Two more days passed in quiet isolation. Li Yu continued to spend his ti consolidating his Qi and practicing his staff forms in the vibrant fields of the spatial pocket. He felt incredibly relaxed and felt like he was ho during this ti.
He was completely unaware of the gathering taking place not far away from him.
Inside the small wooden house Elysia sat at the table. She had discreetly activated a series of arrays that completely isolated the room from the outside world. The ethereal barrier was impenetrable for the likes of Li Yu. He could not sense what was happening inside this specific physical construct while he was distracted by his training.
Sitting across from her was Li Yu’s Half Soul. The younger copy of Li Yu had slipped out of his host body completely undetected. He held a steaming cup of spiritual tea and looked around the wooden room with a peaceful expression. He too felt like he was ho.
Just then two figures stepped silently into the room from out of nowhere. They had physically traveled from their hidden realm in stealth to visit the On Realm for this visit today. They bypassed every outer guard and slipped into the spatial pocket just to answer their Ancestor's summons.
They were the two supre commanders of the Phantom Scythes.
The man was nad Draven. He was tall and lean. He wore dark cloth that seed to devour everything around him. His eyes were like bottomless black pools. The woman was nad Nyssa. She was slender and moved with a terrifying deanor. It felt that if you looked at her for too long, you would fall under an illusion and then die. She wore a simple gray tunic and carried no visible weapons.
Their auras were completely restrained but the sheer density of their physical forms was staggering. It was incredibly obvious that Draven and Nyssa were vastly stronger than Haelan or Jhyra. They were ancient monsters who had spent eras sharpening themselves in the dark. These two were the strongest cultivators within the Eidolon Court and almost no one across the entire empire even knew they existed.
The two commanders imdiately dropped to one knee. They bowed their heads toward Elysia in perfect unison.
"Ancestor." Draven spoke. His voice was a quiet rasp. "We have arrived as commanded."
"Rise." Elysia said softly with a smile. The warmth on her face was radiating. Unlike when she was dealing with the council, there seed to be a much deeper love for these two from her.
The two leaders stood up but they kept their eyes respectfully lowered. But then Nyssa caught a glimpse of the person sitting across from their Ancestor. She froze completely. Draven noticed her hesitation and looked up as well. His black eyes widened in shock.
They stared at the Half Soul. The young man set his teacup down and offered them a warm and familiar smile as well
"It has been a long ti, you little stinky brat." The Half Soul said with an even wider smile on his face. He then looked at the woman. "You look beautiful as ever, Nyssa."
The two ancient assassins completely lost their legendary composure. They returned back to when they had first t the Half Soul. mories upon mories flooded back to their minds and they beca the children that they were when they first saw him. The two stumbled forward. They dropped to their knees again but this ti their bows were incredibly grand and filled with raw emotion.
"You have returned." Nyssa whispered as her voice trembled violently. "We have missed you so much."
"We kept the blades sharp just as you ordered." Draven added. He pressed his forehead against the wooden floorboards. "We have waited."
The Half Soul stood up from the table. He walked over to the two kneeling commanders. He reached down and gently pulled Draven to his feet. He then pulled Nyssa up as well.
He did not offer them a formal nod or a strict military salute. He pulled them both into a deep and genuine hug. The two supre assassins returned the embrace tightly. They had been forged by Elysia through the eras but they had been guided and trained by this very soul in the ancient eras at the start. To them, he was not just a leader. He was like a father to them, no, in their eyes he was their father.
Elysia watched the reunion with a fond smile. It was as if there was a family reunion happening within the small house. She let them have their mont before she spoke again.
"Your ti in the shadows is ending soon." Elysia announced.
Draven and Nyssa pulled back from the embrace. They looked at their Ancestor with burning excitent.
"The empire is changing." Elysia continued as her dark eyes flashed with authority. "The current peace is fragile. You will be needed very soon. I want your legions ard and your edge perfected. Prepare yourselves for the call."
"We are ready at any ti, Ancestor." Draven said firmly.
"Finally." Nyssa whispered with a fierce smile. "We can show ourselves to the world."
Elysia nodded in approval and didn’t question them. She knew she didn’t need to. They pushed themselves harder and more ruthless than anyone else. Elysia gave them a few final silent instructions after the four had spent a bit of carefree ti together. The two commanders bowed deeply one last ti before leaving.
They slipped out as silently as they had arrived. They lted back into the shadows of the physical world. The Half Soul offered a final smile to Elysia before fading into mist. He slipped back out of the house and seamlessly rged back into Li Yu's foundation while the young man was busy integrating his staff techniques.
Outside in the physical fields Li Yu finished his morning practice. He wiped the sweat from his brow and walked back to the wooden porch. Elysia was sitting in a chair on the porch now and enjoying the warm breeze. She looked perfectly innocent and unsuspecting.
"I have been thinking." Li Yu said as he leaned his staff against the railing. "I want to explore this empire a bit."
Elysia looked up at him and she offered a bright smile.
"Of course you can." Elysia agreed imdiately. "You should see the empire that you saved. You have only seen this small secluded fortress. The On Realm and all of the realms under the Eidolon Court is vast and beautiful. Perhaps you will even grow to like or love its people. That would be for the best."
"I just want to stretch my legs." Li Yu replied back to her. "Sitting in one place for too long makes
restless."
"Then you shall leave whenever you wish." Elysia said.
Li Yu planned his departure for the next morning. He summoned the council mbers to inform them of his decision. Haelan and Jhyra arrived quickly. They did not try to stop him as they knew they couldn’t. It was as if he bewitched their Ancestor and she had already told them this in advance. They knew better than to confine the Grand Envoy now.
Instead, they insisted on offering him protection. This was of course just for their Ancestor. They could not allow anything bad to happen to him after all.
"We must assign guardians to you." Haelan insisted respectfully. "You are the Grand Envoy. More importantly you are carrying the Ancestor safely within your foundation. We cannot let you wander our realms without an escort."
Li Yu had no issues with this arrangent. It was completely to be expected and would be strange if they didn’t. If he died, their ancestor would mostly die and if she died, they would all die. If he tried to refuse, they would just follow him in secret anyway.
The guardians they assigned were the two Core Wardens who had been protecting the Ancestor before. Jhyra gestured to the two massive figures standing quietly behind them.
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They wore the sa heavy armor forged from pale overlapping scales that Li Yu rembered.
Their faces were entirely hidden behind featureless masks of polished black glass. They stood perfectly still with massive halberds resting effortlessly against their shoulders. The ancient pressure they radiated was carefully suppressed but still palpable.
"Oram and Fenric will accompany you." Jhyra promised. "They are incredibly strong and know these territories well. They will not get in your way. They will just stay out of your sight and guard for any unseen dangers. You will not even know they are there."
Li Yu looked at the imposing black glass masks of Oram and Fenric. He needed to be certain his secrets were safe if they were going to follow him around and keep watch. That information could never leak.
"I accept them as escorts." Li Yu said firmly. "But they must take an additional soul contract. It will be strictly for secrecy. They cannot reveal anything they see or hear regarding my abilities to anyone. Not even to the council."
Oram and Fenric did not hesitate as it was to be expected. They were already bound to him by life and death contracts. Adding a clause for secrecy was a minor detail. They swore the oath instantly and solidified the ethereal chains. Li Yu felt the new bindings settle into his spiritual sea and he was satisfied.
So off Li Yu went.
He left the isolated spatial pocket and walked out through the colossal iron doors. The underground cavern was massive but barren. He was taken to the surface because there was no way he could have walked out on his own.
The environnt outside was harsh and desolate. The fortress city was more of a military base than an actual city. There were no markets or residential districts. There was not much to see here at all. He had been brought to this specific location originally because it was the center of the restricted zone. No one was allowed to live here for the protection of the Ancestor.
Oram and Fenric summoned a sleek flying vessel from sowhere. It was shaped like a crescent moon and forged from dark spiritual iron. Li Yu boarded the ship and the two pale wardens took their positions at the helm and guided the vessel into the sky.
"Take
to the nearest city." Li Yu asked them. "I want to get started."
"Understood, Grand Envoy." Oram replied. His voice was a deep tallic rumble from behind the black glass.
They flew for a while
across the desolate landscape. Eventually the jagged mountains gave way to rolling hills and wide rivers. The spiritual energy in the air shifted from sharp and defensive to vibrant and flowing.
A sprawling settlent appeared on the horizon. It was a relatively smaller city since it sat directly on the edge of the restricted zone. But to Li Yu it looked massive.
The Wardens landed the vessel in a designated clearing outside the main gates. They bowed to Li Yu and then lted seamlessly into the surrounding shadows along with the ship. Despite their massive halberds and heavy scaled armor, they vanished without a single sound. They would keep their word and stay out of his sight.
Li Yu walked toward the city gates alone but he knew the two were sowhere there and of course the ancestor that he carried inside him. He looked up and took in the architecture.
The city heavily featured a ghostly and ethereal aesthetic. It followed strict principles of spiritual alignnt and flow. The buildings were constructed from pale stone and dark glass. The sweeping curved roofs looked like floating spirits reaching for the sky.
Ethereal flas burned in lanterns that floated without any strings or poles. The light they cast was a soft and spectral blue. A thin layer of white mist clung permanently to the cobblestone streets. It gave the entire city the appearance of a beautiful and structured graveyard. It had touches from other architectures that Li Yu had seen from his travels but the ghostly appearance remained dominant everywhere.
Li Yu walked through the open gates. The guards asked him for the entry fee and Li Yu paid it before heading inside. It was the standard fee of spirit stones or Eidolon Coins, which was a form of currency used throughout the empire but he didn’t have any of those coins.
Li Yu stepped into the bustling streets and was imdiately surprised.
He had expected the city to be filled entirely with the pale and ethereal people like the Eidolon Council. But the On Realm was the center of a massive empire. It commanded many vassal realms and allied territories. The streets were filled with a diverse mixture of other races.
He walked past a group of towering figures hauling massive crates of sothing. They were nearly ten feet tall and their skin looked like cracked volcanic rock. Deep red light pulsed from the fissures in their stony flesh. They spoke in deep rumbling voices that shook the mist around their feet.
Further down the street he saw a vendor selling exotic aquatic plants. The vendor belonged to a race of amphibious beastkin. He had shimring blue scales along his neck and arms. His fingers were heavily webbed and his eyes were completely black. He kept himself hydrated with a mist hovering over his head. Probably so kind of technique but Li Yu was curious about it.
Li Yu also noticed several incredibly slender beings walking through the crowd. They possessed four long arms and wore elegant flowing silk. Their faces were entirely hidden behind smooth porcelain masks that lacked any features. They moved with a silent and eerie grace and traded small vials of glowing liquid with the local rchants.
While each place across the cosmos was different, Li Yu once again saw that the fundantals were always the sa. The people here had their own unique culture and distinct customs. They looked like ghosts and monsters but their overall needs were not that different from most other places he had visited.
People lived their lives here as any other place. They worked hard at their stalls. They trained in the open courtyards and they laughed loudly as they ate bowls of steaming food and drank heavily from large clay jugs of wine or other types of drinks. The city was alive and vibrant beneath its pale aesthetic. Judging from the faces of the people and the overall mood of the city, the people here were overall happy with their lives.
Li Yu smiled to himself. He liked this kind of atmosphere the best. He wandered through the main market district for hours just to look at everything. He observed the strange goods and listened to the unfamiliar dialects.
He found a massive section of the market dedicated to spiritual beasts and his eyes lit up. He walked down the rows of cages and glass tanks. He found several interesting types of different beasts that he had never seen before. There were spectral hounds that seed to almost phase through the bars of their cages and large beetles with shells made of so sort of iron.
He eventually focused entirely on the aquatic section. He was always looking to expand the ecosystem of his Koi Sanctuary. He spent a decent amount of spirit stones and acquired several new species.
He bought a school of Phantom Dart Fish. They were small and completely transparent. They only beca visible when they moved at high speeds. He also purchased a pair of Armored River Turtles. They possessed thick hexagonal shells that radiated a heavy defensive aura. He discreetly transferred all of them into his Koi Sanctuary after purchasing them.
The new additions wouldn’t be helpful at all in combat but perhaps the Phantom Dart Fish would be tasty once they have had a chance to breed and grow in population. As the afternoon sun began to dip below the horizon, Li Yu decided to find a place to eat. He walked toward a large multi story tavern near the center of the district.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed down the street.
A man was thrown violently through the wooden doors of a tea house. He tumbled across the cobblestones and crashed into a stone pillar. The mist swirled wildly around him. Li Yu was surprised and like everyone else around him, stopped and watched.
Four distinct groups of cultivators poured out of the tea house and spilled into the wide street. They were shouting and drawing their weapons. The ambient Qi in the area flared aggressively in an instant.
Li Yu leaned against a nearby wall to watch. He crossed his arms and observed the situation. Li Yu wasn’t sure when he developed the habit but he really enjoyed watching things happen around him and gossip. It looked like he was in good company because that’s what everyone else did as well.
What was before them was a classic clash. The robes they wore bore four different crests. Li Yu was witnessing a turf war between the four different clans within this border city. The fighters were not incredibly strong.
Li Yu scanned their auras and the combatants engaging in the street brawl were largely in the Body Refining and Qi Condensation stages. A few elites fighting in the center were at Foundation Establishnt and Core Formation. The squad leaders shouting orders from the back were barely in the Soul Formation realm.
Li Yu sensed a handful of deeper auras watching from the upper floors of the surrounding buildings though. Those were the true leadership of the clans. They were sitting at the Divine Transformation and Soul Transformation levels.
Li Yu didn’t know it but the peak of power in this entire city was around the Half King stage. It was a respectable level of power for a border town but it was nothing that could threaten Li Yu. He watched as a young man from a clan wearing blue robes pointed a sword at an elder from a clan wearing green robes.
"Your Ironwood Clan has encroached on our spirit stone mines for the last ti." The young man shouted dramatically. "The River Flow Clan will not tolerate this insult."
"You are fools." The green robed elder sneered. "The Raging Blade Clan already agreed to back our claim. You are outnumbered."
Right on cue, a group of cultivators in red robes stepped forward and drew heavy broadswords. The fourth group wearing black robes simply watched from the side and waited to see who would fall first.
Li Yu chuckled softly to himself. It was a ssy and dramatic conflict over local resources and bruised pride. He did not intervene. He had no stake in their fight and no desire to play the hero for strangers.
Li Yu was just a wandering observer passing through and was now indulging in a favored pasti he hadn’t fully realized he had. He pushed himself off the wall and walked past the shouting cultivators. He found a quiet corner table inside the large tavern across the street to watch and listen.
A waiter rushed over with a nervous expression as the sounds of battle echoed outside.
"I will take a plate of roasted spiritual at and a jug of your best local wine." Li Yu ordered calmly.
He sat back and ate his food while he watched the four clans begin their chaotic brawl in the misty street below. It was going to be an interesting week in the border city.
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