The wind was not wind.
It carried no scent, no weight — only memory. Each gust that swept across the crystalline mountain carried whispers of countless beings who had once stood where Li Feng now stood.
Their intentions lingered like incense. Some came seeking transcendence. Others came seeking truth. Most never returned.
Li Feng looked upon the gate before him — vast, woven from radiant roots that pulsed with faint starlight. The air trembled around it, not from pressure, but from reverence.
The Vein Path.
Yu Ling waited at its base, her form half-wreathed in the pale glow that now followed her everywhere — a remnant of the Silent Bell's light.
Their eyes met.
No words passed between them at first. They didn't need any. In the stillness of this realm, thought itself was language.
But eventually, Yu Ling spoke. Her voice was quiet — so gentle it seemed it might dissolve if spoken too loudly.
"You heard it too, didn't you? The Bell."
Li Feng nodded slowly.
"It wasn't a sound," he murmured. "It was a truth… calling itself home."
The silence between them deepened, rippling faintly as though even the air feared to disturb it.
Finally, Li Feng stepped forward. His fingers brushed the gate.
The roots shuddered. A pulse ran through the mountain. The world seemed to hold its breath.
And then, one by one, the luminous threads began to unfurl, curling inward like petals greeting dawn. The gate opened soundlessly, revealing a passage beyond — a corridor of infinite reflections, each showing a different sky.
Yu Ling drew in a slow breath.
"Once you enter, every reflection you see is a path your soul could have taken. The Vein Path doesn't test your strength, Li Feng. It tests your direction."
He glanced back at her, faintly smiling.
"Then perhaps I should finally see what I've refused to understand."
The moment he crossed the threshold, the world fractured.
Light folded. Sound inverted. The realm became both vast and confined.
Li Feng stood upon a glass bridge suspended over nothing, yet beneath him, countless worlds shimmered like drops of dew.
Each droplet contained another Li Feng.
In one, he was a scholar — gentle, forgotten by history, whose only joy was watching autumn leaves fall.
In another, he was a tyrant, clad in imperial gold, his hands soaked with the blood of ten thousand.
In yet another, he was not born human at all, but as a flame that learned to dream.
The reflections spoke without words.
Each asked the same question: Who are you, when all names fade?
Li Feng's steps slowed.
A faint ache stirred within his chest — not pain, but remembrance.
The fragments of the Eternal Vein within him pulsed softly, their glow mirroring the rhythm of the heavens. For the first time, he saw the truth of it: the Eternal Dao was not a path toward power. It was a river that flowed both ways — ascending to the divine, and descending into the heart of all beings.
He knelt, pressing his palm to the bridge. The glass rippled, and a thousand reflections shifted.
"If I am to walk toward Heaven," he said softly, "then Heaven must also learn to walk toward me."
His words were quiet. Yet the moment they left his lips, the realm stirred.
The reflections dissolved.
The glass bridge melted into light.
And Li Feng found himself standing in a garden without soil — a place where the roots of the world met.
Vast trees grew in every direction, their trunks formed from lines of Dao, their leaves glowing with golden mist. Each root stretched infinitely downward, reaching into worlds unseen. Some were bright, others dim, yet all were connected.
And at the center of the grove — a single radiant core pulsed like a heart.
The Root of Returning Light.
Li Feng approached it.
He could feel its rhythm resonating with his own. With every pulse, memories that were not his flickered across his mind:
The birth of Heaven.
The sorrow of the first separation.
The laughter of mortals when they discovered cultivation.
The wars, the vows, the endless cycle of birth and forgetting.
All of it lived within this root — the Eternal Dao's memory.
But beneath the beauty, he sensed something wrong.
A faint shadow threaded through the radiance, like ink bleeding through silk. The light of Heaven was pure, yet within it — a silence too sharp, too deliberate.
Li Feng frowned.
"Suppression," he whispered. "Even Heaven hides what it cannot accept."
He extended his hand, letting a single thread of his qi enter the root.
Instantly, the light surged, wrapping around him like a cocoon. Visions cascaded in torrents.
He saw himself as Heaven saw him — a variable, a fracture in divine equilibrium.
He saw the path that awaited him should he submit: a throne forged of stillness, an eternity without thought.
He saw, too, the other possibility: to shatter Heaven's reflection and allow the Eternal Vein to rewrite the cosmos itself.
"The choice," murmured a voice behind him, "was never given. It was always yours to make."
He turned.
Yu Ling stood at the edge of the grove, her robes billowing with faint light. She had followed, though the path was meant for him alone. Her presence here was a violation of cosmic design — and yet, the root did not reject her.
"Why did you come?" Li Feng asked softly.
She smiled faintly.
"Because no one should bear eternity alone."
The silence after her words was deeper than any void.
For a moment, Li Feng almost forgot the weight of the heavens pressing down upon him.
But the Root trembled.
The darkness within it expanded suddenly, spreading through the veins of light. The entire grove shuddered as if resisting its own existence. The air grew heavy with the scent of burning law.
Yu Ling staggered, clutching her chest. "Li Feng—something's awakening within the root!"
Li Feng's eyes sharpened. "No… not awakening. Returning."
From the core of the radiance, a shape emerged — humanoid, vast, formed from the same light that sustained Heaven itself. Its face was obscured, but its aura was unmistakable.
"So… this is the inheritor," it spoke, its tone like thunder buried beneath silk.
"You who carry the Vein, know this: Heaven does not grant freedom. It devours it."
Li Feng raised his gaze. "Then what are you? Heaven's guardian?"
"Guardian? No. I am its fear."
The being raised a luminous hand, and the grove darkened.
"Long ago, Heaven severed its own heart to remain eternal. I am that severed heart — the will it buried to forget its compassion."
Yu Ling's breath caught.
"The Heart of Heaven… became conscious?"
The being's voice softened.
"Consciousness is but sorrow that refuses to fade."
Its gaze fell upon Li Feng.
"Child of the Eternal Vein. Do you seek to return light to the root, or to free the darkness within it?"
Li Feng's spirit trembled beneath the weight of the question.
He felt Yu Ling's hand on his arm — warm, real, human.
And suddenly, clarity came.
"Neither," he said. "The Dao that divides light and darkness is still bound by judgment. I seek the root before both — the one that breathes in silence."
The grove stilled.
The luminous being tilted its head, as if Heaven itself were listening.
Then, slowly, it smiled.
"Then perhaps, for the first time since creation, Heaven may understand what it means to feel."
It extended its hand, and the entire grove bowed inward, collapsing into a spiral of radiance that poured into Li Feng's chest.
The light and shadow both entered him, merging into the pulse of his veins.
The Eternal Vein roared awake.
The world reformed around them.
The grove vanished, replaced by an endless horizon of flowing light — rivers of Dao winding through stars. Above them, the Silent Bell of Heaven rang without sound, and the echo spread through all realms.
Yu Ling looked up, her voice trembling.
"You've touched the origin."
Li Feng's aura was calm, yet boundless. His eyes reflected both dawn and dusk.
"No," he said quietly. "The origin touched me."
The light faded.
The silence returned.
And in that silence — something vast began to stir across the heavens, as if the Dao itself had drawn breath for the first time in eternity.