The setting sun bled red across the sky as Lin Chen returned alone to his little shack in the corner of the Lin family compound.
Calling it a shack was generous. It was really a converted woodshed. Cracks big enough to stick a fist through ran along the walls, and several roof tiles were missing—when it rained, it was wetter inside than out.
He pushed open the wooden door, and the smell of mold rushed out.
The interior couldn't have been more basic: a plank bed covered with a faded, unidentifiable quilt; a table missing a leg, propped up with a brick; a pile of yellowed books in the corner—remnants of his father's possessions.
Lin Chen sat on the bed and pulled an ancient bronze mirror from his robe.
It was about the size of his palm, its surface mottled with age. Indecipherable runes were carved along the edges, and the mirror itself was gray and clouded, reflecting nothing. The material was extraordinarily hard—Lin Chen had dropped it countless times as a child, and it had never so much as scratched.
This was the only thing his father had left him.
Lin Chen held the mirror in his palm, his thumb rubbing its rough surface.
"Father…" he whispered, his voice echoing emptily in the tiny room. "I failed again. The fifth year."
The bronze mirror was silent, giving no response.
"They call me a waste," Lin Chen continued, as if speaking to the mirror or perhaps just to himself. "Maybe they're right. Miscellaneous spirit root, five elements mixed, impure qi… I can't even practice the Nourishing Qi Art."
His voice grew quieter.
"Am I… really not meant to cultivate?"
Silence.
Outside, the last of the daylight was fading. A final sliver of sunset shone through the window, casting a dim yellow light over the mirror.
Lin Chen's eyes suddenly stung.
He thought of his father.
In his memory, his father was a tall man, always smiling, always lifting him onto his shoulders to buy candied hawthorns from the street vendors. His father's hands were large, warm, and held his small ones to teach him writing.
"Chen'er, when you're older, I'll teach you cultivation. Our family's ancestral technique is really something special."
Those were the words his father had spoken before leaving on that last trip.
Then his father never came back.
Lin Chen thought of his mother too.
One rainy night when he was three. She held him in her arms, so tightly he could barely breathe. He remembered her tears falling on his face, hot.
"Chen'er, I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"
Then she laid him on the bed and walked out into the rain.
He cried and ran after her, his little feet splashing through the mud, falling, getting up, falling again.
He saw only a blurred figure disappearing into the downpour.
She never came back.
Lin Chen closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
When he opened them again, the wetness was gone, replaced by a hard-won determination.
"I will become strong," he said quietly, his voice carrying an unshakable weight. "I will find my mother. I will find out what happened to my father. And I will make everyone know—Lin Chen is no waste."
His fingers tightened around the mirror until his knuckles went white.
"I will cultivate."
The moment the words left his lips—
The bronze mirror trembled.
Lin Chen froze.
He looked down at the mirror in his hand, his pupils contracting.
Something was moving on its clouded surface.
Like water ripples, like mist, like ancient runes slowly turning.
"Was that… my imagination?"
He held his breath, staring at the mirror.
The trembling intensified.
Rust flaked off the mirror's surface, revealing dark-gold metal beneath. One by one, the ancient runes began to glow with a deep blue light, like the darkest stars in the night sky.
Then—
An immense wave of spiritual energy surged from the mirror and slammed directly into Lin Chen's forehead!
"Ah—!"
Lin Chen grunted, his body going rigid, his eyes blank.
He felt his consciousness seized by an invisible hand and yanked into a boundless darkness.
It was like falling into the deep sea—endless dark, endless silence. No sound, no light, no warmth. He couldn't even feel his body, only his awareness floating in the void.
He didn't know how long it lasted—perhaps an instant, perhaps an eternity—
Then, a voice spoke in the darkness.
Ancient. Weary. Carrying the rasp of countless millennia:
"A hundred thousand years… at last, a living soul."
Lin Chen's consciousness jolted.
He tried to speak but found he had no mouth, no voice—only thought echoing in the void.
"Who are you?"
The voice fell silent for a moment, then gave a low laugh. It was a laugh filled with self-mockery, with sorrow, and with something even the speaker couldn't name.
"Who am I?" the voice murmured. "To be honest… I don't remember clearly anymore. Too long. So long I've almost forgotten my own name."
A point of light appeared in the darkness.
It expanded slowly, like a seed sprouting, growing, blooming in the void. The light coalesced into a hazy figure that gradually sharpened into focus.
It was an old man.
White hair like snow draped over his shoulders. His face was aged, but the remnants of a remarkable bearing remained. He wore an ancient gray-white robe embroidered with arcane runes Lin Chen had never seen before—runes that seemed alive, shifting slowly across the fabric.
But what drew Lin Chen's attention most were the old man's eyes—eyes as deep as the starry sky, yet filled with a weariness and melancholy that spoke of eons of seeing everything.
And he was translucent.
Not a living body.
A fragment of a soul.
The old man drifted toward Lin Chen, studying him with the air of an appraiser examining a rough gem.
"Interesting," the old man murmured. "Five elements mixed, qi impure… on the surface, truly the worst of spirit roots. But…"
He narrowed his eyes, his gaze sharpening.
"Interesting. Very interesting."
Lin Chen was utterly confused. "Who… are you?"
The old man withdrew his gaze and smiled faintly.
"I dwell in that bronze mirror you carry. I have been there for a hundred thousand years. You may call me… Jing Lao."
"Jing Lao?" Lin Chen repeated, a thousand questions rising in his mind. "You're inside my head? That mirror was my father's—"
"Your father?" Jing Lao's eyes flickered, then quickly smoothed. "That mirror is called the 'Fragment of the Xuan Tian Mirror.' Forged from a shard of the ancient divine artifact Xuan Tian Mirror, it contains a world within, capable of divining all things, penetrating the secrets of heaven. Unfortunately… it is now but a pale shadow of its former self."
Lin Chen was silent for a moment.
Then he asked a question that Jing Lao did not expect.
"Can you help me cultivate?"
Jing Lao froze.
Then he burst out laughing. The laugh was tinged with surprise, with appreciation, and with a touch of sadness.
"Interesting, interesting." He shook his head, still chuckling. "A hundred thousand years, and you are the first person who, upon meeting me, asks not about my origin, not about my purpose, but simply whether I can help him cultivate."
"I don't care about your origin," Lin Chen said calmly. "Since you reached out to me, you want something. And I need a chance to become strong. We each get what we want. Isn't that better?"
The laughter stopped.
Jing Lao looked at Lin Chen with new eyes—more scrutiny, and more appreciation.
"You, young man… are refreshingly direct."
He drifted forward, extended a hand, and pressed it against Lin Chen's dantian area. His deep eyes closed, as if sensing something within.
A long moment passed. Jing Lao opened his eyes, frowning.
"Miscellaneous spirit root?" he murmured, then shook his head. "No. The five elements are all present, and the qi is mixed—on the surface, it is the poorest of constitutions. But…"
His expression grew grave.
"Your dantian contains a sealed power."
Lin Chen's heart jolted. "Sealed?"
"Yes." Jing Lao circled around Lin Chen, examining him with the intensity of someone unraveling a complex mechanism. "This seal is extremely ancient, its craftsmanship profound—it could not have been placed by any cultivator of this realm. Someone sealed your true spirit root when you were very young."
"My true spirit root?" Lin Chen's breath quickened.
"If this old man is not mistaken," Jing Lao said, stopping directly before Lin Chen and looking into his eyes, "your spirit root is not miscellaneous. It is…"
He paused, a flicker of disbelief crossing his features.
"The Chaotic Spirit Root."
Chaotic Spirit Root.
The four words crashed through Lin Chen's mind like thunder.
He had never heard the term before. In the Lin family library, the only categories he knew were low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and heavenly spirit roots. What was a chaotic spirit root?
Jing Lao saw his confusion and explained slowly: "The Chaotic Spirit Root—the foremost of the ten ancient spirit roots, a constitution that appears once in ten thousand years. It possesses all five elements, but unlike the miscellaneous root, it does not mix them in impurity. Quite the opposite—it can accommodate all the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Regardless of immortal or demonic origin, regardless of attribute, all laws return to one, all paths converge to the same source."
He paused, his gaze complex.
"One who possesses a Chaotic Spirit Root can cultivate ten thousand arts and comprehend ten thousand paths. If they reach their full potential, there would be few in the world who could stand against them."
Lin Chen's heartbeat quickened.