Chapter 232: Like How They Once Spoke of Me

Chapter 232: Like How They Once Spoke of Me

Ren Zhi’s footfalls were near silent as he stepped past the edge of the clearing, leaving Kai behind beneath the night sky.

He should have felt satisfaction. The boy had broken through; finally aligned mind, body, and breath into something worthy of that next stage. And yet, his hand still trembled.

He curled his fingers into a loose fist, hiding the shake in the sleeve of his robe.

Kai had caught his wrist.

That gentle, resolved grasp had sparked something deeper. A memory. One he had buried beneath a thousand meditations and ten thousand lies.

The same way Kai caught his wrist; years ago, he had caught it too.

That boy. That smiling, cruel boy with dark, crimson hair and a voice that sang like silk over steel. A prodigy from the mainland. Closer to Kai's age, and going toe-to-toe with him when he achieved the pinnacle of Essence Awakening.

The memory unfolded unbidden despite having occurred decades ago.

The heat of that courtyard. The blood in his mouth. The hiss of qi disintegrating mid-channel as that hand clamped over his wrist and everything stopped. His joints had locked. His breath had fled. And then—

Calm. Almost bored. Like the choice was no more serious than selecting tea.

He was stronger now. Much stronger than he'd been when he first entered the mainland. But even now, he didn't know if he held a candle to that monster.

He reached the base of the hill behind the Soaring Swallow and paused. His breath caught slightly, and with it, his qi faltered; just for a fraction of a moment. Circulation quickened. Another tremble lanced down his forearm before he forced it back into stillness.

Even now, with all his control, his refined mastery of internal flow… it still slipped when the memory returned.

The sensation of kneeling on stone, knowing he’d been allowed to live purely on a whim.

The night he severed his own sight to keep his life.

He clenched his jaw, rolled his shoulders, and resumed walking. Posture casual. Steps deliberate. Not a single creak as he ascended the wooden steps of the inn, bypassing the hall of creaking floorboards with practiced ease. The weight of his robes concealed each shift of muscle. Not one sound betrayed him.

By the time he reached his room, the tremble was gone. His breathing, even.

But the memory lingered.

He slid the door shut with barely a whisper, sat on the edge of the woven sleeping mat, and tilted his head back toward the ceiling.

In the darkness, his empty sockets didn’t matter. He could still see the boy's face.

Not Kai. No.

"... Tianyou Long."

SCENE BREAK

The morning came quietly, gray and cold, the mist curling along the rooftops like old memories refusing to leave.

Ren Zhi stood near the window of the Soaring Swallow, unseen behind the divider. He didn’t need eyes to know the shape of the village. He'd mapped it in his steps, in the tone of its people’s voices, in the subtle pulse of the qi that hummed beneath its soil.

The village was quieter now. Not silent, but subdued. Spirits weren’t broken; but frayed, worn thin by the slow drip of illness, of uncertainty, of waiting. They still moved. They still worked. But every action came with the weight of doubt.

Still, there were pillars.

Lan-Yin, first among them. He narrowed his focus, tilting his head slightly. Her footfalls were heavier now, but her steps never wavered. She cooked every morning, every evening, not just for herself or the inn, but for dozens. Stirring porridge, chopping roots, feeding children and elders alike.

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He traced the way her qi moved. There. In the way the steam rose from her broth. In the faint shimmer that settled over her spices.

'Did the Interface awaken something in her, too?'

If so, it was subtle. But potent. The way she seasoned her food had changed. A pinch of root that calmed coughing. A dash of herb that helped the sleepless find rest. Not alchemy. BUt something adjacent to it.

Then Li Wei; the carpenter child, the one who had overseen half the village’s growth and smelled of sawdust whenever he passed.

Ren Zhi turned slightly. The boy continued to hammer on; slower than before, but still steady. Construction had come to a crawl with the sickness, yet Li Wei hadn’t stopped. He worked alone more often now, reinforcing beams, patching walls, tending to scaffolds warped by rain.

Xu Ziqing of the Silent Moon was quieter. Observant. Always watching, always listening. A blade sheathed so often, people forgot it was there. But Ren Zhi hadn’t. He’d seen the faint lift of the brow. The way the disciple spoke to him with a slight deference not given to the blind.

Perhaps he knew.

Not of his past. But that he was something more than a traveling bookseller.

And then, of course, there was Shan Ming.

To the villagers, he was Elder Ming. A calm presence. A guiding hand. But to Ren Zhi, he was a ghost from another life.

They had met decades ago. On a ship. A slow, creaking vessel bound for Tranquil Breeze Province. The edge of the world.

Ren Zhi had been late into his forties then. Fresh from the mainland. Fresh from disgrace.

His eyes had just been taken.

His pride, already gone before that.

He’d sat alone beneath the deck, blind and seething. Nursing wounds that medicine couldn’t reach. Not the ones on his face, or chest, or limbs; but the one at the center. The thing inside him that had believed he could ascend, that he could match the monsters of the Jianghu. That had died the moment his wrist was caught and he was told to blind himself or be buried where he stood.

And beside him, just a few bunks down, had been Shan Ming.

Barely a man then. Late teens. Thin. Scarred. Quiet in a way that didn’t come from humility, but from exhaustion.

It was only days into the voyage that they’d exchanged names. And only days after that when Ren Zhi learned that Shan Ming was not just another runaway.

His dantian had been shattered. Not in battle, not in punishment; but by betrayal. Framed for the death of his senior brother. Cast out. Hunted. Losing his sworn brother in the process. A boy marked as guilty by those who needed someone to bury.

They had shared little.

No grand friendship.

No vows of brotherhood.

Just two broken men. One too old to start over. One too young to know if he even should.

Ren Zhi had never expected to see him again.

And yet, now—

Shan Ming stood as the respected Village Head of Gentle Wind Village. He moved slowly, but never with hesitation. He spoke little, but never without weight. The villagers leaned on him, trusted him, and sought him out when disagreements occurred.

And what startled him most wasn’t how much Shan Ming had changed, it was how much he hadn’t.

There was still something quiet in the man. Still the same careful temperance in how he engaged with others. But that quiet no longer came from fear.

It came from peace.

Shan Ming had found it. Somehow. Somewhere along the way, despite everything, despite the bounty on his name and the broken path he’d been forced to walk, he had grown into something steady.

Ren Zhi couldn’t say the same.

He still woke with tension coiled in his chest. Still fought against the ghosts of corridors filled with mainland geniuses and crimson-eyed monsters. Still couldn't fully stop his hands from shaking when the past came back.

He turned his mind away from his spiraling thoughts. He walked outside, and pressed his senses even deeper to see the most crucial pillar among them all.

Kai Liu.

Ren Zhi could feel the boy's presence long before he heard his steps. He was in too many places to track in just one sense. One moment tending the greenhouse. The next distributing medicine or purified water. Then at the forge, or the Soaring Swallow, or wherever he needed to be. Always helping, always working.

Not out of pride. Not out of obligation. But necessity. Kai had become the village’s center not by declaration, but by momentum. Like falling leaves down a stream's current.

The others were integral to the village in various ways. But he was the axis of which all things worked upon.

And the villagers knew it. Ren Zhi had heard it in the way they spoke his name. The reverence. The affection. The way Shan Ming, even with all his years, spoke of the boy like one might speak of a son. Or something closer to a legacy.

'Like how they once spoke of me.'

He clenched his hand again; subtle, almost imperceptible. Fingers curling into palm.

He had been that once.

The jewel of the province.

Not the scion of any sect. Not the prized disciple of some storied lineage. Just a man who carved his own path in the dirt and dared to call it a road.

They called him many things. Rogue cultivator. Wanderer. Madman.

Until they started to call him—

"...Wind Sage. Tch."

Ren Zhi rested his chin on the base of his palm, remembering how much pride he once took in the title.

He had found the manual in the bones of a forgotten ruin, half-crushed by roots and time. A scroll so old it crumbled as he read, but the techniques burned into his memory. Not just swordplay; philosophy. A way of moving, of breathing, of being. A fusion of form and formlessness. Of silence and storm.

With two swords and a will strong enough to unmake lineages, the province bent around his presence. Even sect leaders bowed their heads when he passed.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

So he left.

To the mainland. To chase the promise of greatness they whispered in his ear for years, and found out just how small he was.

He’d stepped into a world where cultivators cut through rivers with their breath and scholars cracked the heavens with a single thought. Where monsters wore smiles and geniuses looked at him like a half-formed thing.

His fall had been silent. Not public. But total. And when he returned quietly to the Tranquil Breeze Coast, spending his long life in a peaceful and quiet manner, the world changed.

The Interface had appeared.

A new path. A new system.

And Ren Zhi never received a quest or tribulation.

Not once.

He had waited. Wondered. Even hoped, in the quietest corners of himself.

But it never came.

And now he understood why.

The Interface did not come to those who had already burned through their desire.

It came to those who still wanted. Who still strived.

And maybe that was alright.

Because in the end, what did he have to ask for?

He had walked the path of power. Held it. Lost it. And lived.

He had no need for miracles anymore.

So instead, he would give them to someone else.

He turned back toward the village, breath slow and measured.

Kai. That boy still burned. Still reached. Still believed that he could do something better than what came before. That he could bear what others could not.

He wasn’t like Ren Zhi.

And he never would be.

Ren Zhi returned to the village square. The sun was dipping behind the misted roofs, casting long shadows over the worn cobbles.

He sat down on the edge of a wooden crate, stretched out his legs like any old man with too many years behind him, and tapped his knuckles on the rim of a barrel.

“Gather ‘round,” he said, voice lifting with ease. “I have a story for you all, if you're so inclined to hear.”

A few children turned first. Then mothers. Then workers with slumped shoulders and tired eyes. Some sat. Others stood nearby, just close enough to listen without admitting they wanted to.

He smiled faintly to himself, tilting his head as if to feel the sun on his face.

His voice lifted again, equal parts rasp and rhythm.

“Did I ever tell you the tale of the wind that shattered a mountain?”

And just like that, they gathered.

And he began to weave.

A tale of impossible odds.

Of a lone cultivator without name or sect, who rose like a storm through the ranks of giants.

The names were changed. The settings abstracted. The swords split into metaphor.

But the heart of it remained.

'Like how they once spoke of me.'