Myriad Rivers to the Sea

The walk back from Commander Urgoton’s stone patio was a short one but for Li Yu, it felt like crossing a vast chasm.

He vaulted back over the low stone wall and landed softly in the dirt of his own estate. The midday suns were warm against his skin and the silver leaves of the surrounding forest rustled with a familiar, soothing cadence. The oppressive and suffocating weight pressing down on his chest had cracked slightly.

Li Yu stopped in the center of his courtyard and looked back toward the neighboring property. He couldn't see the old moth veteran from here but he could hear the slow and rhythmic swish, swish, swish of the wooden broom sweeping the stone pavers.

“Purpose is found in the living.”

Urgoton’s words echoed in his mind. It carries the heavy and undeniable truth of a person who had seen the heights of power and the depths of loss, yet still found a reason to smile. Li Yu looked down at his own hands.

'I have been a fool,' Li Yu thought with a rueful and self-deprecating smile that finally broke through the gloomy mask he had worn.

'I was staring up at the giants shouldering the sky and feeling ashamed that my hands were empty. But I forgot that those giants are holding up the heavens specifically so that this dirt can be tilled. So that people like Urgoton can sweep their patios in peace. So that life can continue.'

He walked over to the wooden table and looked at the cold cup of floral tea he had abandoned earlier that morning.

He realized now that his depression hadn't come from a lack of purpose but from a sudden and jarring shift in scale. The rescue battle and then the Temporal Dao Stone had forcefully expanded his worldview. It shoved the universe directly into his face. He had tried to measure his quiet and peaceful life against the grand and tragic sacrifices of the ghosts he had lived alongside in the dao.

'But I am not Ma Feng. I am not Master Hua or Vane,' Li Yu reminded himself. His breathing deepened as the Law of Soul within his inner self began to resonate with a newfound clarity.

'Khaos was right. He told me not to walk the paths of the ghosts. He told me to follow my own heart. My path isn't to burn out in a blaze of cosmic glory for an empire I don't know.'

Li Yu closed his eyes and was feeling the ambient Qi of Silkwood wash over him.

'Right now those grand things are completely out of my reach,' he admitted to himself. It was a humbling thought but instead of crushing him, it liberated him.

'I am a Law Integration expert but I am still a sapling compared to the ancient trees that rule this cosmos. If I threw myself into their world now, I would just be another casualty. But... one day.'

Li Yu opened his eyes. A bright and focused light returned to them.

'One day, if I keep walking my own path, if I keep building my foundation step by step. I might actually reach their level. And when I do, I won't just be a farmer standing in the dirt looking up. I will have the power to actually stand beside them and help them shoulder the sky so that others can enjoy the warmth of the morning like I have done.'

A profound shift occurred within his mindset. He didn't need to abandon his peaceful life to find meaning, nor did he need to ignore his cultivation to enjoy the peace. The Dao was a balance. He would focus more heavily on his cultivation and getting stronger.

He would be treating his martial progress with the deadly seriousness it deserved. But he would absolutely refuse to stop enjoying the journey along the way. The destination was important but the dirt beneath his feet was where he lived in the present. Li Yu walked over to the field and looked at the iron hoe lying in the dirt where he had dropped it in a fit of despair.

He bent down and picked it up. His fingers wrapped around the smooth wooden handle. He raised the iron blade and brought it down into the dark earth.

Thud.

It didn't feel as futile anymore. It felt like laying the first brick of a very long and very tall tower.

Li Yu spent the rest of the day working the ten-acre field. He fell into a steady and rhythmic trance. As he turned the soil, his mind began to race with new possibilities. He wasn’t just all of a sudden over his previous state but it felt like he was clearing his mind and soul with every strike of the hoe.

Li Yu began formulating a list of rarer and more finicky spiritual seeds he wanted to track down. The next morning, his routine expanded. Before picking up the hoe, he stood in the center of his courtyard and drew the ceremonial sword from his inner world.

The highly decorated blade chimed softly in the crisp morning air. Li Yu took a deep breath, cleared his mind and began to swing.

Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.

He simply swung the beautiful piece of metal. But this time, it wasn't a desperate coping mechanism to keep the darkness at bay. It was a moving meditation. The physical rhythm aligned with his breathing, centering his soul and preparing his body for the day.

He found immense comfort in the simple and repetitive motion. He was completely oblivious to the apocalyptic sealing arrays hiding the true nature of Gilded Calamity beneath the gold silk and decorative runes.

With his mind clear and his daily routine reestablished, Li Yu knew there was one final step to truly banishing those negative feelings. He needed to reconnect with the living. Later that week, Li Yu washed the dirt from his hands, changed into a clean set of dark robes and walked down the gentle slope toward the heart of Silkwood.

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The town looked exactly as he remembered it, yet more precious. The stone streets were bustling with merchants, farmers and the occasional low-level cultivator. The air smelled of sweet nectar, roasted meats and the sharp tang of forged iron.

His first stop was the Silver Lantern tavern.

Jax, the jovial mantis barkeep, was wiping down the long wooden counter when Li Yu walked through the door. The mantis looked up, his faceted eyes widening in genuine surprise.

"Li Yu!" Jax boomed while throwing the rag over his shoulder and rushing around the counter to clap the young man on the arm. "By the ancestors, it has been years! Where did you vanish to? We thought you had packed up and moved somewhere!"

"I took a long journey to gather some rare materials and ended up in a secluded retreat," Li Yu lied smoothly as he offered his warmest smile. "It took much longer than I anticipated. How is your aphid doing?"

Jax laughed, a hearty and vibrating sound. "That beast is fatter and lazier than ever! Ever since you cleared that blockage, he eats like a king. Come, sit! The first jug of sweet nectar wine is on the house. You have years of local gossip to catch up on."

Li Yu sat at the bar, nursing the sweet and familiar wine as Jax filled him in on the town's happenings. He learned that while the core of the community remained, a few people had moved on. A young family of weavers had relocated to a larger city seeking better prospects and Oren, the seed shop owner, had passed his business down to his nephew to retire in the southern provinces.

"And Elise?" Li Yu asked while taking a sip of his wine.

"Still as cranky as the day you left," Jax chuckled. "She still complains about the youth not understanding soil density."

Li Yu visited Elise the next day. The older moth farmer was standing in her fields and aggressively pruning a row of Moonshade Orchids. When she saw Li Yu leaning against her fence, she stopped and narrowed her eyes.

"So, the runaway farmer returns," Elise grunted at him as she was wiping her hands on her apron. She then walked over to him. "I went by your plot a few times over the years. Your dirt is well tended, I'll give you that. But a tilled field with no seeds is just a fancy sandbox, boy."

"I was actually hoping to buy some new seeds," Li Yu smiled and was entirely unfazed by her gruff demeanor. "I am looking for something more challenging this season. Perhaps something that requires a heavy infusion of elemental Qi?"

Elise paused and was looking him up and down. She couldn't read his cultivation level but she could sense the centered calm radiating from him.

"You want a challenge?" Elise muttered as a faint and approving smirk touching her lips. "Fine. Come to the shed. Let's see if you have the patience to grow Star Thread Lotus without drowning the roots."

Over the next few weeks, Li Yu seamlessly reintegrated himself into the fabric of Silkwood.

He became the town's beast physician once again. Farmers brought him their sick soil beetles and merchants led their exhausted flying mounts to his courtyard. Li Yu treated them all with the exact same care and precision he had used before.

His Law of Life made the healing process significantly faster and easier. Something that would have been hard to handle before was made much easier by the ample vitality that he now controlled. He accepted fresh seeds, baked goods and minor spirit stones in return. He was treating the mundane transactions with respect.

He visited Brak, the beetle blacksmith and spent an afternoon helping the massive man pump the bellows. He marveled at the simple and honest heat of the forge. He chatted with Oren's nephew, securing a steady supply of common herbs for his medicinal practices.

He even spent an evening sitting on the low stone wall with Commander Urgoton. They shared a jug of wine and listened to the old moth veteran talk about the different types of birds that visited his patio.

The process of healing was not instantaneous. There were still nights when Li Yu would wake up in a cold sweat, his mind momentarily convinced he was back in the Temporal Dao Stone. That this was in fact it, that he was still in there right now. He felt the phantom blade of an assassin or the crushing weight of a collapsing array.

But each day he spent working the soil, each morning he swung his ceremonial sword and each afternoon he laughed with the townsfolk, the icy shell the Temporal Dao Stone had left around his heart chipped away a little more. Roughly a month after he had stepped out of the spatial rift with Lian and Khaos, the transformation was complete.

The heavy and suffocating fog of his existential depression had fully evaporated. He was no longer a lost soul wandering the echoes of dead men. He was Li Yu. He was a Law Integration expert who intended to reach the absolute apex of the cosmos to obtain the peace that he wanted in his life. He was currently a farmer who took deep pride in his Star Thread Lotuses. The two identities no longer fought each other; they were harmoniously balanced.

It was a quiet and moonless night at the end of that transformative month. Li Yu had finished his evening meditation and decided to take a slow walk along the edge of his property. He followed the gentle curve of the wooden fence until he reached the banks of the river that bordered the rear of his estate.

The water was dark and peaceful. They were currently reflecting the faint and silvery starlight filtering through the canopy of the pale silver forest on the opposite bank. The only sound was the soft and rhythmic gurgling of the current washing over the smooth river stones.

Li Yu stood on the grassy bank with his hands clasped behind his back. He was enjoying the cool and damp breeze. His mind was clear and his internal domain perfectly settled.

Then, the ambient Qi in the air shifted.

It wasn't a violent, aggressive spike of power like a spatial tear or a supreme expert descending from the sky. It was incredibly subtle. It felt like a cold breath exhaled across the back of his neck.

Li Yu frowned as his Law Integration senses flared instantly. He peered into the darkness downriver. A thick and unnatural mist began to roll across the surface of the water. It didn't behave like normal fog; it clung heavily to the river. It was moving upstream against the natural flow of the current. It was dense, grey and utterly silent. It was swallowing the sound of the rushing water as it advanced.

From within the heart of the creeping mist, a soft and warm light appeared. It was a pale, yellow glow. It was bobbing gently in the darkness. As the mist parted slightly, the source of the light drifted into view.

It was a small and incredibly simple wooden boat. The wood was dark and weathered and looked as though it had been drifting across the waters of the world for millennia. Standing at the stern of the small craft was an old man.

He was dressed in tattered robes that seemed to blend seamlessly with the unnatural fog surrounding him. A wide brimmed straw hat obscured the upper half of his face, casting deep and impenetrable shadows over his features.

In his left hand the old man held a simple iron lantern, its glass panes clouded with age and holding the pale yellow flame that pierced the mist. In his right hand, he held a long and worn wooden paddle.

With slow, rhythmic and perfectly silent strokes, the old man used the paddle to steer the small wooden boat directly against the river's current.

Li Yu’s eyes narrowed and his body tensed as the chaotic laws of his domain lay dormant but ready just beneath his skin. He couldn't sense a single drop of cultivation from the old man. There was no Qi, no physical pressure and no martial intent. But the boat was moving upstream against the current without making a sound and the mist seemed to obey the swing of the old man's lantern.

The small wooden boat drifted closer with the pale yellow light reflecting off the dark surface of the river. The enigmatic figure steered his vessel directly toward the bank where Li Yu was standing.