. Tielan frowned and assessed the frail old man standing before her because something about him didn’t seem quite right. She respected his seniority and understood his unique background as an innate inner world possessor but she did not like the hungry gleam shining in his eyes. She had seen such eyes before but this was supposed to be a respected elder that didn’t have a bad reputation which was why this situation was quite confusing to her.

"You may look," Tielan agreed with a stern tone while stepping slightly closer to her son. "But you will do nothing more than observe. We came here for an evaluation and not an experiment."

"I only seek to learn," Guizhong replied while offering a polite nod.

They allowed him to proceed and the old man shuffled forward until he stood directly behind Li Yu. Guizhong raised a trembling hand and placed his wrinkled palm flat against the center of Li Yu's back. The ancestor closed his eyes and funneled a thin sliver of his consciousness into the young man.

Having been born with an innate inner world, he also obtained talents that others did not possess. One of those talents was the ability to actually see and probe another person’s inner world with their permission. The results varied from person to person though. Some he was able to see their entire inner world while for others it was only murky details.

Li Yu stood still and allowed the energy to enter his body. He felt a strange sensation wash over his core as the awareness of the ancestor navigated his way towards the space containing a person’s inner world.

The old man pushed his awareness deep into the spiritual center of the young cultivator and accomplished what the array tools could not. Guizhong managed to stand before the projection of the inner world within Li Yu. He could see the blurry outline of the sprawling domain and the faint shapes of the laws hiding behind the natural veil. It was an incredible feat of cultivation prowess for someone to project their consciousness so close to another person's private realm without causing an immediate rejection.

Guizhong marveled at the sturdy foundation that he felt even though most of the things before him still looked quite blurry. He then shifted his attention toward the far edge of the domain. He noticed the dark shadow clinging to the boundary and felt the unnatural rhythm pulsing from the invisible barrier. The old man felt a surge of academic greed and he could not resist the urge to peek behind the curtain. Guzhong gathered his spiritual presence and gently pushed his consciousness against the barrier to read the foreign laws hiding within the dark ocean.

The reaction was instantaneous and terrifying.

A violent force erupted from the inner world itself and shattered the conscious projection of the ancestor in a single heartbeat. The invisible force that had been blocking all of the probing thus far reacted to the intrusion like a sleeping dragon waking up to defend its territory. The spiritual backlash translated directly into the physical realm as a shockwave of concussive energy exploded between the two men.

The sudden blast sent Li Yu flying forward through the air. Tielan reacted with the speed of a seasoned warrior and darted forward to catch her son before he could crash into the basin. She wrapped her arms around him and absorbed the remaining momentum and bringing them both to a quick stop without injuring Li Yu at all.

The same shockwave pushed Guizhong backward as well. The frail old man stumbled and his wooden cane scraped harshly against the ground as he fought to maintain his balance. The surrounding elders gasped in alarm and rushed forward to support their ancestor but Guizhong waved them away with a shaking hand.

"What do you think you are doing?!" Tielan roared as her fierce aura flared to life and pushed the elders away. She glared at the old man while checking Li Yu for any signs of internal injury. "Did you just try to launch a sneak attack against my son under the guise of offering protection?"

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Tielan’s protective instincts flared as she already did not like the look of this old man and almost went for her weapon but she quickly paused and reassessed the situation. Guizhong was an expert with centuries of combat experience and a strong cultivation base. If he truly wanted to harm her son, he could have done far more damage than a simple repulsive shockwave. The energy eruption felt chaotic and defensive rather than an offensive strike. Even still, she did not like this situation at all and planned to leave without any other things being done to Li Yu.

Guizhong caught his breath and offered a deep bow to apologize for the sudden chaos. "I did not attack him, Zhan Tielan. I merely tried to gently probe the invisible barrier and some force rejected my presence with a violent strike I could not predict. I do not understand what just happened either."

"I am fine, mother," Li Yu said while standing up and brushing the dust from his robes. "Something happened within and it wasn’t his fault."

Guizhong looked at Li Yu and the spark of curiosity that was in his eyes mutated into a blazing obsession. This was the first time in his long life that an inner world had violently rejected his innate affinity with such overwhelming power. The old man realized that unlocking the secrets of this world and of that dark ocean could elevate his understanding of the inner world to unprecedented heights. The mystery standing before him was the culmination of his life's work and he felt an overwhelming desire to claim it.

He wished he could use Li Yu as a permanent test subject to further his research until he found the answers. The old man did not harbor any initial malicious intent toward the boy but now it was different. He wanted to dissect the anomaly for the sake of boundless knowledge. Guizhong knew he could force a wandering rogue or a lesser cultivator to stay in the clan and submit to endless experiments without facing any repercussions. Those test subjects would be treated nicely and given whatever resources they needed while serving his academic pursuits though.

But he could not do that to someone with Li Yu's background. The young man was the grandson of the Worldkeeper. His mother was Zhan Tielan and his father was Li Canghai. That lineage was a deterrent strong enough to make the greatest powers in the Myriad Realms hesitate before offering even a minor slight.

At least that was what everyone in the garden thought.

Guizhong had become slightly different in the last twenty or thirty recent years. His obsession with inner world mechanics had slowly consumed his rational mind and many elders had noticed his declining mental state during the few clan meetings he attended. His patience was thin and he was much more aggressive. While they didn’t see him much, each time showed such a difference from how they knew him before that it led to suspicions and worries. They could not do anything about his deteriorating sanity because he was their revered ancestor and his authority was supreme.

The blazing obsession swirling in Guizhong's mind finally shattered the last remnants of his common sense and logic at this point. The desire for knowledge eclipsed his fear of political ruin and the fallout that would occur. It wouldn’t even be right to call it a desire for knowledge, that was only how he was masking it, he was at the point of madness.

"Capture them!" Guizhong ordered with a cold and reckless tone that echoed loudly through the silent garden. "Seal the mountain and take them into the containment cells. I need to research this boy and I will not let this opportunity slip through my fingers. I am so close! I just need that little bit more! Capture them at once!”

The gathered elders froze in place. The command hit them like a physical blow and a shock washed over their faces. Supreme Elder Feng stared at his ancestor with wide eyes while the other experts looked around in sheer disbelief at the words they just heard.

Everyone present knew exactly who Tielan was. She was an extremely strong warrior known for her fierce temper and she was not someone anyone would take lightly on a battlefield. She hailed from the powerful Zhan Clan and carried the blood of the Worldkeeper in her veins. She was also the wife of Li Canghai who was a monster from the Li Clan in his own right. Just one of those titles was enough to make a top power hesitate before messing with her let alone trying to imprison her for such a deranged reason.

Tielan was also surprised by the sudden command as well but she prepared herself immediately. She summoned her heavy warhammer into her hands and the hammer gleamed with a deadly light that was ready to smash her foes. She could tell by the crazed look in the old man's eyes that he was not joking around and her instincts were confirmed. He meant every word he said and he was willing to throw everything away to get it.

Nobody on the Worldheart Clan dared to move even though the order was given. The guards near the entrance lowered their spears in a stance but they refused to step forward and the elders remained rooted to the spot as well. They were all terrified of the order and no one wanted to be the sinner of the clan.

"Did you not hear me?!" Guizhong yelled while slamming his wooden cane against the tiles with enough force to crack the stone. "Capture them right away! I need to research his inner world and I will not let this chance go. Seize them now!"

Supreme Elder Feng took a hesitant step forward and raised his hands in a pleading gesture. "Ancestor, please stop this madness. Are you playing some kind of sick joke on us? She is Zhan Tielan. Do you understand what this will do to our clan?"

The other elders quickly joined in and tried to reason with the old man. Tielan had helped their clan several times in the past and they owed her a great debt. They understood the catastrophic consequences of attacking her and they begged their ancestor to regain his senses before he doomed them all.

Guizhong did not seem to care at all though. He acted as if there were no consequences at all from doing this. It was almost like he was not himself or perhaps he had just gone crazy under the weight of his lifelong obsession.

"You cowards!" Guizhong berated Supreme Elder Feng with a look of pure disgust. "She is in our home and we hold the ultimate advantage here. We have the numbers and we have the arrays built over the ages. Do as I command and secure the boy for my research!"

Still no one moved as they told him this was foolishness and prayed it was just a terrible joke. They refused to throw their lives away for a madman but more importantly refused to drag down the clan they loved for such a strange order. While they were supposed to listen to someone of a higher authority, this order was completely insane to the point that no one moved to execute it.

Guizhong sneered at him and made his own move to the dismay of everyone present. Zhan Tielan thought that the situation was going to de-escalate with the intervention of the elders but Guizhong was going ahead anyway.

"If you are too weak to secure the future of our knowledge then I will do it myself!" Guizhong declared while tossing his wooden cane aside. From the moment he declared the attack earlier, he had already taken control of the arrays of the clan and locked down the area. That was the only reason that Tieland hadn’t already flown away with Li Yu from the beginning of his earlier declaration.

The frail appearance of the old man vanished as he summoned out his inner world, his ultimate weapon. The projection did not manifest as a blurry sphere hovering above his head. It expanded outward and overlapped with the physical reality of the garden. At the same time, a towering phantom of the Genesis Elephant materialized behind the ancestor and let out a silent roar that shook the very foundation of the mountain. The oppression falling over the area was suffocating and the surrounding bamboo stalks splintered under the heavy weight of his domain.

Guizhong raised his hands and activated the grand defensive arrays of the Worldheart Clan to empower his strike. Glowing runes erupted from the stone tiles and formed a swirling vortex of energy that funneled directly into his body. The arrays reinforced his already terrifying strength and elevated his aura to a level that made the air itself crackle with raw power.

"Stop this at once!" Supreme Elder Feng yelled while fighting against the crushing pressure of the domain. "Even if you somehow beat her, what is your plan? The Zhan Clan and the Li Clan will turn this realm into a graveyard. The Worldkeeper and even her own army will come for us and we will be destroyed. What are you doing?! You crazy fool!"

Guizhong ignored the desperate pleas of his people and focused his mad gaze entirely on Li Yu. Tielan gripped her warhammer tighter and stood firm against the overwhelming tide of energy. She would burn the entire mountain down before she let this crazy old man lay a single finger on her son.