The next day, the light of dawn pierced the clouds.
Yun Qing slowly wound down his cultivation, the chaos-currents wreathing his body drawing back into his sea of qi like a hundred rivers returning to the sea. A single night's regulation had not only wholly healed his wounds; the insight from yesterday's spar with Yun Huang had been thoroughly digested and absorbed, and his command of chaos-force had advanced another degree.
Only that mark of Yun Huang's divine power in the depths of his sea of qi still lay quietly coiled there, reminding him of the delicacy of his present position.
Black robe cinched at the waist, ink-dark hair fixed with a jade crown, Yun Qing appeared punctually outside Qiwu Hall, his aura restrained and still. The first light of dawn fell across the side of his face, lending him an added touch of clear elegance.
The hall doors opened without a sound, and Yun Huang stepped out. Today, rarely, he too wore a long robe of black embroidered with gold, which set off his aura all the more sternly. He glanced at Yun Qing, standing in respectful silence with head bowed, his golden eyes pausing on him an instant, and said blandly: "Walk with This Lord."
"Yes." Yun Qing bowed and assented, his steps steady, always kept half a pace behind, following quietly at Yun Huang's side.
Two black-robed figures, one before the other, walked among the layered halls and corridors of the palace. Wherever they passed, the patrolling Yunxiao Guards dropped as one to a knee, the clash of their armor solemn and resonant. Clan children who chanced to glimpse them from afar likewise held their breath, bowing and yielding to the road's edge until the two figures had gone, only then daring to steal a look up, their eyes full of awe and an irrepressible curiosity.
These two brothers of so delicate a relationship walking shoulder to shoulder were, in themselves, a rare sight in the Yun clan.
Yun Huang's steps came to rest at last outside the ancestral shrine, before the damaged Soul-Suppressing Stele.
After the Discipline Hall's urgent handling, the shattered spirit-jade wreckage had been cleared away, but the hideous crack on the stele's main body was still shocking to the eye. In its depths, the not-yet-quelled savage aura and the yin-corroding force tangled and coiled, making this ancient stele — which should have held its radiance within — seem dim and fragile.
Yun Huang stood still before the stele, his gaze fixed on that crack; yesterday's displeasure seemed to climb back onto his fine brows, his aura sinking faintly. Though he said nothing, that formless low pressure already had the several stewards kneeling in guard at a distance trembling, their heavy robes soaked with sweat.
Yun Qing understood in his heart. This ancestor said "no further pursuit" with his mouth, but seeing this eyesore of a crack with his own eyes, his mood could hardly be good. Yun Hao had been severely punished, which was his just deserts; but as Yun Shuo's elder brother, by reason and by feeling, Yun Qing could not fail to make some gesture.
Certain useless workplace lessons from his past life told him that when a superior said "it's fine," it was never truly fine — what if it was a test of your perceptiveness? What ought to be coaxed still had to be coaxed.
He stepped forward and clasped his hands: "Young Lord, this stele is damaged; though the surface has been cleared, the crack remains and the savage aura is unquelled — in the end it is unlovely. Qing is willing to try to repair it, to console the heroic spirits within the stele, and to fulfill the Young Lord's heart."
Yun Huang turned to look at him, somewhat surprised: "You can repair it?" The Soul-Suppressing Stele was of special make, a chaos-marvel-stone handed down from the primordial age; the inscriptions upon it were ancient and intricate, and ordinary means could hardly touch its root. He had meant to summon the clan's several master artificers at once.
"Qing is willing to try his utmost." Yun Qing did not boast, but by his certain, composed manner, he plainly had great confidence.
"Granted. Fail, and you may go down and collect that discipline-whipping." Yun Huang flicked his sleeve, unreasonable as ever.
Certain of himself as Yun Qing was, at these words his steps could not help stalling faintly. He had nearly forgotten — there were still ten strokes marked against him! This ancestor truly forgot not a single old account!
With his back to Yun Huang, he secretly twitched the corner of his mouth.
Reaching the stele, he opened his Double Pupils, then stretched out his right hand, palm up, and a wisp of the purest chaos-energy surfaced from his palm. This wisp of chaos-energy seemed to hold within it the primal mystery of all things springing into being — utterly unlike the annihilating overbearance he showed against a foe.
He guided this wisp of chaos-energy, pouring it with precision into the crack in the stele. Wherever the chaos-energy passed, the savage aura melted swiftly like snow-remnants meeting the sun, and that thread of yin-corroding force was devoured and dissolved outright.
More astonishing still, the chaos-energy began to simulate and evolve a spirituality of the same source as the stele's body; the grey mist-current, like living spirit-threads, flowed winding along, delicately mending every fine flaw, and the ancient inscriptions were traced anew.
This was no simple gluing and filling, but a "regeneration and evolution" from the level of energy to that of matter!
The stewards kneeling around watched dumbstruck, their awe of this Eldest Young Master deepening further.
Before long, the crack vanished utterly; the Soul-Suppressing Stele returned to wholeness, a warm, restrained radiance flowing through it, its aura even more mighty and rich than before it was damaged.
Yun Huang gazed at the stele, whole as new, and that thread of displeasure between his brows dispersed at last. He looked at Yun Qing, surprise and keen appreciation showing in his golden eyes: "Chaos evolving, mending the flaw and restoring the source... your use of the Chaos Dao Embryo grows ever more subtle."
"It is all thanks to the Young Lord's guidance yesterday that Qing was able to gain some understanding. To ease a little of the Young Lord's care, and not fail the grace of his teaching — Qing's heart is content." Yun Qing withdrew his hand and bowed slightly, his tone sincere and earnest.
Inwardly, though, he could not help a measure of smugness: See — isn't that the fur smoothed flat?
The Soul-Suppressing Stele restored as new, its radiance clear, Yun Huang moved his gaze from the stele to the depths of the shrine, his eyes turning somewhat distant.
"Beneath this stele lies a special spirit-vein, connected to the core of the shrine's forbidden ground." Yun Huang suddenly spoke, his voice carrying a few more shades of an indescribable ethereality than usual. "There is the place where This Lord descended into this world, where primordial spirit and flesh-body fused wholly into one."
His tone was bland, yet into Yun Qing's mind flashed at once the heaven-and-earth portent described in the "plot": 'In that hour, immortal-essence came into the world, drawing down the blazing sun of the Nine Heavens and setting the molten fire of the earth's heart surging; for a thousand li, three days without cease, the light shone and the laws resonated!'
Yun Qing's body stiffened faintly, his aura fluctuating for an instant. He at once lowered his eyes, and when he raised them again his face had become shock and dawning realization, as though hearing so earth-shaking a secret for the first time. He widened his eyes slightly, his gaze moving between the Soul-Suppressing Stele and Yun Huang, and worded it with care: "So... this stele is linked by spirit-vein to the Young Lord's very place of birth — no wonder it holds such divine wonder within. Yet I had not known Qing and the Young Lord shared so deep an affinity. Could it be the Young Lord too descended to this world by the power of the 'Soul-Tracing Secret Rite'? And I wonder — the world of the Young Lord's past life, what a vast scene it must have been?"
Immortal-essence reincarnated, taking form in the forbidden ground — this was the Yun Clan's most top-tier secret, by rights nothing he could know. So he deliberately steered the subject toward the relatively safe, already-known concept of the Soul-Tracing Secret Rite, skirting the core taboo of "immortal-essence reincarnation," and cozied up a little besides.
Yun Huang turned his eyes aside, his pale-golden gaze falling on that face written all over with "just-right surprise," calm and unrippled, yet seeming to see through every disguise. That gaze rested on him several breaths; the very air congealed with it.
The fingertips in Yun Qing's sleeve curled faintly, unconsciously.
In the end, Yun Huang only withdrew his gaze blandly and looked again into the depths of the shrine, committing to nothing.