High Elder Jiao Lian gazed at a mark solemnly.
"That one is mine," she said quietly. "When I erged, I was injured. Bloodied. But not broken. I left that mark so I would never forget the lesson the Path gave ."
She paused, brushing a finger along the scar. Even now, millennia later, it still pulsed faintly with sword intent.
"It showed the weight of my arrogance. And the depth of what I had yet to learn."
The third elder, a reclusive figure nad Elder Ji Shen, remained silent. But his eyes were closed, and his fists were clenched behind his back. If one were to look closely, they would see faint white scars lining his knuckles—scars that were not the product of battle, but of discipline, penance, and failure.
He had never spoken of his ti inside.
So wounds didn't heal with ti—they simply settled deeper.
The Grand Elder exhaled slowly and finally spoke.
"He is different."
The others turned toward him.
"Lin Mu," he continued, "walks a path none of us have seen before. His cultivation is profound, yes. But more than that… it is his foundation that makes him special."
"My eyes and experience can tell ... He has failed. He has endured. He has lost—yet refused to crumble. He has never sought glory, only understanding. And that makes him more suited to the path than most of us were at his age."
The elders didn't know Lin Mu's true age that was below a hundred years. But they could at least guess that he was a few thousand years old, considering the kind of skill he had shown. If they were to know that he was barely eighty one years old they would feel like their entire world was crumbling around them.
Thankfully for them, they didn't know.
Jiao Lian gave a soft sigh.
"It is rare to see soone with power who doesn't seek to flaunt it."
high Elder Yan Dao chuckled again, this ti more genuinely.
"He blocked my sword with his bare hand, Lian. The man is power made flesh. And yet he bowed to every elder he t before stepping through that door. That is rare."
The Grand Elder remained silent for a mont longer.
Then, slowly, he approached the closed door and placed a hand on its surface. The carved character for "Xian" pulsed gently beneath his palm, and for a mont, his eyes were filled with an ancient nostalgia.
"Do you rember how many entered before us?" he asked softly.
"Twenty-nine in our generation," Jiao Lian replied. "Six passed."
"Thirty-two in mine," Ji Shen muttered, his voice dry and raspy. "Only four erged."
Yan Dao folded his arms and lowered his gaze.
"And in the last five hundred years, none… fewer and fewer each decade before that. The path grows harder. Or perhaps… our hearts have grown softer."
The Grand Elder turned to face them once more, expression unreadable.
"He will not fail."
The words were spoken not with certainty, but with faith.
It wasn't arrogance. It wasn't blind hope.
It was the kind of faith that ca from seeing the impossible happen—again and again.
They stood in silence for a while longer, watching the door that now pulsed faintly with invisible intent. None of them could guess what Lin Mu might be facing inside—whether illusions, mories, sword phantoms, or the crystallized regrets of those who had fallen before him.
The Path of the Sealed Sword was not a place of simple trials.
It was a mirror, and it reflected not one's strengths… but one's deepest truths.
And now, all they could do… was wait.
While they reminisced about their ti in the path, Lin Mu was seeing it himself.
Darkness.
Not the kind born of night or shadows, but sothing deeper—absolute and primordial. The kind of darkness that seed to exist before light had ever been conceived.
A void without air, ground, or sky.
Lin Mu stood motionless.
He could feel his boots planted on sothing, but there was no sensation beneath them. No texture. No resistance. No temperature.
It was as if he were standing on the concept of space itself.
He raised his hand slowly, and even that action felt muffled, as though reality itself was draped in thick, unseen curtains. His immortal senses pulsed out instinctively, reaching in all directions.
And yet… nothing.
No terrain.No walls.No ceiling.No boundaries.
Only infinite, unresponsive stillness.
He narrowed his eyes and clicked his tongue lightly.
"So this is how it begins."
He switched to a deeper perception—his Spatial Perception.
This ti, his mind painted the true picture:The space around him was not a room.Not a hall.Not even a cave within Mount Sky Sever.
It was a Minor Plane. He had sowhat expected it, but seeing it was still sothing else.
An entire separate dinsion carved out from reality, existing solely for this path. Lin Mu felt the faint, imperceptible folds of dinsional layering. The laws here were different, warped, redefined by the ancient sword wills that had created this place.
And yet, even with that understanding… it was empty.
No terrain. No structures. No sword marks. Not even a single mote of sword intent to cling to.
Just silence.
And yet—he knew.
Sothing was here.
He could feel it: a pressure against his back, a tingle at his neck, the almost imperceptible crawl along his spine.
"A gaze…"
His voice sounded odd in this place. Not echoing—absorbed, like a stone vanishing into the ocean.
But the sensation persisted.
Not one gaze.
Multiple.
Like a thousand invisible eyes watching from beyond the veil of nothingness. So were filled with curiosity. Others with judgnt. And a few… with grief.
Lin Mu instinctively reached for Afternoon Pine—but then stopped himself.
No.This wasn't a threat. Not yet.This was… an observation.
A weighing.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, centering himself.
"So this is the first layer of the path," he whispered. "To unnerve… to strip away the senses… and force the sword heart to stabilize itself."
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