The seasons turned; more than ten days slipped by without a sound.
Deep within the Mountain City, a hall stood in quiet stillness, its doors shut, cutting off the clamor of the outside world.
On the desk within, a censer of sinking-wood incense was burning; wisps of smoke coiled upward, diffusing through the hall, carrying a faint, indescribable solemnity.
On either side of the hall, Ah Shu and Pu Zan stood with bowed backs yet straight spines, seeming more than twenty years younger.
The aura around them was no longer as it had been in days past; faint silvery moonlight flowed about them, like gauzy veils winding around their bodies—an unmistakable sign that true qi had entered their forms.
Under Red Wood's protection and guidance, the two had already broken through their mortal shells, opened their spirit apertures, and gathered qi to merge with those apertures, formally stepping into the Qi Refining Realm.
