Gerald settled back into the armchair, the cracks of the wood beneath a familiar comfort amidst the uneasy feeling that clung like a damp mist in the air. The dimming light from the hearth flickered and cast the long shadows dancing like whispering voices on the wall. He watched Bai Cheng as he finished his milk tea; a thoughtful expression settled into the young one's face as he was just a day old.
He felt something within that was troubling him; depth beyond a merely interested and surprised sense for this unusual, unknown world.
Bai Cheng, said Gerald softly breaking the silence, "What troubles you?
He turned his head to the window, where the moon's silvery light flowed into the room and chased dust motes dancing in hazy, slow-motion eddies. He wanted to say, to phrase those questions that pulsed through his mind, but they seemed locked up behind a shroud of vagueness. So he sat staring into space as if searching for answers among the scattered stars. ( could not speak yet)
Gerald watched intently; there was just something. There was a lack of energy surrounding Bai Cheng, a stillness in his demeanor, a quiet that hung in the midst of so much noise amidst a people who thrived on the power of qi. In Eldenwood, where every living creature pulsed with energy, where every tree appeared to breathe within it, an ancient wisdom older than humanity, Bai Cheng felt himself to be a ghost, an echo of what should have been.
You know, Gerald said softly, his voice barely a whisper. The forest can be quite harsh to those without qi. It's a domain of energy, a place of dominance, of control over the personal energies that govern lives. And you. you're nothing like that. He paused, choosing his next words with care. Tell me, how did you get here, with no scent of a cultivator?
Bai Cheng's shoulders hunched at the question, but the truth bore down upon him, unseen, a weight in his chest. He was nobody, after all; just a man caught up in a snare of fate that had drawn him into the unknown and amongst men he did not understand and sat, so, in Gerald's cluttered living room, in the comfort of a strange yet inviting home.
He thought of all the others who left the village, those ambitious warriors with their dreams and ambitions, all running in the depths of Eldenwood for power. These people wielded their qi as weapons, and he was a flickering candle in a storm, vulnerable and fragile.
"I don't know how I came here," Bai Cheng finally realized, his voice babbling just barely above a whisper. "One moment I was …. And then, I was here." The emptiness left in by the words and the deep sorrow that germinated in his chest made it tough to see for him. "I feel like standing at the cliff's edge, staring into the abyss, and have no idea how to leap over." ( as he thought in his tiny head)
Gerald's face relaxed into a gentle smile. "The lack of qi does not make you worthless. Sometimes, people who walk without the fire of cultivation carry a different light within them. Maybe it is hidden now, but it doesn't mean it's gone for good.".
"But how can I survive in a world where strength is everything?" Bai Cheng expressions says so, pouring out frustration like an unconfined river. "I do not belong here, and the forest-it is all so full of energy, yet I am too poor to even reach for that energy. I am nothing."
Gerald nodded, the lines of his grizzled face cast in shadow by dancing flames. "Yes, this world is cruel, always punishing the unprepared. But survival, as such, is not in strength only. That's resilience; it finds strength in forging your way even through the darkness. It is necessary to learn to travel in shadows and find lights within.
Bai Cheng looked down into the teacup, warming now to a memory across his fingertips. He bore the weight of his world, that awful truth-the truth he was alone within a world that demanded and demanded and demanded. The children's laughter in the evening, their shared burdens across the landscape, was so distant that it was as though it echoed out of the darkness at night.
"What if I can't?" his sad face was saying, a flicker of fear in his cooing. "What if I am to be but a shadow?"
Gerald forward, his eyes vicious and sharp. "And you carve out your existence, Bai Cheng. Shadows are fine allies. Shadows can hide you from pain and give you room to grow and bloom. You must like what makes you different, not see it as a weakness. You are not blessed with qi, but maybe that's something deeper, and maybe that's something others will miss.". I know someone far greater and more powerful that even gods are afraid of him and yet he's like you, has No Qi energy, and still sits at the pinnacle of the cultivation world.
It flickered in Bai Cheng's chest, a fragile and tentative spark of hope, a newborn star struggling to break free from the night. Yet the uncertainty clung still to him; and so, Gerald's words served as a balm for the ache of his solitude.
"Rest now", Gerald said, and his voice resumed that soothing cadence. We'll go over this together. We'll see what secrets this might hold for you, maybe, just maybe you'll find what you're looking for here. And as for all that Qi stuff, never be alone without that. As Bai Cheng settled into the couch, he was soothed by Gerald's presence. The wind spoke through the trees with an air of mystery and promise outside. For the first time since he had arrived in this world of wonder, he could now dare hope that maybe, just maybe, he would find a place in it. In faraway places, strange incidents and phenomena are happening in the cultivation world. What could be the reason for it? Still unsolved and yet to be discovered soon.