The Immortal Path Is Crowded

Swallowed by darkness, the forest lay in a deathly silence. Only the buzzing of insects and the whisper of leaves moved by the ghostly wind dared to break the stillness.

Not even the nocturnal beasts approached that open wound in the earth. A fissure a hundred zhang wide looked like the slash of an ancient Immortal, as if a celestial sword had split the mountain range in two. From the abyss rose an icy wind that cut the skin like blades.

Hu!

On the very edge of the precipice, under the pale moonlight, a fifteen-year-old youth was getting dressed. He had an ordinary face, neither handsome nor ugly, the kind that gets lost in any crowd in a mortal city.

He adjusted his gray robe and tightened the leather strap at his waist. With a fluid motion, he gathered his long black hair and tied it with a simple faded strip.

His breathing was uneven. The qi in his meridians roared like an overflowing river after forcing his escape, but his hands didn't tremble at all.

At his feet, on the cold stone, lay in tatters the red robe with black trim of the Crimson Demon Sect.

He looked at it for an instant. His black eyes, normally dull, shone for a second with a depth that did not belong to a fifteen-year-old boy.

He crouched and lifted it with just the tips of two fingers, as if touching it would stain his skin. He walked two steps to the edge. Below, the abyss waited, swallowing even the light.

The robe fell spinning, a solitary crimson dot. The wind tore it apart in the air before the darkness of the canyon devoured it completely.

For Luo Wuji, it was now nothing more than trash from his past.

He turned his gaze toward the black sea of trees on the other side. He narrowed his eyes and felt the faint pulse of the world's qi flowing between the leaves.

"If my memory doesn't fail me... there's a mortal city this way," he murmured, his low voice blending with the whistle of the wind.

His figure blurred. In the blink of an eye he was nothing more than a black shadow sliding between the trees.

When the sun tore through the horizon, dyeing the sky blood red, Luo appeared on the outskirts of Black Stone City.

Peng!

The air exploded faintly and his silhouette materialized beside the dirt road. The morning dew didn't even dare wet his boots.

In the distance, the stone gate opened onto different roads. A line of mortals, merchants and peasants with sacks, waited to enter.

Luo narrowed his eyes. He took a step forward and, suddenly, stopped short.

His hand flew to his temple. A sharp pain, like a thousand needles, pierced his skull. His brow furrowed.

"Tsk... damned righteous path dog," he hissed through his teeth. "A low-level soul technique and you think you can leave me with aftereffects?"

His qi burst for a second. Boom!

In that instant his aura, which he normally kept contained, leaked out. Suddenly the air around him grew heavy and cold. The leaves within ten zhang in every direction were pulverized. A couple of travelers in line felt a chill and looked around without understanding why.

Exhaling slowly, the pressure disappeared as quickly as it came. He was once again the average-faced boy.

Then, with his hands clasped behind his back, he walked with calm steps toward the gate.

He got to the end of the line, like any traveler. A guard in old armor looked him up and down and laughed.

"Ha! Another skinny brat playing at being tough. They're simply trash! How much dignity can a brat have?"

Luo didn't look at him. He only sketched a faint smile that didn't reach his eyes as he waited his turn.

When his turn came, Clang! A steel spear crossed in front of Luo, stopping him cold.

It was a bald ox of a man, wearing Black Stone City armor that looked about to burst across his chest. He swept Luo with his gaze from top to bottom and let out a mocking laugh through his teeth.

"Well, well... what is such a young brat doing alone on these roads? Did you get lost from your mommy?" he said, and planted his open palm against his face. "It's ten low-grade spirit stones to enter."

Ten. He had charged the pot-bellied merchant in front of him five, and Luo had heard it perfectly.

Slowly, Luo raised his gaze. His black eyes, normally dull, lifted until they met the guard's.

With a single glance, he knew everything. First level of Foundation Establishment, unstable qi, meridians full of impurities from cheap pills. An ant in armor.

If he wanted, with a single cut he could separate his head from his body in this very instant. The idea crossed his mind for a second, cold and sharp.

But he held back his bloodlust. He still had a plan to follow, and causing a scene at the gate of a mortal city wasn't part of it.

He said nothing. He simply looked at him.

That silence was what enraged the guard the most. A swollen vein began to throb on his bald head, shining with sweat under the morning sun.

"Hey, brat! Did you go deaf? I'm talking to you!" he growled, taking a step forward intending to grab him by the collar of his robe.

Just as he was about to spit out harsher words, his gaze met Luo Wuji's fully and in that instant he froze.

His back was soaked with cold sweat in a second. A chill rose from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck. It was a premonition of death so deep and primal that his instincts screamed louder than his cultivation.

His hand, halfway there, trembled. Confusion and fear mixed, turning into an even hotter anger, an anger born of humiliation.

How was it possible? How could he, a dignified guard of Black Stone City, a Foundation Establishment cultivator, feel fear of a simple average-faced brat, without a trace of qi fluctuation?

Driven by humiliation and anger, the guard snorted and expelled all his Foundation Establishment qi.

BOOM!

An invisible wave of pressure spread from his feet, kicking up dust from the road. The gate's flags flapped hard.

The people in line opened their eyes in surprise. Several merchants instinctively took a step back.

"Ah, that young man has bad luck..." murmured an old man shaking his head. "Making Guard Gu angry, known for his bad temper throughout all of Black Stone City."

"They're going to take ten spirit stones from him and he's going to beat him on top of it. Poor brat," whispered another beside him.

A smug smile filled the guard's bald face as he heard the crowd's reaction. That was the respect he deserved. He concentrated all his qi and directed it, without holding back, straight at the young man in front of him.

He expected to see him turn pale and fall to his knees begging, but nothing happened.

Luo remained standing, hands behind his back; not a single strand of his hair moved under the pressure. It was as if the guard's qi were a summer breeze trying to move a mountain.

Guard Gu's expression turned dark. If he couldn't make this child kneel before him, in front of all these people, he would lose all face.

"Kneel!" he roared.

His hand, charged with all his strength and qi, shot forward to grab Luo by the shoulder and slam him to the ground.

But something absurd, which left Guard Gu and the crowd stunned, happened.

Halfway there, before the guard's huge hand could touch him, Luo simply stretched out his arm.

His hand, thin and pale, with the long fingers of a scholar, caught the great guard's wrist in midair.

The clash was silent. The guard's hand stopped dead, trapped by those scholar's fingers as if they were shackles of cold steel.

Faced with such a situation, the crowd erupted.

"WHAT?!" shouted a young merchant, pointing with a trembling finger.

"He stopped him! With one hand!" exclaimed a woman covering her mouth.

"Impossible! That's Guard Gu, he's at Foundation Establishment!" roared a cultivator in line, his eyes bulging.

"That brat... has no cultivation?! Then how...!"

The silence broke into a murmur of chaos and confusion. Luo kept holding him effortlessly, oblivious to his surroundings.

And in his gaze, until now indifferent, there appeared for the first time a clear, cold trace of annoyance.

In the midst of the guard's surprise, Luo's voice rang out. It wasn't loud, but it was cold, and laden with an irritation that chilled the morning air.

"I was going to let it go," he said, his black eyes locked onto Guard Gu's. "But it seems you don't know the immensity of heaven and earth. I will not be patient any longer."

Without warning, a refined and calm explosion of qi burst from Luo. It wasn't violent like the guard's; it felt like a silent tide spreading through the area.

The dust settled and Luo's gray robe fluttered once. The crowd held its breath and then erupted.

A middle-aged cultivator in line, wearing the frayed robe of a small sect, took a step back with a pale face and shouted in a broken voice:

"How is this possible?! Ninth level of Qi Condensation! He doesn't look more than fifteen and he's already at the ninth level!"

"NINTH LEVEL!" repeated another, almost choking. "At that age! He's a genius from a great sect!"

"No wonder Guard Gu's pressure didn't affect him!"

Hearing the crowd, Guard Gu came to his senses with a jolt, and humiliation turned into pure fury. He gritted his teeth and tensed his large muscles, the veins in his neck swollen and twisted, trying to break free from that brat's grip.

It was a useless effort. Luo Wuji's slender hand was an icy shackle. Immovable. It didn't move a single millimeter.

His face turned purple from the effort, sweat pouring down his bald head in streams.

"LET GO, BASTARD!" he roared beside himself, and raised his other arm, loading it with all the qi he had left, preparing to strike that damned youth in the face.

The instant his fist rose, he felt all the strength drain from his body. His proud Foundation Establishment qi snuffed out in one go, dead.

His legs gave out and he fell to his knees in front of Luo Wuji, raising a cloud of dust, head bowed and arm still trapped.

From below, he saw the young man seem to debate something with himself. His expression shifted from cold annoyance to total indifference in the blink of an eye.

In the end, Luo simply opened his hand. From his sleeve fell five low-grade spirit stones, which clinked against the ground in front of the guard.

He released the guard's arm and walked calmly past him, without even looking at him again. His voice, clear and calm, was heard by the entire crowd at the gate:

"You should feel lucky today. There won't be a second time."