Chapter 69
A Heart's Nobility
Lu Yang was certain that he was actually on his last breath, and this was his mind concocting a story to ease his path to death. He'd heard tales like that of those who returned from the brink of their demise--their minds conjured up entire lives, and once they were brought back to life, all they yearned for was to close their eyes and be back in another world.
That was the only way he could explain everything--the innumerable Spirits around him, the strange, sweet liquid that was like a heavenly elixir purifying his innermost wounds and scars, as well as the stew that unclogged and even broadened his meridians. He was well into his sixties--there wasn't a treasure anywhere in the world that could so much as simply strengthen his meridians slightly, and yet...
It was all a dream, after all--that was why it was possible. The man sitting casually in front of him was merely a manifestation of perfection, what Lu Yang hoped the world would one day have. Someone, or rather something to embody the principles that it had deviated from over the course of thousands of years.
"Ah, you should thank these two," the man suddenly said as a pair of strange cats suddenly perched themselves on his lap. "They were the ones who found you and dragged me over to help you."
"Oh," Lu Yang exclaimed softly, feeling somewhat perturbed. Even if it was just his imagination, he felt as though he was being sinful, imagining that the great Immortal Spirits would ever care enough for a nobody like him to rescue him. "Thank you verily," he bowed toward the pair.
The man fell silent, seemingly observing him. Beneath the stately gaze of the brown eyes, Lu Yang felt exposed almost. There was something agonizingly beautiful in the framing of it all--he sat solitary, surrounded by overlooking Spirits on all sides as though they were his guardians. He felt that, should even the Gods try and harm this man, the forest would go to war for him.
"You are safe," the man said suddenly. "While you're here, neither I nor my friends will care about anything... just that you heal up. Eat, rest, drink, and whatever else you want. Whatever awaits beyond the trees, perhaps it can wait a few days longer."
"... forgive me," Lu Yang said. "I... I just find it incredulous, is all. I was never a man of much fortune and luck; the opposite, in fact. To have struggled all my life only to be blessed so staunchly at the rakes of death feels like a cruel lie and prank by the Gods."
"It isn't," the man said. "And meeting me is seldom lucky or fortunate. As with most things in life that seemed unbound, it's simply a coincidence. So, treat it as such--just a cosmic mistake correcting itself, irrespective of the hands of fate."
Lu Yang fell silent and contemplative, staring at the swirling bouts of liquid in his cup. Was he truly alive? Was it truly just a mere coincidence that he was rescued? Especially within the Nameless Forest? Besides, he couldn't even understand what he was doing in the Nameless Forest. His last memory was of him still being locked up in the dungeon within the Heavenly Pavilion, just about twenty thousand miles westward of this place.
"My name is Lu Yang, benefactor," he said. "I express my deepest gratitude for rescuing me. May I hear the Venerable One's name?"
"Leo," the man replied simply. "If you'd like to take a bath, there's a nice, cool pond of water just some ways west of here."
"That would be rather lovely."
"Hm, I'll show you," the man stood up as the pair of cats--nay, panthers--jumped off and scattered away.
Lu Yang stood up and followed the man, soon recognizing that there was an armada of animals stalking from the rear--they didn't trust him, it seemed, and he felt should he take a step closer to the man than the distance between them right now, he'd truly die. His eyes veered to the front and to the broad back of the stranger. Why? That was the only question he held.
In all the Writs and Scriptures of his Ancestors, the Spirits were indomitable. They were the Overlords of Life and Death, and short of the mythological Immortals from the Before-Age, they had no equal. The Spirits closed themselves off from the rest of the world and seldom interacted with it, not from fear, but because they desired peace shorn of humans and their filth. And yet, there stood a human that had seemingly captured their hearts.
Perhaps, Lu Yang mused for a moment, he wasone of those exalted Immortals from the Before-Age. It oughtn't be possible, of course--it had been fifteen thousand years, by the earliest estimate, from when the last Immortal fell. There shouldn't have been any survivors as they all gave their lives to protect this realm from the Outsiders. Then again, perhaps one lived, entombed and enshrined in the faraway depths of the world, never revealing himself, masquerading as an ordinary figure.
However, Lu Yang didn't believe that particular musing. He'd met a few of today's (false) Immortals, and the man lacked the overbearing grace and divinity that they all had. Even if they used Qi to prevent others from seeing their cultivation, it was impossible to disguise one's Immortal Seed--it was the Law of Nature, and not even the Immortals of the Before-Age would have been able to circumvent it.
Perhaps... the man was simply a mortal. An ordinary human cleansed of sins and wants, raised by the trees and the animals, the ultimate expression of what they wanted the humans to become. It made some level of sense, especially considering what the Nameless Forest was--in so much as it was a sanctuary, it was also a prison, the sort whose history was seldom remembered these days, and only so by the most inscrutable figures of the Ashlands.
This place, after all, was the original Cradle of Humanity--where the last dregs of the fading race were saved and sheltered in their darkest hour, protected unto death. And this place, too, was the scene of that first betrayal, and the very reason why the Spirits raised the forest and made it their home, one isolated from everything else.
"Here we are," the man said, breaking the silence as the two came upon a wide clearing. There, between the trees and protruding rocks, was a breathtaking pond of water--undoubtedly the oft-referenced Immortal Basin, the Well of Infinity, and a dozen other names. It was here, supposedly, that the Immortals of the Before-Age were baptized at birth, reforging their Mortal Spirit Roots into the mythical Immortal Spirit Roots. "Do you know the way back? If not, I can stay, or leave behind one of the animals to guide you."
"No, I know a way back," Lu Yang said, glancing to his right. This man... regardless of who he was at the moment, Lu Yang felt more toward what he would become in the future. It would be one thing if he was a mortal who would live out the last few decades he had left in the forest, never venturing past its borders. But... what if he was not? What if he did step out into the vast world? "Thank you verily, again. Here," Lu Yang dispelled the array on his neck and revealed a spatial ring hanging off it. "I don't have much, but everything inside is yours."
"It's kind of sad," the man spoke instead of taking the ring. "That my helping others causes them to feel in debt. Keep it," he added, smiling faintly in such a way that left Lu Yang momentarily frozen. It was an honest smile, one shorn of masks that bewitch the world. "It goes that even if one soldier cannot stem the tides of war, they can become the kindle of the fire that would burn down the world. I will begin with myself, and hope that, one day should you have a chance to help someone... you will do so in the same spirit. I probably won't be home when you return as I have to go out to hunt. Though, I should be back before nightfall; there's some leftover stew and fruit juice in the northernmost hut that you can take if you feel hungry."
And thus he walked away, his back broader than before. Lu Yang felt guilt surge within him like a storming wave--his fingers curled up into fists, and he found himself at the loss for words.
He must have died, for certain.
Kindness was reserved for blood--and even there in clustered reserves. He himself did not know a single soul who'd extend an arm to a stranger lying by the roadside. Rather, the few that wouldn't rob the dying soul would be considered saints. The world was of wolves and of dogs, and it was of fiends and shades, and those in want of change found themselves at the cold edge of a dagger before ever growing old enough to understand that some things could never be different.
Some laws of man were as set in stone as the Laws of Nature--and one of those was the impenetrable self-interest that the world held. If someone helped you, you were bound by duty of the soul to repay them twofold, threefold, even tenfold if you could.
It was the law.
The unspoken, unwritten, yet broadly understood law.
The law that was just broken. Perhaps the man was merely indulging him--wherefore, though? Someone capable of living within the Nameless Forest and amidst the Immortal Spirits would be in want of nothing, for he could already have anything. Even so, it was the gesture. In the end, though Yu Lang felt that none of the things he had on him mattered to the man, it was the courteous gesture... one that was so coldly rejected it was worse than his first heartbreak.
He disrobed slowly and stepped into the cool waters of the pond, sitting down at the edge. The still waters roused ever so slightly as he felt himself be purified within and without--from his skin, flesh, and bones, all the way to his marrow. Dozens of years of toxins were expunged, countless scars accrued over the countless battles were healed, and he felt himself reborn.
Indeed, he laughed mockingly at himself, what would a man with the Immortal Basin need from him? Perhaps even the gesture itself was insulting.
His heart began to burn with the quaint understanding of human nobility--his act, even if selfless and noble, ultimately fed his ego. He comforted himself that they escaped, yes, but he also comforted himself with the knowledge that he died a heroic death--that, in a hundred years' time, there'd be stories of his sacrifice still hanging on the lips of his clansmen.
What of the stranger in the woods? Would he care whether Lu Yang even remembered him tomorrow?
No.
Perhaps that was why the forest protected him with the bloodthirst of the bedeviled fiend. So simple, yet for the vast majority of the world a goal well beyond even the faintest approach.