Chương 163: I'm Leaving

The walk back to the Han compound was one of the most awkward things that had happened to me since I'd taken up residence inside Han Renyi's body and there had been a lot of awkward things already in that time, but trying to walk through the streets of Blue Horizon City at night while trying to come up with a convincing reason for why we'd been gone for twelve whole hours was one of the worst experiences so far.

"Maybe we could just say we were meditating?" Han Renyi offered after I'd finished giving him the rundown of everything that had happened with the Immortal Boy, the summary being as careful and edited as I could make it under the circumstances.

"For twelve hours straight?" I said back to him.

"In a storage room? And without telling a single person where we were going beforehand?"

"Okay when you say it like that it sounds bad."

"It is bad." He didn't have anything to say to that, so we just kept walking and I kept thinking. Neither of us came up with anything particularly brilliant in the next few minutes before we rounded a corner and nearly walked directly into a group of city guards who were doing patrol rounds and not expecting to run into us either. The lead guard looked at Han Renyi's merchant robes and his eyes went wide and he immediately moved to cut us off before we could go anywhere.

"Young Master Han?" he said, sounding both relieved and annoyed.

"Your father has had half the whole district out searching for you!" So that was how bad it had gotten then. Good to know.

"I'm fine," Han Renyi said quickly, doing his best to sound calm.

"It was just a misunderstanding about where I was, nothing more than that." The guard nodded but his face said he wasn't buying it completely, though there wasn't much he could do about it either way since Han Renyi wasn't actually under arrest or anything. He told us he'd send word to the other patrols and that Han Renyi's father would be glad to hear the young master was safe and then they let us go.

We kept walking and I could feel Han Renyi's anxiety getting stronger and stronger the closer we got to the compound, his thoughts getting more tangled up the more he tried to think through what exactly he was going to say to his father when we got there.

"What am I actually supposed to tell Father?" Han Renyi asked.

"That I was gone all day because I was sitting inside the crystalline heart of our whole realm with an immortal messenger that most people don't even know exists and also my cultivation master who is sharing my body."

"Probably skip all of that," I said.

"The crystalline heart part especially. And the immortal. And the body sharing thing, definitely leave that part out."

"So I should lie to him?"

"Think about it this way," I said, "you were with your master, weren't you? That part is true."

"Yes but…"

"And you did learn important things about your cultivation today, nothing false about that statement at all."

"I guess that's technically…"

"So just talk about those parts and leave the rest alone." He seemed like he was going to argue more but then we arrived at the Han compound gate and the decision was sort of made for us because a group of servants was already heading out through the gate carrying lanterns and clearly intending to join the search effort. When they saw us, they started shouting and running back inside and within about thirty seconds it felt like the entire household had come pouring out into the courtyard.

Han Zhongwei came out of the main hall so fast that he'd clearly abandoned whatever composure he usually carried around with him, and he crossed the courtyard in a few long strides and grabbed Han Renyi by the shoulders. He pulled him into a tight embrace that lasted several long seconds before he stepped back and held his son at arm's length just looking at him, checking him over.

"Renyi," he said, and his voice was rough.

"Where have you been? With everything happening with the Three-Leaf Clover Sect lately, we thought that maybe they had…" He stopped himself there, clearly not wanting to finish that sentence.

"I'm fine, Father. I promise," Han Renyi said quickly.

"I'm so sorry I made you worry. My master needed me for something urgent and important, and I should have sent word before I left but the situation moved too fast for that." Han Zhongwei's expression did several things in quick succession, relief and confusion and something a little bit like hurt all passing over his face before he settled on acceptance.

"Your master? The same one who dealt with the Zhou Shentong situation?"

"Yes. He's been teaching me many things." Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. That was one way to put it. His father breathed out slowly and nodded. It was clear he had more questions but was choosing not to push right then, and he mentioned that Han Qingyi had been beside herself with worry and would be relieved, and as if she'd been listening at the door the whole time, Han Qingyi herself came into the courtyard right at that moment crying.

"You idiot!" she said, running up to punch him in the arm.

"Do you have any idea how scared we all were? After everything that already happened with Elder Zhou and then you just vanish without telling anyone anything?"

"I'm sorry," Han Renyi whispered.

"I really didn't mean to scare anyone."

"But you did!" She punched him in the arm again, this time softer though, and then she just grabbed him and hugged him hard and didn't say anything else for a little while. I pulled back quietly to a less active part of Han Renyi's mind while the reunion happened, it felt like the right thing to do. The servants who'd witnessed everything were already whispering to each other as we all moved inside following Han Zhongwei toward the main hall.

The news spread fast through the household that the young master hadn't been grabbed by any sect members after all, he'd just been off somewhere doing something mysterious with his master, which wasn't a bad story as far as these things go. The next several hours were exhausting, and I say that as an observer, not even as the person actually doing the talking.

Han Renyi had to go through the same edited version of events multiple times for different people while also accepting food from the kitchen staff who had apparently decided the best way to express that they were glad he was alive was to feed him an enormous amount of things. Han Renyi did it well to not let anything slip, I'll give him that.

He stuck to the core story the whole way through and answered questions, apologized for worrying everyone, and made the whole thing sound at least somewhat reasonable even though it definitely wasn't. The only cracks in the performance were small ones, little hesitations and pauses that probably only someone paying very close attention would even catch. His father caught most of them, I could tell by how the man watched his son while he talked, but Han Zhongwei didn't press and eventually the evening wound down.

Finally, much later, we were alone in his room. Han Renyi just dropped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling and let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for about six hours.

"That was exhausting," he murmured.

"You did well though," I said.

"But I think your father picked up that you were leaving things out."

"Father always picks up on things like that," Han Renyi said with familial pride.

"Before everything went wrong with the family business, he was one of the most successful merchants in the region because he notices things that other people miss." He went quiet after that. I could tell where his thoughts had gone to, before the losses, before the fall, before everything that had put so much pressure on this young man's shoulders.

"I've never lied to my father this much in my life," he whispered after a moment.

"You kept information from him that would have caused him to worry about things he can't do anything about," I replied.

"That's a different thing."

"Is it really?" He sat up a little and frowned.

"Because I keep asking myself that question and I'm not sure anymore. Is this just what being a cultivator is? Constantly keeping secrets from the people closest to you because of things they can't understand or handle?" It was a better question than he probably realized, and it deserved a real answer, so I thought about it before I spoke instead of just saying the first reassuring thing that came to mind.

"It's about recognizing that some information would only hurt people who can't do anything useful with it. If your father knew everything we know right now, would it help him run the business any better? Would he sleep any easier? Or would he just have more things to lie awake worrying about at night?" Han Renyi chewed on that for a long moment without saying anything, and eventually he sighed again and said "I suppose that's true. It's still complicated though."

"That's the cultivation world for you," I said dryly.

"Complicated is usually the most straightforward thing you encounter on a regular basis." He laughed a little at that, just a short quiet laugh, but it was something at least and it broke some of the heaviness in the room. Though I could feel that his thoughts weren't done yet, that there was a whole collection of questions just waiting to come out.

"Master," he began.

"I wanted to ask about everything that happened today, about Astralis, the heart-space..." There it was.

"You have questions?" I said.

"About a thousand of them," he admitted.

"But there's one thing I need to know first before anything else." I could feel the shift in him.

"Astralis said you were leaving," he said.

"Is that true?" When he said that, I could still feel the Genesis Seed pulling at me, steadily, insistently, stronger than it had been an hour ago.

"Yes," I said. There wasn't a softer way to say it, so I didn't try to find one. There was silence for a few moments.

"How soon?" he finally asked.

"Within the hour probably. The pull keeps getting stronger." He nodded, slowly.

"Will you come back?"

"When I can," I said, and I kept the longer-term plan about eventually annexing this realm to myself because that was a conversation for another time.

"But time between realms doesn't move in a consistent way so I can't tell you exactly when that will be."

"What do you mean it doesn't move consistently?"

"A day here might be a week somewhere else, or the other way around, it shifts based on a lot of variables that I don't fully have a handle on myself," I explained.

"Which is why I don't want you waiting for me to come back. Focus on your own path, on your cultivation, on keeping your family safe. Build something worth coming back to."

"But couldn't I..." He hesitated.

"Couldn't I come with you instead?" I'd been expecting that question to come up again eventually and this time I had a clearer answer for it than I'd had before.

"Not at the level you're at right now. The crossing between realms would kill you at your current cultivation stage."

"What level would I need to reach for it to be survivable?"

"Tier 7," I said.

"The Celestial Sovereign set that threshold deliberately and Astralis can help you get there, but it's going to take real work and real time." His shoulders dropped a bit, and he stared at his hands for a moment.

"Tier 7 is... that's so far beyond where I thought I'd ever get."

"Is it really?" I asked.

"Think about where you were before and think about where you are now. You've already done things you didn't think were possible. What is stopping you from continuing to do that?" He looked up at that, and I could see the shift in his eyes, the tiredness still there but something else underneath it now, something steadier and more determined.

"Master," he said after a quiet moment, "you promised you'd tell me about your world sometime." He paused.

"So, what is it actually like?"