For several months, Lu Chenyuan had lain dormant, having fully absorbed the essence contained within the spirit jade. He was now capable of employing the illusion techniques recorded in the Xuan Yin Zhuan Lun Sutra, attempting to establish spiritual contact with members of the Li family.
However, judging that the moment was not yet right, he had never revealed his consciousness. Instead, he remained as silent as a lifeless object suspended above the ancestral hall.
After all, the Li family members were no fools. Though this ancient mirror held considerable status, Lu Chenyuan himself was merely a fledgling who had just crossed the threshold of cultivation.
Revealing himself now would mean fabricating an outlandish backstory, and he would have to field the Li family's endless suspicions—needlessly inviting numerous vulnerabilities upon himself.
Fortunately, his spiritual awareness comfortably covered the entire Li compound. In his daily life he simply rested with closed eyes, and when he woke, he treated it as watching a play of the mortal world unfold before him—rather pleasant and carefree.
Only the occasional startling presences sweeping across the Gu Yun Road above would jolt Lu Chenyuan awake, sending a chill through his heart as he sensed those vast or ethereal fluctuations, silently drawing his spiritual awareness to its extreme limit.
Though the Li family had imagined Lu Chenyuan to be some kind of ancient immortal mirror left behind by a supreme cultivator, Lu Chenyuan himself knew perfectly well what he was worth. With the Bearing Light Wheel of the second stage of Womb-Breathing as his base and the Azure Profound Wheel of the fourth stage as his limit, that was all he amounted to.
Compared with those vast auras—so overwhelming that even hidden inside the mirror he felt needles pricking at his back—Lu Chenyuan believed he ought to remain cautious. Better to lie low for another hundred years or more before thinking about anything else.
"Still, why are refugees fleeing all the way here along the Gu Yun Road..." he muttered in confusion.
———
Li Changhe led a group of villagers holding torches and farm tools—pitchforks, hoes, and the like—as they faced off at the village entrance against a ragged band of refugees.
Only a few days earlier they had finally finished dealing with the marriage of Li Yunping and Tian Wan. Li Changhe had just found a spare moment to practice when one of the Li family's tenant farmers came running in, breathless, to report that a group of refugees had arrived at the village gate.
"Refugees?"
The last time Li Changhe had seen refugees was more than three years ago, when a Chen family had fled over the Cangwu Mountains to seek shelter. In recent years the weather had been favorable, and the land nourished by the Qingxi River kept the people on both its upper and lower reaches alive. There should have been no reason for folk nearby to be starving.
"They say they came from the Gu Yun Road," the tenant answered respectfully, clearly taking Li Changhe's appearance as the arrival of a pillar to lean on.
"The Gu Yun Road... how can that be..."
Li Changhe considered for a moment, then waved a hand and stepped outside.
"Father has already gone to rest, so don't disturb him. Call Uncle Tian and Uncle Ren. We'll go take a look."
By the time Li Changhe reached the village entrance, Liu Yunfeng—the steward of the Liu family, the other large household in Lixi Village—was already standing there with a dry-smoking pipe in his mouth. Seeing Li Changhe arrive, he smiled and called out,
"Changhe, you're here."
"Uncle."
Li Changhe nodded in greeting. Liu Yunfeng was the elder brother of his mother, Liu Yun. Back when Li Gengye had killed the wealthy Yuan household and seized their lands, Liu Yunfeng's father had taken one look at the young man and, overruling all other objections, married Liu Yun to him, joining the two families as kin.
Li Changhe and Liu Yunfeng called out to the refugees three times before a middle-aged man was pushed forward from their ranks. Though his face was smeared with dirt and his clothes were in tatters, there was still a trace of bearing in the way he moved.
He cupped his hands and smiled bitterly. "I was once a caravan steward on the Xiayun Road. The Wu kingdom in the south breached Jingyun City, and now war rages across the whole Xiayun route. The people suffer everywhere. We were attacked by bandits on the road and escaped by mixing in with the refugees. I am unworthy, but everyone pushed me forward to speak on their behalf. I only ask that the two of you might give us shelter."
"That stretch of the Gu Yun Road has fallen into disrepair. Beasts run wild there. You made it all the way through that?" Liu Yunfeng asked in disbelief.
"Naturally, many people died along the road. The old, the weak, women, children—they all fell there," the man answered bitterly.
While the representatives of the two large households questioned the man about their origins, Old Xu stood among the villagers with a freshly woven grass locust in one hand and a hoe in the other, squinting at the refugees.
He lived at the entrance of the village and had been woken by the refugees' clamor at dawn. Hearing that Li Changhe was coming as well, Old Xu had hastily brought the grass locust he had woven several days earlier, planning to give it to the child still unborn in Lin's belly.
But now his attention had been caught by one young man among the refugees. The fellow wore torn cloth and scraps of hide about his waist. His eyes burned as if with fire as he stared fixedly at Li Changhe and Liu Yunfeng at the head of the crowd.
"Those eyes look oddly familiar..."
Old Xu stroked his white beard but could not immediately recall where he had seen them before.
"Everyone, hear me out!"
Liu Yunfeng raised his voice to quiet the restlessness among the refugees and stepped forward.
"I am the head of the Liu family in this village. There is still plenty of wasteland in Lixi Village that can be reclaimed. If you are willing, my Liu family can supply your grain and tools for this year. The land you clear will count as rented from our family, and we will take only thirty percent of the yield."
Standing half a step behind as the younger man, Li Changhe likewise made his promise.
"The Li family will do the same."
At those words, the young refugee suddenly turned his head and fixed Li Changhe with a burning stare. He looked for several breaths, then lowered his head again, apparently satisfied.
Old Xu, meanwhile, had finally elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and was carefully examining the refugees, yet no matter how he searched he could not spot that young man again.
Turning his head, he found that the fellow had already slipped to the very front of the refugee ranks, no more than a few body-lengths away from Li Changhe and Liu Yunfeng.
The middle-aged man standing respectfully beside the two heads cast him a glance and thought to himself,
"What sharp eyes. Could there really be someone like this hidden among refugees? We have eaten and slept together for three months, and yet I never once noticed him."
"You may make lives for yourselves in Lixi Village. You may marry, raise families, and settle down here. But there are things you absolutely may not do—no stealing, no rape..."
As Liu Yunfeng continued laying down the rules, the unease in Old Xu's heart grew stronger and stronger. He watched as the young man suddenly sprang forward and dropped to his knees before Liu Yunfeng, breaking into loud sobs.
"My entire family died in the chaos of war. I alone escaped. After traveling a thousand miles, I finally met two masters willing to shelter me. I am moved beyond words! How would I dare commit such shameless acts here?"
He cried with such apparent misery that the refugees behind him were stirred as well, and soon they were all bawling loudly. For a moment even Liu Yunfeng was moved.
But Old Xu's gaze had fixed on the youth's ankle where his trouser leg had ridden up as he knelt. The left ankle, crisscrossed with scars, bore several black moles.
A suffocating familiarity surfaced in his mind. His face flushed as red as if he were drunk, and he stared at the young man in mounting alarm.
By then Li Changhe beside him could no longer hold back. Looking with pity at the man kneeling on the ground, he stepped forward half a pace and bent down to help him up.
Old Xu's mind exploded. His vision turned white, and in an instant he seemed to be back in that afternoon more than twenty years ago.
Old Xu had still been a tenant under the Yuan family then. Golden waves of rice had rolled in the autumn wind, and that woman had come to the fields holding her child. Bending his back in ingratiating deference, he had said,
"Look at those black moles on the child's foot. He'll surely go on to accomplish great things."
"Wait!!"
For the first time in more than twenty years, Old Xu forcefully straightened the back he had kept bent all that time. Throwing up his head, eyes wide, he shouted in fury,
"Wait!"
Yet at almost the same instant another voice rang out from not far away, calling for a halt in the very same words.
It was the middle-aged man chosen by the refugees to speak on their behalf. He was staring at the youth's face in shock and alarm, and he too called for Li Changhe to stop.
But before either of them could finish, the young man had already snapped his head up. Li Changhe met those eyes before he could react.
Those savage, razor-sharp eyes, like the eyes of a beast.