A very frightened and nervous Lin Mo Chen stood in front of the sliding door of his home. His hands were resting on his knees, and he was breathing in and out slowly to calm his restless heart, which was still pounding in his chest from the run through the forest.
He thought back to the exact moment when Lin Xuan had looked up and asked if anyone was there. He could still feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
Once he had calmed down enough for his hands to stop shaking, he slid the wooden door open carefully and stepped inside.
His home was medium-sized, big enough for his family of three. Simple, clean, with polished wooden floors and the faint scent of medicine and food that always hung in the air.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, a woman's warm voice reached his ears.
"I'm glad you're back from the ceremony," she said without raising her voice much from the small kitchen.
She didn't ask him about his results. She didn't ask him about his rank. She simply dried her hands on her apron, walked over to him, and gently hugged him. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she kissed him on the forehead.
Lin Mo Chen froze instantly, his face contorted with a strange emotion.
In his past life, his parents had died when he was a child, so he had never grown up with a mother's love. There had never been hugs when he came home or kisses on the forehead for no reason. That's why that affection, so simple and so direct, still felt strange to him, almost uncomfortable.
With a smile of embarrassment she couldn't hide, she stepped back a little.
"Mother, don't treat me like a child. I'll be an adult soon," he said softly.
Although he knew perfectly well that she wasn't the real Lin Mo Chen, at that moment, to him, this woman was his mother. Throughout this past month, he had witnessed the unconditional love she had given him without asking for anything in return, simply because he was her son.
She laughed softly and ruffled his hair anyway, completely ignoring his protest.
"Come on, dinner's getting cold."
They ate dinner in silence. All that could be heard was the soft clinking of chopsticks against bowls and the distant crackling of the brazier. His mother served him more broth from time to time without asking, and Lin Mo Chen ate with his head bowed, the image of Lin Xuan's silver ring still etched in his mind.
When he finished, he placed his chopsticks perfectly aligned across the bowl, stood up, and thanked his mother with a slight bow.
Just as he was about to turn toward his own room, his mother stopped him with a gesture.
Confused, he watched her pull a small lacquered wooden box from her sleeve and place it in his hands. It was simple and unadorned, but it weighed more than it looked.
As he opened it slightly and saw the object inside—a round, pale amber pill that gave off a clean, medicinal scent—Lin Mo Chen was taken aback. He knew exactly what it was.
He looked at his mother and asked her with genuine surprise, "Where did you get this? Why are you giving it to me?"
His mother smiled with her usual calmness.
"It's a reward they gave your father for completing the family's missions this month," she replied. "A First-Grade Spiritual Reunification Pill."
Upon hearing that, Lin Mo Chen quickly closed the little box and tried to hand it back to her. "Then Father should take it… that way he'd have a better chance of advancing in his cultivation. He's at the ninth stage of Ling Zhe; it would be more useful to him."
The woman shook her head gently and pushed his hand back, closing her fingers around the box.
"It was his decision," she told him in a low voice. "Your father says he no longer has confidence in advancing further. He wants you to become strong, Mo'er. So that you can protect yourself in this dangerous and treacherous world."
Hearing that, Lin Mo Chen's heart, which had been nervous all afternoon, filled with a different kind of warmth—heavy and calm.
He gently took the little box. He no longer tried to refuse it. With a silent nod, he accepted.
Seeing her son's still conflicted expression, his mother ruffled his hair affectionately, as she always did.
"You don't have to worry about anything," she whispered. "Just cultivate peacefully, okay?"
This time, Lin Mo Chen didn't reject his mother's affection. He stood still for a second, feeling that hand on his head.
With a simple "thank you," he clenched the small box in his fist and quickly made his way to his room.
Once in his room, he closed the sliding door behind him. The room was austere and simple. He looked at the small table next to the bed, on which there was only a half-burned oil lamp and the few belongings he owned, folded in a corner.
He walked over and sat in the lotus position on his bed, his back straight against the cold wall. He opened the lacquered box, took out the pill, and for a few moments looked at it thoughtfully under the flickering light. The pale amber color of the pill seemed to catch the flame.
Having made a decision, he calmed his breathing. He inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, until his state of mind shifted from that of a boy who had just spied on the "protagonist" to that of a cultivator.
When he felt he was in optimal condition, he swallowed the pill in one go.
He felt it dissolve almost instantly inside his stomach; to his surprise, he felt a coolness build up. From that point, a modest but pure stream of spiritual energy sprang forth and coursed through his entire body, cleansing his meridians like spring water. Without wasting any more time, he closed his eyes and concentrated.
In this world, there was a strange concept that initially took Lin Mo Chen by surprise. Instead of accumulating energy in a dantian, as in the novels he had read in his past life, cultivators condensed spiritual rings around their Qi core.
A practitioner who can already sense spiritual energy and draw it into their body is called a Ling Qi. At this level, the practitioner must constantly refine and accumulate energy to condense their first ring, and when they succeed, they are called Yī Huán · Ling Zhe, meaning they now possess a complete spiritual ring that envelops their core.
Lin Mo Chen concentrated all the pill's energy into a single point, right around his core, where he could feel it. An illusory ring—only half of which existed—was slowly taking shape.
The rings consisted of nine parts. When you manage to condense one part of the ring, that is advancing a stage. Only when you create all nine fragments can you attempt to fuse them into a complete ring and make the great leap.
Lin Mo Chen was stuck at the fourth stage. That meant he had four stable fragments.
At this moment, with the pure energy of the Spirit Gathering Pill, he could clearly feel how the fifth fragment of his ring—which until now had been nothing more than a scattered mist—was absorbing all the energy from the pill.
Little by little, the smoke was becoming denser and more tangible. The illusory edges were taking shape, glowing with a faint light as it anchored itself alongside the other four.
Just as the lamp was about to go out, with the wick drowning in the last pool of oil, Lin Mo Chen let out a heavy sigh and opened his eyes.
He could feel it clearly. The fifth fragment was no longer illusory; it was now more realistic, on the verge of anchoring itself completely. He had come within a hair's breadth of reaching the fifth rank.
The pill had saved him nearly a month and a half of constant practice. Now, according to his calculations, with two more weeks of steady accumulation, he could enter the next rank naturally… and yet it was frustratingly slow.
Sighing this time out of pure frustration, he stood up and stretched his stiff body; the movement had made his joints creak.
It seemed he had been gathering energy all night, because outside, through the slit in the paper window, the sun had already risen and was bathing the courtyard in white light.
He walked over to his wardrobe, swapped his wrinkled tunic for a clean, dark red one, and tied his long black hair into a simple ponytail. He wasted no more time and left his house.
The reason for going out was simple. He was bored, and since he had just been practicing for hours, he needed to relax.
As he walked leisurely along the stone paths, he saw some servants who greeted him with a quick bow. After all, even though he was a member of the collateral branch, he was still a young practitioner of the clan.
His walk was peaceful, and it seemed that nothing was going to go wrong that day—at least until he heard two family disciples talking as they hurried past him.
"...I'm telling you, I saw them come in through the south gate. The Yun Family arrived this morning with three carriages."
"And is it true that she was coming?"
"Of course. Yun Qingran herself. The favorite daughter and the great genius of that family. They say she's already at the ninth stage at fourteen years old."
Lin Mo Chen heard something else that made him freeze in his tracks.
"...and she's Lin Xuan's fiancée. She came to see him after the ceremony, I suppose." They kept talking as they walked on, oblivious to the mental shock they'd caused the poor young man out for a stroll.
Upon hearing that, Lin Mo Chen stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the path. A bitter look filled his face; he couldn't help but gaze up at the clear morning sky, as a single thought filled his mind.
"Of course… It couldn't be a peaceful day!"