Suddenly, Yun Qing felt a pressure vast as a sea of stars, laden with a supreme will, settle over him with pinpoint precision!
His frame stalled, almost imperceptibly. Those deep, fathomless eyes shifted in secret; chaos-energy churned within them, and only then did he just barely hold off the tremor that would have driven him to his knees.
Yun Qing gave no sign of it on his face — even the rhythm of his breath did not change. Only the knuckles beneath his black sleeve went faintly white from the sudden force.
Upon the jade throne, a trace of the faintest surprise flitted through Yun Huang's pale-golden eyes. He could sense that Yun Qing was not gritting his teeth and forcing it down; rather, in some subtle way, he was dissolving and devouring the pressure. This temperament, this strength — truly they were nothing the clan's baseborn stock could match.
"No," Yun Huang at once rejected his own comparison, "to set them beside Yun Qing would only wrong him."
Yun Qing still held his bow — only his spine was straight, and in the eyes that met Yun Huang's directly there was, besides deference, even a trace of... the knowing indulgence of an elder brother regarding a younger?
"I have long heard the Young Lord's talent to be peerless in this age; seeing it today surpasses even the telling. To serve as the Young Lord's vanguard is Yun Qing's good fortune." His tone was sincere, without a shred of falseness or pretense.
Upon the dais, the fingertip tapping Yun Huang's armrest came to a sudden halt.
He had imagined a great many possibilities — only the scene before him had not been among them.
No naked, edged ambition; none of the cowardice and resentment common to the baseborn; nor any of the arrogance that talent so often breeds. This "elder brother" left him feeling decidedly strange.
This man was no ordinary man.
After a long moment, Yun Huang's terrible pressure quietly dispersed.
"Begin the spirit-testing." His clear voice rang out, betraying neither pleasure nor anger; the rebuke everyone had expected never came.
At one side of the dais, the smile in Second Elder Yun Yuan's eyes deepened. Grand Elder Yun Che's gaze did not stir, still as an ancient well.
"Yes." Yun Qing's heart eased a little. He turned and walked toward the center of the plaza. There stood an ancient stone stele carved wholly from "Dao-Bearing Stone," its surface dense with runes, a massive "Immortal-Discerning Spirit Orb" set at its crown.
Today, all the Yun children save Yun Qing had already completed their testing. The highest in talent among them had even reached top-grade of the Heaven Rank, red light surging from the stele to the very sky.
Small wonder that so many clansmen were unconvinced. In the outside world, Heaven Rank talent was rarer than phoenix feathers and unicorn horns — which of its bearers was not a prodigy fit to be called a monster? And of such "monsters," a single routine Spirit-Testing Rite of the Yun Clan had produced fully three.
Yun Li's was Heaven Rank middle-grade talent. At this moment he could not hide the smugness on his face as he looked provokingly toward Yun Qing. A pity the latter paid him no notice. His expression unchanged, Yun Qing stepped forward at a measured pace and, beneath countless doubting, scrutinizing stares, calmly raised his right hand and pressed it to the groove in the stele's base.
The motion was simple and direct.
And yet, in the very instant his palm touched the stele —
"Hmmmm—!"
A droning hum, as though from remote antiquity, burst suddenly from within the stele!
The sound was vaster by far than any test before it. The stele's body shook violently; every ancient rune was kindled at once, erupting with a deep and secret light.
The Immortal-Discerning Spirit Orb at the crown no longer gave off a single halo — it burst forth with a boundless, chaotic immortal radiance. That light was like the primordial murk before heaven and earth were split, within which star-clouds seemed to be born and to perish, the first forms of all things unfolding — an aura ancient and vast, seeming to hold all creation within it, that roared out with the stele as its center and swept across the entire plaza!
Mighty spiritual energy of heaven and earth poured into the field like a hundred rivers returning to the sea. A vast vortex of spirit-energy took shape; a wild wind rose up, whipping the robes of the crowd below until they could scarcely keep their feet.
Yun Qing simply stood at the very heart of the tumult, his black robes and ink-dark hair flying free, his face without a ripple. In those deep eyes, chaos-energy churned, as though he himself were a part of this chaos.
"This... could this be—?!"
"The last time the Immortal-Discerning Spirit Orb stirred like this was tens of thousands of years ago, when Old Ancestor Yun Shu was tested."
Everyone was struck pale with shock at this heaven-shaking, earth-moving portent. The earlier doubt and disdain were ground to powder before a scene that now seemed nothing short of a divine miracle!
The smugness on Yun Li's face froze solid. His face was white and disbelieving, and his body even began to tremble faintly.
On the dais, Grand Elder Yun Che, who had sat so steadily, could not help leaning slightly forward. The hand with which Second Elder Yun Yuan stroked his goatee halted in midair, and on his face appeared the gratified, excited look of a man thinking "just as I thought."
Even Yun Huang's golden eyes were fixed tight upon the figure in the field who had drawn forth this portent of heaven and earth, his expression complex and hard to read.
Yet just when everyone thought this was already the limit, Yun Qing's mind stirred, and a secret light flashed in the depths of his eyes.
"Zheng—!"
A clear, ringing note — as though it could tear the heavens asunder and pierce through the Nine Nethers — took the place of the stele's hum. The chaotic radiance upon the orb, just about to draw inward, surged once more; and this time, to their shock, the crowd discovered that at the center of that chaotic star-cloud there was even a shut eye, its phantom faintly limned!
That phantom snapped abruptly open, and two layered pupils surfaced with perfect clarity! The Double Pupils were deep and fathomless, as though they could see through past and future and perceive the very origin of all things.
Amid this utmost chaos and awe, immortal script at last gathered slowly upon the Immortal-Discerning Spirit Orb, several archaic, forceful characters manifesting:
Chaos Dao Embryo! Ancient Double Pupils!
The moment the immortal script appeared, it was like a purple-empyrean divine thunder, crashing through the very souls of all present.
"Ch-Chaos Dao Embryo — the supreme cultivation body of legend? Kinship with the origin of ten thousand daos?!"
"The old records say one who possesses this constitution carries within himself the foundation for attaining the Dao — his cultivation knows no bottlenecks whatsoever."
"So — so the Eldest Young Master's gift was this all along..."
Cries and gasps detonated across the entire plaza in an instant. Every trace of disbelief and doubt vanished without a trace before this absolute power. What distinction of trueborn and baseborn — put plainly, in the end the strong were still revered.
Two peerless gifts, rare across all the ages, converging at once upon a single person.
The Yun clansmen looked at that black-robed figure in the field as though gazing up at a god come suddenly into the world.
Yun Li's face was ashen. His earlier envy and provocation seemed so laughable now. Before talent such as this, his Heaven Rank middle-grade was less even than dust.
The Chaos Dao Embryo — ranked fourth on the Nine Heavens Eternal Rankings! This was a true immortal-grade divine body; layer the Double Pupils atop it, and...
Beside Yun Li, a maiden in the bloom of youth clutched the hand of a small child at her side and cried out in excitement, "Shuo'er! Your eldest brother — his talent is something downright terrifying." The little one, too, was flushed with excitement, his small face gone red, fists clenched tight, a pair of puppyish eyes fixed in worship upon that proud, easy figure in the field.
"Dong."
Yun Huang lightly rapped the dark-jade armrest. The sound was not loud, yet it stilled the whole field in an instant.
The crowd held their breath and swallowed their voices, all awaiting the Young Lord's verdict.
From this alone it could be seen: Yun Huang was the Yun Clan's absolute authority.
The Second Elder's gaze swept over Yun Qing, concern in the depths of his eyes. He had personally brought Yun Qing into the secret realm and raised him for more than a decade; their cultivation paths ran close, and he was as much father as teacher to the boy. Naturally he hoped these two prodigies of the Yun Clan's generation — both fit to be called monsters — could get along in harmony, and that his boy Qing would never come to grief in some internal feud.
As for why it was Yun Qing's safety he feared for...
Had it been anyone else seated in the Young Lord's place, the Second Elder would of course have backed Yun Qing in simply throwing a punch, charging up, and beating the daylights out of whatever damned Young Lord there was, then taking the seat himself.
Only, Yun Huang... "Qing, my boy, you're always the steadiest of them all — today, whatever you do, hold steady. If you can't beat him, you truly, truly cannot beat this little ancestor." Mulling it over and over, the Second Elder could not help jabbing an elbow into the Grand Elder beside him.
"You sanctimonious old wretch — aren't you worried at all?"
Grand Elder Yun Che nimbly dodged to one side, utterly ignoring the Second Elder's sneak attack.
The Second Elder was so vexed his beard bristled and his eyes glared. "Hmph. You old good-for-nothing — nearly twenty years since I last saw you, and still as sanctimonious as ever. Your grandson learned it straight from you — two of a kind!"
Yun Huang gazed quietly down from the dais at that figure who had triggered so earth-shaking a portent, yet stood as calm as if he had merely brushed away a fallen leaf. In those pale-golden eyes, a trace of the most hidden turbulence flowed.
He suddenly spoke, his voice carrying clearly across the deathly-still plaza:
"Elder Brother need not stand on ceremony."
For the first time he used the word "Elder Brother." His tone was flat, yet it fell heavy as a thousand jun.
"Henceforth, when you meet This Lord, answer standing. That will do."