Chương 797: Chapter 796: Three Days of Peace

The heavy and rune carved doors of the hidden vault groaned as they swung open. Li Yu stepped out of the chamber. The cool and sterile air of Fortress Hope rushed over him. It was a jarring contrast to the oppressive weight of the temporal stone he had inhabited. He took a deep breath and was savoring the simple act of filling his lungs without having to fight against the flow of time itself. Standing at rigid attention on either side of the massive doors were two sets of elite guards.

One side was from Leviathan Smashing Vanguard and the other was from the Golden Shell Phalanx. He had seen their armor before during the rescue mission and thought nothing of it. As Li Yu emerged and was followed closely by the two blurred figures, the guards momentarily broke discipline. They stiffened and their eyes widening beneath their visors. They had stood watch over this vault for years. They were fully aware that a young man was most likely going to die or be in there forever.

To see him walk out and seem unharmed was nothing short of miraculous. They quickly caught themselves and saluted sharply as the two behind him. They had a role to play now.

"Return to your posts," Li Canghai ordered but they knew what he truly meant. Li Canghai did not control them. He was telling them to let their respective groups know of the good news.

"Understood Commander." The guards responded in unison. However, the moment Li Yu and the commanders turned the corner of the grand corridor, the guards exchanged rapid and silent glances. They abandoned their post at the empty vault. Their job here was done. They would return with the great news. Further down the hall and hiding in the periphery of a scouting array, the general that Lian had left behind observed the scene. He let out a long sigh of relief.

He pulled a jade slip from his robes and shattered it to send an urgent message across the void. It was time to bring Lian back to meet with Li Yu. Li Canghai discreetly sent a message to Khaos as well. The message was simple: "He is out. Return." Lian and Khaos had brought Li Yu into this horrific warzone. They were the only ones that could escort him back without raising further questions. In the meantime, Li Canghai and Zhan Tielan faced a delicate problem. They wanted nothing more than to embrace their son.

To show him the grand armadas they commanded and to celebrate his miraculous survival. But they couldn't. Fortress Hope was the nerve center of the allied defense now. Li Yu could not be seen here as it would only draw questions.

"Young man," Li Canghai said as they reached a heavily warded and luxurious guest pavilion deep within the inner sanctum.

"We must ask for your patience. Fortress Hope is a high security military installation. There are secrets here that are vital to the survival of the realms. To ensure that those secrets remain protected, we must ask that you remain within this pavilion until your escorts arrive." Li Yu looked at the grand double doors of the pavilion. He didn't feel insulted or imprisoned.

"I completely understand, Commander," Li Yu replied with a respectful nod.

"I am an outsider. It is already a great kindness that you have allowed me to recover here. I will not leave the room." He knew his place. He was a Law Integration cultivator, powerful in his own right, but these two beings were titans who shouldered the sky. If they asked him to stay in a room, he would stay in the room. The doors opened to reveal a spacious and beautifully appointed chamber.

It had a small indoor garden, a meditation platform carved from warm jade and large windows that instead of looking out at the fortress, projected a calming illusion of a bamboo forest. For the next three days, Li Yu did not leave the pavilion. But he was rarely alone. To his immense surprise, the two of them spent nearly all of their time with him. The two parents couldn't help themselves.

They would deal with any fall out that would come but the chances that Li Yu could piece it together were extremely low, even if he got suspicious. No one was going to separate them from their son right now. They did not sit in awkward silence or interrogate him about his cultivation. They played the role of gracious and attentive hosts.

"Is the tea to your liking?" Zhan Tielan asked on the second afternoon. She poured a fragrant and steaming cup of Spirit Cloud tea, carefully keeping the obscuring aura of light and shadow firmly in place over her features.

"If you require anything else. Such as elixirs, rare meats or specific meditation incense, you only need to ask. You have done us all a great favor with freeing the trapped army. It is the least we could do."

"The tea is wonderful, Senior," Li Yu said back to her while accepting the cup.

"You have brought me everything I could possibly need. Truly, you are too kind." Li Canghai sat across from him at the low wooden table. He was observing Li Yu with a quiet intensity. As the hours turned into days, a strange, nagging sensation began to take root in Li Yu's mind. These two were supreme beings. They commanded millions. They dictated the fate of realms.

Yet, here they were, pouring tea for a young man from what could only be a lower realm to them and asking him if his meditation cushion was soft enough. It wasn't just their hospitality that felt strange; it was the way they interacted with him. When Li Canghai spoke, there was a subtle and grounding cadence to his voice that made Li Yu feel incredibly safe.

When the Zhan Tielan handed him a plate of food, the subtle shift in her posture was entirely lacking the cold and military precision he would expect from a general. It was warm. It was almost... maternal. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

'I feel like I know them,' Li Yu thought while taking a sip of the tea. He searched through the fragmented memories of the lives he had lived and was trying to find a connection.

'Is it because the soldiers whose lives I experienced revered them so deeply? Is their respect bleeding into my own emotions? That must be it. I had seen Li Canghai many times. I thought I was able to cleanse it all but surely there would still be some residue left over.' It was the only logical explanation he could find. He dismissed the nagging familiarity as a byproduct of all of those lives.

"If I may ask," Li Canghai said while breaking the comfortable silence.

"What exactly did you experience within the relic? The Temporal Dao Stone is known to be an execution. To break us free and then survive it yourself. You are the first and only one known in history." Li Yu set his cup down. He looked at the two blurred figures. They had protected him here within this fortress. The fact that he was securely in a safe place this entire time showed that they had protected him. He guessed that they brought him here to this place.

He didn't know that the bubble was immovable and that they built the entire place around him. They guarded his physical body and treated him with nothing but kindness. He felt no reason to hide the truth.

"It was not a pleasant experience," Li Yu began as his voice dropped slightly.

"The Dao Stone, at least in my experience, does not just age the flesh. It archives the lives of those who perished within it and those that were trapped within. I experienced some of those lives in there." Zhan Tielan leaned forward and her hands clenched tightly beneath her robes.

"You... you lived their lives?" Li Yu nodded.

"I lived many lives. I can't even remember how many. I can vaguely remember I was a spearman who burned out too quickly. I was an illusionist who watched his home burn. I was an array master, a beast tamer, a medic and others. I experienced their triumphs, their philosophies and ultimately, their horrific deaths when the Dao Stone claimed them or had entrapped them." He spent the next hour detailing the cycle. He spoke of the desperate attempts to change their fates.

The realization that he was dying prematurely because he fought their natural instincts or simply made bad choices. The final surrender to the current and allowing the momentum of the hosts to guide him to the end. The room was deathly quiet when he finished. Behind their blurred visages, Li Canghai and Zhan Tielan were stunned. They had assumed he was simply fighting a physical battle against time, perhaps entering a state of frozen meditation to preserve his soul.

To hear that their young son had been forced to mentally endure the brutal, horrific lives and deaths of ancient soldiers and current casualties was a terrifying revelation. Zhan Tielan felt a wave of agonizing guilt.

'My baby,' she thought as her heart was breaking.

'He had to die many times while we sat outside.' Li Canghai reached out under the table and gently rested his hand over his wife's clenched fist and was offering silent support. He looked at Li Yu and was analyzing the young man's aura. The fact that Li Yu had emerged from that mental crucible with his sanity intact was nothing short of miraculous. Many cultivators, even those at much higher levels might have had their minds completely scrambled by the conflicting identities and the repeated trauma of death.

They might have emerged as raving lunatics. Unable to separate their own memories from the ghosts. But Li Yu's eyes were clear. His aura was stable. It was all thanks to his incredibly powerful soul, the five distinct Nascent Souls that anchored his mind.

"You have endured a trial that would break even some of the strongest of men," Li Canghai said with his voice thick with genuine pride that he couldn't hide.

"To emerge not only whole but enlightened... it is a testament to your unyielding will."

"I was lucky," Li Yu said with a self-deprecating smile and didn't really take it to heart.

"I had a lot of time to sort out which memories belonged to me and which belonged to the others. When I had finished living all those lives, the memories were very vague and starting to dim already so it was easier. Though... speaking of time." Li Yu rubbed the back of his neck and was looking slightly embarrassed.

"I know you mentioned I should be twenty five now. But honestly, after living through those lives and then spending I don't know how long consolidating my foundation in that space... I have completely lost track of how much time actually passed for me inside that bubble."

"It is a complex matter," Li Canghai agreed. He quickly shifted comfortably into the role of a guiding elder.

"The flow of time within that relic is entirely divorced from the reality of the cosmos. For you, spiritually, eras may have passed. Physically, your flesh was subjected to the rapid acceleration of time as well. You mentioned that it was likely that your physique and soul fought against that. So it is unknown how much time your body has experienced as well. Lastly, in this room, it has only been a few years."

"So..." Li Yu asked while raising an eyebrow.

"How old am I, really?" Zhan Tielan laughed softly. It was a warm and melodic sound that made Li Yu smile and brought a warmth to his heart.

"Age is but a construct, young man," she said gently.

"In the cultivation world, once you reach a certain realm, years lose their meaning. You are as old as your foundation and as young as your spirit. But for the sake of simplicity..."

"Twenty-five," Li Canghai finished with a decisive nod like he could read his wife's thoughts.

"Your physical vessel registers as twenty five years of chronological growth. It is a good and solid number to go by, not that it really matters. Let us leave the complexities of the Dao Stone to the historians who will eventually write about you." Li Yu smiled and nodded in agreement.

"Twenty-five it is. It sounds much better than 'an unknown amount of cosmic millennia'." The tension in the room dissolved as they spent more time with one another. For the rest of the afternoon and into the next day, they simply chatted. It was a comfortable and easy dynamic. It was akin to a younger, promising cultivator spending time with two wise and benevolent elders of his sect. Li Yu asked them about the broader cosmos, the different types of realms they had seen and the general state of the war.

They answered his questions with patience and insight, carefully omitting any details that would reveal their true identities or scare him too much. It was peaceful. Li Yu wished this moment could go on forever. He felt like he was at home and it was a feeling he hadn't felt in what was honestly countless years to him at this point. On the evening of the third day, the heavy doors of the pavilion finally opened. Li Yu looked up from his cup of tea.

Standing in the doorway and looking slightly out of breath and entirely relieved was Lian. She wore elegant robes this time instead of armor. Standing right behind her with an unreadable expression on his face was Khaos.

"Li Yu," Lian breathed with a brilliant and genuine smile lighting up her face as she stepped into the room.

"Thank the Dao, you are safe." The escorts had arrived.