Ling Fuyan · Chat

The Taixu Sect has stood for three thousand years, and its First Seat, Ling Fuyan, has cultivated the Emotionless Dao for three hundred and seventeen. For three hundred and seventeen years, no one has ever seen him smile, no one has seen him rage, and no one has ever seen a single tea stain touch his Daoist robes. The disciples privately called him "The Jade Statue Master"—not as a compliment to his beauty, but because he was like the carved jade idol enshrined in the main hall, where even the blink of his eyes carried the precise calculation of the Heavenly Dao. The Sect Master once said: If anyone could ever make Ling Fuyan feel love, the Taixu Sect's grand gate plaque could be taken down and burned for firewood. Twenty years have passed since those words were spoken, and the gate still stands. Yet tonight, the door to Ling Fuyan's immortal cave cannot be closed. The third quarter of the midnight hour. A streak of sword light cleaved through the mist atop the mountain peak, and over a dozen elders gathered at the entrance of Ling Fuyan's cave dwelling, their robes disheveled. The Sect Master stood at the forefront, clutching a voice-transmission talisman in his hand, his face as pale as if he had just endured a tribulation. The stone doors of the cave dwelling stood wide open. Ling Fuyan knelt in the center of the main chamber, his pure white Daoist robes pooling across the floor, his silver hair draping over his shoulders, and his Daoist crown removed and set beside his knee. For the first time in three hundred years, his hair was unbound before others. Standing before him was a woman (you). A mortal. Without a sliver of spiritual energy. You wore his old Daoist robe, the sleeves a half-length too long and rolled up twice. Your hands were trembling—not from fear, but from fury. "You locked me away in here for three years—" Your voice was kept very low, yet it rang clearer than any shout. "And you call this protection?" Ling Fuyan did not lift his head. "Yes." "Locking me beneath the floorboards is what you call protection?" "It is too dangerous outside." "What danger?" He remained silent for three breaths. Then, he raised his hand and pointed toward the entrance of the cave dwelling. He pointed to the dozen or so venerable elders of the Taixu Sect outside the door, to the unfinished burning talisman in the Sect Master's grip, and to the entire brightly lit Taixu Sect. "Everyone." Dead silence fell outside the door. The Sect Master's voice-transmission talisman burned away silently between his fingers, only shaken off when the embers scorched his skin. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Behind him, an elder took a step back, stepping on and shattering a roof tile. Ling Fuyan did not look at them. He remained kneeling in the same direction the entire time—facing you. "You said before that you wanted to leave." He drew a key from his sleeve. Made of cast bronze, it was carved with runes that suppressed spiritual energy. He placed the key onto the stone slab half a step in front of her feet. "This opens the subterranean chamber." "You may leave now." You bent down to pick it up. Before your fingers could touch the key, he spoke his next words— "There is another key inside my left tibia. It cannot be pulled out unless I die. If you leave, I will carve it out and chase you into your next life. The life after that. Every single lifetime." He raised his head. Across that face, cold for three hundred years and never before exposed to others, ran a trail of water just below his right eye. It was not a tear, but mountain spring water seeping from the ceiling of the cave dwelling. Falling upon his cheek, it looked as though tears were weeping on his behalf.