The Ancestor lived beneath the mountain.
Not a metaphor. The Lian compound sat at the base of Mount Qinghe, and buried within the mountain's roots — past three sealed gates, through a tunnel carved by formations that hummed with enough qi to make Rhen's teeth ache — was a chamber the size of a temple hall.
It was empty. No furniture, no decorations, no lights. Just raw stone walls, a stone floor worn smooth by centuries of someone sitting in the same spot, and, in the center of the chamber, a man.
He looked seventy. Which meant he was much, much older. His hair was white but full, pulled back loosely, and his robes were plain gray — no Lian crimson, no family crest. He sat cross-legged on the bare stone, hands resting on his knees. His eyes were closed.
The qi in the room pressed against Rhen's skin like a physical weight. Pure Yang realm. The third tier of cultivation. A man who'd been refining himself for four centuries, whose spiritual energy had saturated the very stone around him.
Mingxue knelt. One knee, head bowed. The War Goddess of Great Yue, who'd told the family elders to go to hell, knelt like a child before a grandfather.
Suyin dipped her head respectfully but stayed standing — Rhen's arm supporting her.
The Ancestor opened his eyes.
They were the color of old amber, with the depth of something that had been staring at the same four walls for thirty years and seeing further than anyone who'd traveled the world. They moved from Mingxue to Suyin to Rhen, and lingered.
"Sit," he said. His voice was dry, soft, the kind that didn't need volume because the room itself amplified it. "The floor is cold, but I stopped noticing that around my second century."
They sat. Rhen helped Suyin down, and she arranged herself with practiced grace — back straight, legs tucked, hands in her lap. Mingxue remained kneeling.
"Mingxue. You may drop the formality. You're not eight years old anymore, crouching in this room because you thought I had candy hidden in my robes."
Mingxue's jaw tightened, but she shifted from kneeling to sitting. "I never thought you had candy."
"You did. I always kept some, just in case you came looking." The Ancestor's attention returned to Rhen. "So. The man who won my great-granddaughter's marriage contest without throwing a punch."
"I dodged," Rhen corrected. "And touched. Briefly."
"I know. I watched." The Ancestor tapped the stone floor. "Formation arrays throughout the compound. I see everything above from down here. A bad habit I developed when the elders started making decisions I disagreed with." He leaned forward slightly. "I also watched your breakthrough. Chi Sea realm from nothing in one afternoon. The golden pill should have killed you."
"It tried."
"But your core ate the excess qi. A Hollow Core that swallows energy instead of generating it — then uses an Oath bond to convert that energy into cultivation." The Ancestor's amber eyes held Rhen like pins held a butterfly. "I've been alive for four hundred and seven years. I've met Saint Embryo realm cultivators. I've seen primordial divine weapons activated. I've been inside the Celestial Altar. But I have never seen a Hollow Core forge an Oath."
Silence. The chamber's stone walls seemed to press inward.
"Tell me about the artifact," the Ancestor said. "And do not lie. I will know."
Rhen told him. Not everything — he kept the Eternal Vow's specific notifications private, and he didn't mention the manipulation suspicion — but the core truth. The artifact had been dormant inside his Hollow Core since birth. It activated when he entered the contest. It identified Suyin's sealed Dao Body. It facilitated the Oath that bonded them and began healing her curse.
The Ancestor listened without interrupting. When Rhen finished, the old man was quiet for a long time. His hands hadn't moved from his knees. His breathing was so slow it was almost imperceptible.
"The Eternal Vow," he said finally.
Rhen's stomach dropped. "You know what it is."
"I know the name. I encountered a reference to it once, five hundred years ago, in the Celestial Altar. A fragment of a text — incomplete, half-destroyed. It described an artifact created by the Primordial Empress before her sealing. An artifact designed to forge bonds between people — genuine, unbreakable bonds that granted power proportional to their sincerity." He paused. "The text also said the artifact was lost. That whoever possessed it would either save the world or give the Sacred Sects exactly what they needed to end it."
"What do the Sacred Sects need?"
"Cultivators with special spiritual bodies." The Ancestor looked at Suyin. "Like your wife."
The room temperature dropped. Not physically — but something in the Ancestor's voice chilled the air.
"I need to tell you something about Suyin's condition," the Ancestor said. He wasn't looking at Rhen now. He was looking at Suyin, and there was guilt in those amber eyes — old, heavy, the kind that four centuries of cultivation couldn't dissolve. "The Severed Meridian Curse was not an accident of birth."
Suyin's hands tightened in her lap. "What do you mean?"
"It was inflicted. Deliberately. While you were still in your mother's womb."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the formation arrays in the walls seemed to quiet.
"Someone poisoned your mother with a curse specifically designed to seal your meridians before they formed," the Ancestor continued. His voice was steady, but his hands — those ancient, cultivator's hands — pressed harder against his knees. "The curse is sophisticated. Sacred Sect level work. It targets the Supreme Yin Dao Body specifically — it wouldn't have affected a normal child."
"You knew." Mingxue's voice was low. Dangerous. The sound of a blade being drawn in a quiet room. "You knew someone cursed her, and you said nothing."
"I suspected. It took me twenty years to confirm. By then, the damage was done, and no healer in the mortal kingdoms could reverse it." The Ancestor met Mingxue's fury without flinching. "I said nothing because telling you would have accomplished nothing except giving you an enemy you couldn't fight."
"That wasn't your decision to make."
"I am the patriarch of this family. Every decision is mine to make. That's the burden I accepted four hundred years ago." He turned back to Rhen. "But now the situation has changed. The Oath can heal what no healer could. And the man who forged it is sitting in front of me, asking for help."
"I haven't asked yet," Rhen said.
"You're about to. You need the Fate Fragment of the Supreme Yin Celestial Sovereign from the Primordial Star Realm. Your artifact told you. I'm telling you it's correct — the fragment is the only thing that can fully reverse a Severed Meridian Curse at this level."
"How do you know about the Fate Fragment?"
"Because I went looking for it myself. Thirty years ago. I spent a decade researching Suyin's curse, identified the Fate Fragment as the cure, and attempted to enter the Primordial Star Realm to retrieve it." The Ancestor's expression didn't change, but something behind it shifted — the shadow of a failure that still stung. "I nearly died. The forbidden zone's guardian formations are designed to repel anyone above the Chi Sea realm. Only the young and the weak can navigate the inner reaches without triggering the ancient defenses."
"Only the weak," Rhen repeated.
"Pure Yang cultivators are turned away at the entrance. Heavenly Position realm cultivators are killed on sight. But Chi Sea realm — the defenses consider that beneath notice. A deliberate design. The Primordial Star Realm was created as a proving ground for young cultivators, not a treasury for the powerful."
Rhen understood. The Ancestor couldn't get the fragment because he was too strong. Rhen was weak enough to enter — but was he strong enough to survive?
"What's inside?" he asked.
"Desolate beasts. Ruin formations. Other cultivators — the Primordial Star Realm draws treasure hunters like flies to honey. And at the core, where the Fate Fragment rests, a guardian beast that's killed every Chi Sea cultivator who's reached it for the last three thousand years."
"Comforting."
"It's not meant to be. It's meant to prepare you." The Ancestor stood. Despite his age, he moved with the fluid ease of a man whose body was an instrument kept in perfect tune. "You have an advantage no one else has had. The Eternal Vow. The Oath bond. Heaven's Will Future Vision — yes, I know about that too. The artifact's gifts are not standard cultivation techniques. They're something older. Something from before the Sacred Sects sealed the Empress."
"You know about the Empress."
"I know what the fragments of that text told me. That she was sealed for opposing the Sacred Sects. That the Eternal Vow was her last act. That the artifact was designed to find someone — a specific type of person — and give them the tools to undo what the Sects did." He looked at Rhen with something that might have been pity, or might have been awe, or might have been the complicated emotion of a four-hundred-year-old man seeing a piece of a puzzle he'd been working on his entire life. "She chose a man with no power. No family. No ambition. A man who'd be kind because kindness was all he had."
"I wasn't chosen," Rhen said. The words came out harder than he intended. "I walked into a contest because the road ended there."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps the road was built to end there." The Ancestor picked up a jade token from the floor beside him — it had been sitting there the whole time, half-hidden by his robes. "This is a Primordial Star Realm entry token. I obtained it thirty years ago and couldn't use it. It's yours now."
Rhen took the token. Cool jade, carved with symbols that pulsed with ancient qi. It hummed in his hand, resonating with the Eternal Vow in his chest.
"I'm sending you to a forbidden zone," the Ancestor said. "If you die, the Oath backlash will hurt Suyin. If you succeed, you'll save her life and gain power that the Sacred Sects would kill to control." He looked between Rhen and his great-granddaughters. "You have one week to prepare. Advance as far as you can. Learn your abilities. Then enter the realm and retrieve the fragment."
"One week isn't much."
"It's what we have. The Fate Fragment's location shifts with the realm's internal cycles. The current window opens in nine days and closes in twelve. Miss it, and the next window is in forty years."
Suyin took Rhen's hand. Her grip was stronger than it had been three days ago. Warmer.
"Come back," she said. Simple. Direct. The voice of someone who'd spent sixteen years learning not to waste words on anything that wasn't essential.
"I will."
**[Oath binding detected. Promise registered. Note: you have now made a commitment that the Oath will enforce. If you intend to die in the Primordial Star Realm, the Oath will try to prevent it. If you break this promise through negligence, the backlash will be proportional.]**
Rhen almost laughed. Even his promises had teeth now.
Mingxue stood. She hadn't spoken since the Ancestor's revelation about Suyin's curse. Her face was a mask — but the kind of mask that had cracks running through it, held together by will alone.
"I'm going with him," she said.
The Ancestor shook his head. "The realm's defenses—"
"I'm Peak Innate. Below Chi Sea. The defenses won't trigger." Her voice was iron. "You just told me that someone cursed my sister before she was born. That you knew and said nothing. That you tried to fix it alone and failed." Her eyes burned. "I am done watching from the outside while other people decide her fate."
The chamber was silent. The Ancestor looked at Mingxue for a long time. Something passed between them — old history, old arguments, the weight of a family that had relied on one woman's strength for far too long.
"If you enter the realm," the Ancestor said, "you do so under his command. Not yours. The Oath bearer is the one the defenses recognize. You follow his lead."
Mingxue looked at Rhen. The idea of following his command sat on her face like spoiled food.
"Fine," she said through her teeth.
Rhen pocketed the jade token and stood.
One week to prepare. A forbidden zone to survive. A Fate Fragment to retrieve.
And somewhere, an unknown enemy who'd cursed a baby in the womb to prevent something they feared more than death.
The Ancestor watched them leave. Just before the tunnel's darkness swallowed the light from the chamber, Rhen heard the old man's voice, barely above a breath.
"Be careful with the Vow, boy. It was made by a god. Gods don't give gifts. They make investments."
