Like a Tree by the Water

The air inside the library had changed.

No longer still — watchful.
Not like someone listening.
Like something ancient had been waiting for this very moment.

Nie Li stood before the open Hei Jin book. Its pages no longer felt like parchment and ink. They felt like wounds — still fresh, still weeping, still remembering.

The last verse clung to him like mist:
Before the yoke, before the binding… they remembered the Name.

He closed his eyes.

And the Voice returned.

Not as fire.
Not as blast.
But like a whisper in stone — ancient, measured, undeniable.

“There are two paths, child of dust. There always have been.”

Nie Li opened his eyes.
The room looked the same.
But his soul did not.

“There is the path of descent,” the Voice said.
“Of those who first walked with beasts,
then stood in their wisdom,
and finally sat in judgment over the Seal.”

He frowned. Poetic. Symbolic. But far too familiar.

“First, they walked,” the Voice continued. “Curious. Clever. They sought strength in the marrow of the earth.”

“Then they stood — proud, unteachable. They named themselves masters of spirit and soul.”

“At last, they sat — enthroned in their own system. And called their rebellion order.”

A shiver ran through Nie Li.
He knew that descent.
He had lived it.

“Cultivators,” he spat.

His lips curled. “Vanity,” he whispered hoarsely. “That’s what you called me in the classroom. I thought you meant only my pride — but you meant all of us, didn’t you? Every master, every sect, every soul trial. Vanity dressed as wisdom.”

“Yes.
The descent was praised as progress.
The spiral as enlightenment.
But it did not lead upward — only inward.
And downward.”

Nie Li turned toward the table. The Emperor Kong Ming book looked different now. Not an artifact.
An altar.

“And the Sealed?” he asked, voice low. “The ones this book speaks of?”

“They took the other path.
They did not walk with beasts.
They did not stand in dominion.
They did not sit in mockery of the Seal.

They remembered.
They lived as roots live — unseen, yet alive.
They bore no glory.
But they were planted in the First Covenant.”

Nie Li’s body moved restlessly, as though the stillness was too heavy.

“If they were so faithful,” he asked, “why did they vanish?”

“They did not vanish.
They were scattered.
Hidden.
Preserved in the blood of the lowly.
The outcast.
The unchosen.
The ones the world calls talentless.
Their soul-gates did not open — not from failure,
but from mercy.”

Nie Li froze. His mouth opened — not in awe, but in horror.
“Then…” he whispered. “What is cultivation?”

He asked it like someone who already feared the answer.

The Voice did not hesitate.
“It is the systematic undoing of the First Seal.
The unraveling of the Covenant.”

Nie Li blinked. But said nothing.

“It is not enlightenment.
It is mutilation.
A proud science of soul-wounding — perfected over centuries.”

The words fell like stones into a bottomless well.

“What the world calls growth is corruption.
Every level gained.
Every beast fused.
Every soul weapon drawn — all marks of rebellion.
The soul was never made to be yoked.
It was meant to be sealed — whole, closed, at peace.”

Nie Li’s breath stuttered. His hands curled into fists as if to shield his own soul-gate. All those nights bleeding for progress… all those scars — not sacrifice, but self-destruction.

Slowly at first, then harder, he shook his head.
“No… no, that can’t be…”

His voice cracked into a desperate rush. “Cultivation saved lives! The walls still stand because of it. Families survived because men bled their soul-force into shields. I bled for it! My comrades died for it! Every child trained in those arts believes they are defending their people — are you saying all of them are wrong?”

His voice cracked. “You’re telling me they died for nothing?”

“I am telling you they died in blindness.
And you lived long enough to see.”

Faces swarmed his mind — comrades, mentors, brothers and sisters in arms. People he had admired. People who had died for him. Their triumphs, their sacrifices, their screams. All blind.

Nie Li turned away, fists clenched, eyes wild.
His thoughts raced like a flood breaking its dam.

If cultivation was rebellion…
Then the entire world was in revolt.
Every sect.
Every academy.
Every noble house.
Every scroll.
Every ritual.

Every child trained to open their soul-gate was being taught to destroy it.

He looked back at the book, trembling.
“Then why let it happen? Why didn’t you stop it?”

The Voice paused.
Not for ignorance.
But because the answer would wound.

“I did.
I sent the darkness.”

Nie Li stiffened.
“The Age of Darkness…”

Nie Li’s blood ran cold. Memories surged unbidden — streets of Glory City drowned in beasts, comrades torn apart, days when the sun seemed smothered by wings and fangs. He had survived that nightmare by claw and cunning, had hated it as the curse of the heavens. Now the Voice’s words turned the horror upside down. Not punishment… preservation?

“It was not a fall.
It was a flood.
I loosed the beasts as waters
to wash the altars clean.
Not to punish — but to preserve.
To silence the shrines of soul-fusion,
and raise up the quiet.

The Sealed were not destroyed.
They were hidden.
The outcast.
The unchosen.
The talentless ones this world mocks.
They are My inheritance.”

The Voice said it with such finality that Nie Li flinched. Yet beneath its gravity, for the first time, he thought he heard not only judgment, but grief. And love.

Nie Li’s eyes dropped to the stone floor.
“Then… it was all wrong.
Every soul trial.
Every spirit bond.
Every cultivation level…”

“It was desecration?”

“Yes.”

The Voice was unflinching —
the way oceans do not apologize for drowning what resists them.

“The cultivation world buried the First Covenant.
The Hei Jin were hunted.
Their scriptures burned.
Their history rewritten.
But the time has come for the Second.”

Nie Li stumbled back to the book.
He touched its closed cover — not like a scholar.
Like someone touching a tomb.

“And now?” he whispered hoarsely. “Where are the Sealed?”

“Everywhere.
The memory is gone.
But the inheritance remains.

The blood of the Sealed flows —
in the warrior who never awakened,
the scribe no beast would yoke,
the healer who prays without soul-force.

And in you…
…it has begun again.”

Nie Li looked down at his hands.
Calloused. Scarred. Empty.

Once they had wielded weapons of soul-force.
Now they held nothing.

“What am I?” he asked. “Why me?”

“Because the Seal has begun in you.
Not by strength.
But by grace.
You were marked in death.

You were not preserved to rebuild the system.
You were preserved to remember what came before it.”

His legs buckled. He crashed to his knees, palms striking stone. His breath tore ragged from his chest, vision blurring as if the very air had thickened into soil pressing down. It was not surrender — it was breaking, the kind of breaking that comes before a man can stand remade.

“You want me to perfect the First Seal…”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You will bear it — in stillness.
In weakness.
In refusal.

You will teach others — not how to rise.
But how to close.

Closed to pride.
Closed to yoking.
Closed to power.”

Nie Li’s voice cracked. “You want me to kill cultivation…”

A pause.

Then the Voice answered:

“No.
I want you to bury it.”

The words struck like earth shovelled onto a coffin. The silence that followed was no release, only the weight of soil pressing deeper, sealing him in.

He bowed his head, trembling. They will call me mad. They will call me heretic. They will kill me before they ever listen.

The thought hollowed him out, yet the silence only pressed closer, heavy and inexorable — like the grave itself had already claimed him.