"Can you eat these things after they're offered to the gods?"
Gu Tao pointed at the pig's head meat, roast chicken, and braised beef on a small table. He hadn't had any of this food for a long time. The last time was when he stayed at the fat man's house and his mom came to visit, bringing some from her hometown. Usually, the two of them just ate instant noodles to get by, so seeing such a feast now, he was seriously craving it.
"Actually, you can't." Xin Chen inserted three sticks of incense into the old incense burner. "These are offerings to heaven, earth, and ancestors. They're for them, not us."
"But if you leave it out, it will rot anyway, right? Isn't going through the motions good enough? Wasting food is the real crime, isn't it?" Gu Tao pointed at the chunk of braised beef. "I'm a staunch materialist, didn't you say you were one too?"
"That's true in theory... Forget it, let's start your apprenticeship!" Xin Chen lit three sticks of incense and handed them to Gu Tao, then knelt before the altar cushion: "Ancestors above, your disciple Xin Chen, on behalf of my master, accepts an apprentice into our great lineage today. I beseech the ancestors to grant their consent."
"Why do you need their consent? What if they don't give it?"
"The candles will go out." Xin Chen's expression became serious, as if he was suddenly another person. After answering Gu Tao, he raised his voice, "I beseech the ancestors to grant their consent!"
However, these words seemed to have no effect. The candle flames on either side began to dwindle slowly, looking like they would extinguish in the next second, barely larger than soybeans.
Xin Chen slapped Gu Tao's back: "Bow your head!"
"No."
Gu Tao stood up, pointing at the two candles: "They're just clusters of ionized energy. Why should I bow down to them?"
After saying this, he took out two small pill-like items from his pocket, tore off the sealed wrapper, and in an instant, the flames from the two candles grew like they had been given a shot of adrenaline, bursting up over a foot high.
"See, they've agreed now."
Although the flames tried to shrink back down, they couldn't reduce any further. The two little pills placed below the candles seemed to wield magical power...
"This is... what?"
"High-purity oxygen tablets. One tablet can maintain a person's oxygen consumption for three days. I refuse to believe it!" Gu Tao chin up, his fighting-spirit-filled face stared at the two candle flames: "It thinks it can just extinguish on its own will? Dream on! Even if it's a person on their deathbed, if I say they can't die, they won't die! Let alone two candle flames?"
The arrogance in his words left Xin Chen dumbfounded, but after Gu Tao finished speaking, the desperately flickering candles stopped moving and then flared up three feet high, fueled by the pure oxygen. This sudden change left Xin Chen completely at a loss. He hastily bit his own finger and started scribbling on his other palm.
"Please show a sign, honored ancestors!"
He raised his hand high, kneeling motionlessly as if his soul had left his body. Gu Tao shook him for a long time but didn't see any response; there was breath and heartbeat, but Xin Chen's brain waves inexplicably ceased, undetectable by any of Gu Tao's tests.
"Ah, is he in a vegetative state now?"
Despite the strangeness of the situation, it wasn't something Gu Tao couldn't fix. Being in a vegetative state, as long as one wasn't dead, could be completely remedied. It was just a matter of administering a nano repair injection. After confirming that Xin Chen showed no neurological response, Gu Tao tied him up with a harness and began to lift him upstairs using a hovering robot.
But halfway through, Xin Chen suddenly opened his eyes. However, upon realizing he was restrained, he appeared very confused: "What is this...?"
"Damn, he's alive?" Gu Tao, who was setting up a sterile room upstairs, ran down and blinked a few times at Xin Chen's perplexed face: "How'd you manage that?"
"I wasn't dead in the first place."
"But you just had no brain activity, that's brain death. I was about to operate on you." Gu Tao wiped his nose: "What did I say? It's especially tough to die in front of me."
Xin Chen, facing that grin that bode no good, shivered uncontrollably and quickly started to squirm: "Let me down, I'm fine... really, I'm fine. I merely separated my soul from my body to find out what was going on just now."
Soul-body separation? Gu Tao squinted his eyes skeptically at Xin Chen: "The soul is a composite of memory and personality. You say it left your body just like that?"
"Hmm, it's possible to leave the body, but it's very dangerous. If the physical body is destroyed, I'll become a wandering, masterless soul. Could you put me down please!"
After freeing Xin Chen from his restraints, Gu Tao circled around him a few times, "Did you just say you communicated with someone who has already died?"
"That was an ancestor! Gosh... I'm not going to explain now, I don't even know how to. Anyway, the ancestors have agreed to let you join our sect, and they said all those tedious formalities aren't necessary anymore. But they also said that if you ever do evil in the future, they will utterly annihilate you."
"First, I didn't come here with the intention of being a bad person. Second, they have no way to utterly annihilate me. Lastly, if I wanted to be bad, I'd just have to send an order to my spaceship—defining Earth's civilization as an aggressive one—and there probably would be no survivors in humanity within three months," Gu Tao said, then waved his hand, "But that wouldn't be good for me at all. I might not be able to return, struggling to survive alone on a Barren Planet would be really terrible. However, why did they suddenly change their minds?"
"They said they liked your wildness and saw that you have an excellent root bone structure, which would make you a great seedling," Xin Chen said, then reached out to hold Gu Tao's hand, "It might hurt a bit, so just bear with it."
"Wait!" Gu Tao quickly withdrew his hand, his watch scanning Xin Chen up and down before he appeared to press something in the air, "Listed as white-listed, to expire in twenty-four hours."
"What is this..." Xin Chen asked, not understanding, "What are you doing?"
"Pain can cause an increase in people's heart rate and adrenaline secretion, and if my equipment detects a change in my vitals and judges that I am in danger, it will activate Annihilation Mode. Although I don't know whether you're really an Earth Immortal or not, I'm sure you wouldn't stand a chance against the Titan Mecha in Annihilation Mode. So, I've white-listed you, which means my exoskeleton won't pop out, the spider robots won't start, and Annihilation Mode won't be triggered," Gu Tao extended his hand, "We can proceed now."
Xin Chen wiped the sweat from his palms, looking troubled, "No matter what you see or hear, it's all imagery from the past; don't freak out."
Gu Tao nodded, closed his eyes, and prepared himself. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his brain and, although he hadn't opened his eyes, he began to see vivid images...
Mists enshrouded the minor mountains, and he appeared to be standing at the very peak of these mountains, with a red sun behind him and a boundless sea of clouds below. And above the sea of clouds drifted a palace so stunning it seemed like a mirage, yet clearer than any mirage and, as he drew close, he could even smell the distinctive soft warmth of sandalwood.
The palace flew in the sky, and his viewpoint uncontrollably circled around it before settling steadily on the palace courtyard—the sensation of solid ground beneath his feet was distinctly not a hallucination.
Suddenly, a flock of birds soared up from behind the imperial hall, darkness fell, and the profound sound of bells drifted slowly, bringing out groups of people dressed in blue, with their hair coiled up, from the various rooms of the palace; some were young children, others were verdant youths. As the bells tolled twelve times, they all gathered in the courtyard, and then the sound of ancient zithers, coming from nowhere in particular, began to fill the air as people of all sizes sat cross-legged and chanted in unison.
The imagery stopped abruptly, the scenes in front of Gu Tao gradually blurred, then faded to darkness, and the sharp pain in his brain completely disappeared. He heard Xin Chen's weary voice, "What did you see?"
Gu Tao opened his eyes, too concerned with what he had observed to reply to Xin Chen and instead spoke directly to his watch, "Satania, did you record that?"
"Recording complete; the data is vast. Though the imagery lasted only three minutes and thirty-five seconds, the data amounts to 2PB."
"What is this? Can you analyze it?"
"I've already matched it against all the scan data in the database, no matches found."
Gu Tao let out a breath and stared at Xin Chen, "What was that?"
"I don't know. Disciples see different things when they join the sect. I saw someone practicing swordplay. What did you see?"
"It was a palace," Gu Tao spread his hands, showing a virtual projection of the palace he just saw, "this one here."
"What's this?" Xin Chen tilted his head, "I don't know either, I've never seen it nor has anyone mentioned it before."
In the end, Gu Tao simply played back the entire scene he had observed for Xin Chen. As Xin Chen watched the image of the young Daoists of various sizes, his eyes suddenly reddened...
"Why are you crying?"
"The legacy... the ancestors want you to carry on this legacy! The legacy of the Dao!"
"Me?" Gu Tao was taken aback, pointing at his own nose, "An alien?"