Chapter 132

  Echoes (VIII)

  The world while he was using Master's created cloaking art appeared... odd. It was as though the edges were washed off, shadowy ink tearing out as if guided by the wind. It would also grow slightly desaturated, like he'd entered an entirely separate reality hidden behind an invisible membrane.

  Though he walked among them, he was like a ghost--and they were none the wiser that there was an ear privy to all their whispers.

  Unsurprisingly, they were mostly all about the newcomers--though none were all that... tolerable.

  "Did you see how they're dressed? I've seen dogs and cats back home dressed better."

  "Pfft. Forget that; they looked like they hadn't bathed in months."

  "What else do you expect of this backwater place?"

  "At least those other ones are children, but that old man..."

  "Right? Instead of running as far away as he can, he actually comes here..."

  "He he, just wait. Old Zemin won't always be here to protect him, no?"

  "What are you saying?"

  "You know what. Maybe we start fighting, and it accidentally spills out toward him?"

  "He he, right? After all, when cultivators fight, things are bound to happen..."

  Long Tao listened to them all and marked their faces in his mind but had little to no reaction otherwise.

  Why would he?

  These were all children of some backwater nobodies who thought themselves Gods and Emperors simply because there was somebody else beneath them. It was precisely cultivators like this that never made much of themselves, and he'd met literal tens of thousands of them throughout his life.

  They would continue yapping until their throats dried, and he had no intention of stopping them.

  Rather, they would be stopped in another way, regardless.

  Thus, he ignored them all, slowly walking over to the centermost area where the jutting stones were thinly hidden behind a reddish veil. As soon as he saw it, he recognized it. Like a bolt of thunder ripped open his memories and forced him to remember.

  There was likely nobody alive who could recognize these runes--rather, even well back in the day, there were fewer than ten that could, and only just two that could also read them.

  It was because the runes did not originate from a language or some ancient script; no, they were his own creation. An arrayed, layered language he formed early in his youth. It wasn't particularly efficient or even good, but it was his own, and he used it in the making of his early arrays and formations.

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  He reached out and touched its surface with a fingertip--bursts of hostile energy quickly swarmed toward it, as though wanting to consume him, but a singular thought of his calmed them down. Just like in the Antechamber--his soul was recognized.

  Sighing, he stepped forward and through it.

  Though he made it, he wasn't actually sure what or who was in it. He made it as a parting gift to his first Dao Companion before he ascended. She was unable to follow him, having drained her talents many centuries beforehand. So, he left her with this array where she could sustain her mortal shell for a long, long time and wait for his return, where he would reforge her anew.

  He, however, never returned. As for whether she waited, and for how long... he couldn't know. Perhaps, he mused inwardly as he stepped through, she was in there right now, having waited this whole while.

  The cooling sensation washed over him as the look of the world changed once again--the stones of the ruin began to rumble and move, unshackled, slowly forging a stationary temple. It was tall and broad, with pillars upholding the arched entryway, cast of dark-gray stone.

  Surrounding it were fields of green, within them randomly scattered flowerbeds of roses and lilies, her favorite.

  A strange sense of melancholy washed over him as he walked toward the entryway; he'd forgotten most of the memories of the two of them. It had been innumerable years since then, and he's had nine Dao Companions after her.

  But now, being here, some of those fossilized memories were being reawakened.

  He'd offered to stay, but she told him to go.

  Passing through the entryway, he entered a rather cool hall--the only one of the temple. It was vast and entirely undecorated, its walls old and cracked, windows forging a slight draft.

  At the center was a coiling structure of Qi, lifting out and back down around a strange, vague object. As he approached, more of it came into focus, though he could only see it fully when he was standing just below it.

  It was an orb.

  To be more specific, a Soul Orb. A fancy name for a rather useless tool--well, useless as far as cultivation went.

  Long Tao's expression dropped considerably as he stared at it, hesitation worming out within his gaze. His fingers all but squirmed in place as a battle raged within... whether to reach out or not.

  Sighing yet again, he took a deep breath, momentarily closed his eyes, and then reached out.

  Just like with the barrier on the outside, hostile energy swarmed toward him for a moment before he put a touch of his Soul into his fingertips. Then it retreated, like a hunter who'd lost interest in its prey.

  He clasped the orb in his palm and pulled it out--as soon as he did, the orbital swath of Qi collapsed, disappearing into nothingness. Having expected it, he ignored it, his gaze far too focused on the smoothed orb of infused metals.

  Soul Orb was an archaic thing, older than Long Tao by several generations, and being archaic, it wasn't used, as far as he remembered, by anyone of note. Perhaps low-level cultivators with no other options, but never by someone of note--and she, at least for these parts, was someone of note.

  He fiddled with it between his fingers for a moment, feeling the cool and somewhat rough surface; its greenish sheen began to worm and squirm, and he pressed his thumb into it, cracking its surface like it was an egg.

  An outburst of light blinded him for a moment, though he could still see a veil of white erupt into a sheen--thousands of motes of light began to converge, as though there was a star pulling them inward, all until they forged a figure.

  A painfully familiar figure whose face he'd forgotten--but now that he'd seen her again, it was as though nothing had changed in the countless years since they last met.

  Her long, curly, black hair that she complained about all the time but never cut because she knew he liked it; her gemmed, bright, green eyes; her oval face with rather sunken cheeks, courtesy of malnourishment in her childhood days; and that smile...

  "Hello, my love." It was her voice, and it was a hammer that struck a dam of his memories, waking up all that which had lain dormant for so many years. "It's time you returned."