Elsewhere, far beyond the city's quiet walls…
The forest stood still under the weight of midnight.
"Hold! Stay where you are!"
Two guards readied their spears in an instant, their voices sharp and alert.
Anyone wandering deep into the forest at this hour rarely had a good reason to be there. Naturally, they prepared for confrontation.
But the moment they caught a clear glimpse of the approaching figure, their expressions shifted instantly.
"Sir Su Jun!"
The tension in their bodies vanished as they cupped their fists in respect.
The head of the secret guardians barely slowed his stride. "Has the new formation been set up?"
"Yes, sir," one of them replied quickly, pointing toward a seemingly ordinary tree at the edge of the path. It looked no different from the countless others surrounding it.
"That one. Please enter through that tree. It's the only safe path."
With a brief nod, Su Jun didn't waste another word. He stepped past the marked tree without breaking pace.
—
Encircling the area loomed an enormous formation, vast enough to swallow a sizeable stretch of forest whole. Countless thin filaments, finer than silk and nearly impossible to detect, stretched across the forest like an invisible web. They intertwined with one another, forming a massive barrier that blanketed the entire region.
To anyone without prior knowledge of the entry point, sound would be suppressed. Direction became distorted. And even one's sense of distance could not be trusted.
Without knowing the correct path, a person could walk for hours… only to find themselves back where they started.
The moment he crossed the ordinary tree, the forest changed.
Faint movements, footsteps, and low voices gradually became audible. The once-empty forest revealed its hidden activity.
The trees thinned not long after. Lantern light flickered between them, and the silhouettes of gathered figures began to take shape.
Su Jun made his way toward them.
"Patriarch." Su Jun cupped his fists as he approached.
The man at the center of the group turned at the sound of his name. Even standing still, the patriarch carried a weight that was difficult to ignore. Not loud, not oppressive. Yet as undeniable as a mountain standing before the horizon.
The Su patriarch.
With a slight wave of his hand, he dismissed the others nearby. The surrounding elders and guards quickly retreated, leaving the two alone.
His gaze settled on Su Jun. "Has the Third Elder spoken to Yang Huo?"
"Regarding that..." Su Jun paused briefly. "Elder Zhenhua has requested a private meeting with you once you were back. He'll be waiting in the main hall."
The patriarch's eyes narrowed slightly. "Su Zhenhua requested a private meeting?"
"Yes, Patriarch." Su Jun stepped closer and lowered his voice. "He believes he has a solution to the problem with the two groups."
The two groups needed no further elaboration between them.
The Golden Lotus Pavilion.
The Wang Family.
The patriarch fell silent. After a few breaths, he gave a slow nod, setting the matter aside for now.
He turned his gaze forward.
Su Jun followed his line of sight and asked respectfully, "Patriarch… how is the secret realm?"
Beyond the trees, at the edge of a shimmering lake, an enormous formation towered as high as a building, suspended in the open air.
Within it, space itself seemed distorted. Intricate arrays of light interlocked in dense layers, surrounding what looked, from the outside, like a desert mirage hovering over still water, its reflection rippling gently with the lake below.
Laws and raw, unfiltered energies bled from its surface in slow, heavy pulses. And yet, caught within the formation encasing it, those pulses barely stirred the air, fading before they could reach the shore.
Around it, several people floated around the structure, holding compasses and formation tools, constantly calculating and adjusting.
The patriarch shook his head slowly.
"Everything seems normal. The energy fluctuations are consistent with the signs of its opening…"
Yet the furrow between his brows hadn't eased in the slightest.
Before Su Jun could ask further, one of the circling figures broke away from the group and walked toward them — an older man, grey-haired and unhurried, a compass still open in one hand.
"Have you finished the calculations, Second Elder?" the patriarch asked.
"Yes, Patriarch." The second elder's tone was measured, as always. "It will open in four days. Precisely at the break of dawn."
The patriarch gave a slight nod. But that wasn't what he wanted to know.
The second elder continued. "However…"
He folded the compass with a quiet click.
"According to our last projection from three years ago, the probability of the realm opening at this point in the summer…"
He paused. When he continued, the certainty in his voice had quietly left.
"...was approximately one in eighty thousand."
The words settled into the air like a stone sinking into still water.
The Su family had studied this secret realm for generations. Countless resources, time, and effort had been poured into understanding and predicting its behavior. Three years ago, drawing upon generations of accumulated knowledge, they had finally narrowed down the opening period to this year.
Late winter.
A margin of error spanning several weeks.
And yet—
After three years of careful preparation, the realm had shown signs of opening far ahead of any reasonable prediction, with no warning and no apparent cause.
The probability of natural variance accounting for this was not zero.
But it was so small… that treating it as zero was the only sensible approach.
Which left one other explanation.
Something, or someone, had accelerated its opening.
The patriarch had already anticipated such a possibility. While the second elder completed his calculations, he had quietly dispatched the remaining elders along with a contingent of guards to sweep the surrounding area.
And as though fate had willed it—
"Patriarch!" A guard's voice rang out from beyond the lake's edge.
Without wasting time, the patriarch, Su Jun, and the second elder moved immediately toward the sound. The guard led them from there.
It wasn't far. Barely a few dozen meters from the shore, tucked between the roots of a dense cluster of old trees, two senior elders crouched low over something on the ground. They seemed to be whispering to each other... though whispering might have been too generous a word.
"Old woman, are you blind? This is clearly a talisman inscription…"
"Old Lei, since when are talismans written onto tree roots?" she snapped. "Talismans are written on paper! This is obviously a demonic ritual! Look at it, it's written with blood!"
".....Are you stupid? Talismans can also be written in blood!!"
"This is human blood!"
"And how the hell would you know that?!"
"You two." The patriarch's voice cut through the argument, mildly impatient. "Are you here to investigate, or to argue?"
The two froze for half a breath.
"Patriarch."
Old Lei straightened first, his expression perfectly composed, as if nothing had happened at all. Elder Shen Yulan followed a beat later, though the faint dissatisfaction hadn't quite left her face.
The patriarch gave a perfunctory nod, his gaze already dropping to the roots beneath their feet.
"What did you find?"
Old Lei crouched and pointed at the faint lines etched into the wood. "We're not certain what these markings are. But they weren't here before." He traced the air just above them without touching. "They're fresh. At most… a few hours old."
The patriarch studied them in silence for a moment, then glanced at the second elder.
"Su Wenqing. Do you recognize them?"
The second elder had already crouched beside the roots, his brows drawn together. He didn't answer immediately.
"Patriarch..." he said slowly. "I believe these are ancient runes."
"Runes?" Elder Shen Yulan asked, genuinely confused. "Isn't that a lost discipline?"
"Not lost," Su Wenqing shook his head. "Merely… close to extinction."
He extended a finger toward the symbols and let a thread of Qi flow into them.
The reaction was immediate. The markings responded with a faint luminescence, their lines brightening from the inside out. Then, gradually, the symbols began to detach from the root entirely. They rose, hovering barely a foot from the ground, suspended in the still air between the trees.
Nobody spoke.
Then, as quietly as they had risen, the symbols drifted back down and settled into the wood once more, returning to their original state as though nothing had happened.
Su Wenqing straightened slowly.
"Although people today often treat talismans and runes as separate disciplines, according to history, talismans were originally a subdomain of runes."
He paused briefly before continuing.
"The study of runes has long declined from its former glory after much of its knowledge was lost. It is only natural that few would recognize these markings for what they are."
Runes were the language of the Heavens. Talismans were one discipline that learned to wield it. Without runes, talismans would never have existed.
Su Wenqing turned to the patriarch and cupped his hands.
"Patriarch, allow me to study these symbols and determine their purpose."