Where No Road Was Given

The final images of the Realm of the Past slowly faded away, taking with them the figures Hao Nhien had watched from the stone platform.

He remained standing for a while.

The despair on the middle-aged man’s face was still vivid in his mind, as was Lang Tuyet’s hesitation and the memories he himself had been forced to confront.

But when the last of the separate spaces vanished, the heaviness pressing against his soul gradually settled as well.

A moment later, the stone platform beneath his feet began to dissolve.

Hao Nhien felt as though he were standing inside a vast open space, but there was no sign telling him whether he had been transported somewhere else or whether the scenery around him had simply ceased to exist.

When he looked ahead, all he saw was an endless expanse of gray-white emptiness.

There were no mountains.

No rivers.

No intersecting currents like those of the Realm of Circumstances.

No memories or figures appearing before him as they had in the Realm of the Past.

Even the ground beneath his feet was indistinct, leaving him with the strange sensation that he was standing in a completely empty void.

Hao Nhien extended his spiritual sense.

Nothing reacted.

He walked forward.

Then several more steps.

The scenery remained exactly the same.

There was no landmark by which he could judge how far he had traveled, nor any place that looked different enough to become a destination.

Hao Nhien stopped and changed direction.

The result did not change.

He sensed no danger.

But neither could he find any indication of what he was supposed to do.

After observing for some time, Hao Nhien noticed a very thin layer of light appearing beneath his feet.

It spread slowly outward and formed a perfectly still surface resembling water.

There were no ripples.

It did not reflect the gray-white emptiness around him.

Only one image appeared within it.

Hao Nhien lowered his eyes.

The person reflected there was himself.

The image was clear enough to show the smallest details of his face, the clothes he wore, and even the uncertainty in his eyes.

Hao Nhien stepped sideways.

The reflection moved with him.

Nothing unusual.

He looked around again.

The emptiness remained empty.

When he lowered his gaze, his reflection was still there, as though it were the only thing this place intended to leave him.

Hao Nhien studied it for a long time.

In the Realm of Circumstances, no matter how chaotic the surrounding forces had been, he had at least been able to see the stone platform ahead.

He had known there was somewhere he needed to reach.

The path was what he had needed to discover for himself.

The Realm of the Past had been similar.

Memories and choices continuously appeared, forcing him to face things he regretted, things he wanted to change, and things he had never fully put to rest.

Difficult as it had been, he still understood what he was being asked to confront.

Here, there was not even a question.

Hao Nhien looked at his reflection.

What was this place asking of him?

Or perhaps—

if there was nothing at all for him to rely upon, what would he do?

That thought left him silent for a long time.

He was accustomed to observing his circumstances before making a decision.

When facing an enemy, he wanted to understand their strength and methods.

When entering unfamiliar territory, he wanted to know the terrain, the powers involved, and the dangers that might arise.

Even when forced to act quickly, he still tried to base his decision on whatever information he possessed.

Hao Nhien sat beside the still surface.

His eyes remained on his own reflection.

After a while, his thoughts drifted toward the road he had already traveled.

He remembered the earliest days after stepping onto the path of cultivation, when almost everything had been unfamiliar.

He had wanted to find Anh Nhien even then.

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But he had barely known where to begin.

The world outside what he understood had seemed so vast that even choosing a direction had been difficult.

If someone had asked him back then where the road to Anh Nhien lay, Hao Nhien would not have been able to answer.

Yet he had still set out.

The years that followed had never unfolded according to one complete plan.

He met people he had never known existed.

He was drawn into events no one could have predicted.

Sometimes he had to abandon his immediate objective simply to deal with a danger that had appeared without warning.

More than once, something that seemed to pull him away from his original journey eventually became the very reason he reached another place—one containing information or relationships he could never have accessed otherwise.

When he was still in the Tieu Dao Sect, he could never have imagined what would happen in the Western Wastes.

When he passed through Tien Thanh, he had never expected to become the Alliance Leader.

Nor could he have known that the events in Heavenly Eye would later connect to the mysteries he had spent so long searching for.

Even his journey to Sea City was the same.

He had come because of the Ancient Bow.

On the road, he encountered Chu Thanh and learned of an ancient metal fragment.

Later, an apparently worthless token appeared at the harbor market.

And those two objects had ultimately brought him and Lang Tuyet into the Fate-Convergence Realm.

If even one of those encounters had never happened, would he be standing here now?

Hao Nhien did not know.

What interested him was that most of those events had given no sign, when they occurred, of where they would eventually lead.

Some began as chance meetings.

Others were crises he had no choice but to face.

Yet after passing through them, each left something behind, ensuring that the choices that followed were no longer exactly the same as before.

Hao Nhien slowly raised his head.

The gray-white emptiness remained unchanged.

But within his thoughts, events that had once seemed unrelated began to reveal faint connections.

He did not believe everything had been arranged by some unseen hand.

Many choices had unquestionably been his own.

Many accidents had just as clearly arisen against everyone’s intentions.

Yet saying that none of those things were connected at all also felt wrong.

Once something happened, it left an effect behind.

That effect might be tiny.

It might not even be noticed at the time.

But later it could become the reason a person made a different choice.

Or the reason two roads that once seemed completely separate unexpectedly crossed.

Hao Nhien remembered the times he had believed himself trapped in a dead end.

At the time, he had seen only the difficulty directly before him.

But after overcoming it and looking back, some of those very obstacles had led him to notice things he might never have seen had everything gone smoothly.

A difficult feeling slowly emerged within him.

Was there some deeper connection between meetings, choices, and events than what he currently understood?

Hao Nhien thought about it.

He could find no answer.

He had only noticed a few traces across his own experiences.

That was nowhere near enough to define a law, much less explain why events that seemed accidental repeatedly connected in ways no one could predict.

He did not force the thought any further.

Then another realization came.

Even without understanding why those roads had crossed—

he was still here.

Hao Nhien lowered his eyes toward the water.

His reflection looked silently back at him.

Ever since entering this space, he had been searching for some sign telling him where to go.

But after everything he had lived through, had there ever truly been a road laid out in advance?

Sometimes he chose wrongly.

Sometimes he had to turn back.

And sometimes a road only appeared after he had already entered a completely unfamiliar place.

Then why, now, did he insist on seeing the path before taking the first step?

Hao Nhien studied the person in the water.

This place showed him nothing except himself.

He did not know whether that was coincidence or intention.

But if every external sign disappeared, then the only thing left for him to rely upon was himself.

He was still Quan Hao Nhien.

The reasons that had once made him set out had not disappeared.

The people he cared about still existed.

The principles he had chosen to live by had not changed merely because the road ahead could not yet be seen.

He did not know whom he would meet tomorrow.

He could not know what events were waiting.

A new clue might force him to change direction.

An unexpected crisis might render every current plan useless.

But when that happened, he could still observe.

Think.

Choose.

Just as he always had.

Hao Nhien suddenly remembered the water beneath U Minh Mountain.

It had never needed to know the entire terrain ahead before it could continue flowing.

When it encountered stone, it changed direction.

When it reached lower ground, it followed the gaps.

Sometimes it separated into smaller streams.

Later, those streams joined again.

Water did not know the road in advance.

Nor did it insist upon destroying every obstacle.

It simply continued through whatever places allowed it to pass, gradually becoming a current.

Hao Nhien remained seated for a little longer.

Then slowly stood.

He looked into the gray-white emptiness ahead.

For the first time, he stopped trying to determine which direction was most likely to contain an exit.

He still did not know where the road would appear.

But that no longer made him want to remain still.

Hao Nhien drew a deep breath.

Then slowly exhaled.

In that moment, the thoughts that so often forced him to calculate possibility after possibility seemed to quiet together.

He had not forgotten the things he needed to worry about.

Nor had he somehow become certain about the future.

He simply stopped demanding that he find answers to events that had not yet happened.

Hao Nhien took a step.

The instant his foot came down, an unexpectedly light sensation passed through his soul.

No soul power erupted.

He did not enter another realm.

Yet the currents of soul force he usually maintained carefully within the circulation of the Quan Family Soul Art suddenly became more natural.

They still followed the foundation of the Soul Art.

But the coordination between them seemed to loosen slightly.

The constant sense that he needed to adjust everything to keep each current in precisely the correct place diminished.

Hao Nhien was surprised.

He did not stop to investigate.

He continued walking.

Small ripples began appearing across the still water beneath his feet.

His reflection shifted with each step.

But it did not disappear.

It continued forward with him through the empty space without landmarks.

Then Hao Nhien sensed another change.

A very thin strand of True Qi had emerged from the Golden Core in his dantian.

By habit, his mind immediately moved to guide it into the familiar circulation route.

But the moment he sensed the resistance in the meridians that were still obstructed, he stopped.

Throughout the past month, whenever he attempted to cultivate, he had been trying to restore the routes he had used before.

Even after recognizing that his meridians were changing, he still unconsciously treated the old circulation cycle as the path his True Qi needed to return to.

But the small reactions produced by the Body-Soul Fist Art had not been following that logic.

Hao Nhien suddenly realized that he was still using a familiar method to search for a different way of circulating power.

He looked down at his hand.

The strand of True Qi near his dantian continued to fluctuate faintly.

This time, Hao Nhien did not guide it toward any particular meridian.

Nor did he force it through the obstructed areas.

He held only a single, clear intention.

Bring the True Qi to his hand.

The strand began to move.

At first it followed the familiar meridians closest to his dantian.

But when it reached an area of resistance, instead of accumulating there as it had before, it slowly turned into a smaller secondary branch.

Hao Nhien sensed every part of the change.

That branch had already undergone gradual adaptation after the prolonged effects of the Body-Soul Fist Art.

It was not wide enough to carry a large amount of True Qi.

But for the thin current traveling through it now, the route remained relatively smooth.

Farther on, the strand divided into two smaller currents.

They followed different meridian branches.

Near his arm, they gradually converged again.

A faint warmth appeared in Hao Nhien’s palm.

He stopped walking.

His entire attention turned inward.

The True Qi had truly reached the place he wanted.

He had not forced it through the old circulation cycle.

Nor had he specified every meridian it needed to use.

Hao Nhien withdrew the power.

Then tried again.

The path changed slightly.

But once more, the True Qi reached his palm without being forced through the obstructed meridians.

Hao Nhien looked inward at the branching network running through his body.

His eyes slowly changed.

For the first time since U Minh Mountain, the obstruction in his meridians no longer looked like a wall he had to break.

It looked like something power could learn to go around.