The question hung in the cool, misty air of the grove, as sharp and pointed as a shard of ice. Who are you? And what do you want?
For a long moment, Lian did nothing. He stood before the old woman, a mountain of silent, coiled power. His first instinct, the primal law of the forest that had governed him for so long, screamed a simple, clean answer: eliminate the threat. She had seen his true nature. She was a witness. A loose end. A single, lightning-fast strike, and the problem would be solved. His hand twitched, the memory of his fists shattering stone and bone a phantom sensation in his knuckles.
But another, colder part of his mind, the part that had been honed by long nights of patient observation and disciplined control, held him in check. He analyzed her. Elder Maeve. Her body was frail, her life force nearing its end, but the Qi within her was like a gnarled, ancient tree root—deep, resilient, and utterly intertwined with the grove around them. The way she rested her hand on the Ironwood tree wasn't for support; it was for connection. She drew strength from this place, just as he had drawn it from the Heartwood. This was her domain. Attacking her here would not be a simple matter.
More importantly, she was a resource. A living, breathing well of the very knowledge he had risked everything to acquire. She knew the ways of these people, the names of their techniques, the locations of their powers. To kill her would be to burn a library to read a single, smudged page. The pragmatist in him, the cold strategist that was slowly conquering the raging beast, found the idea wasteful.
His mask of the simpleton was gone. It was time to craft a new one. Not of weakness, but of enigma. He would answer her question not with a lie, but with a truth so vast and alien she could not possibly comprehend it.
He did not speak. Instead, he reached out his hand, not towards her, but towards the Spirit Spring beside them. He closed his eyes and summoned a sliver of the power he had stolen from the sky, the pure, chaotic essence of the Lightning. It was a power utterly anathema to the calm, grounding Earth-Qi of this grove. He let a single, brilliant blue arc of lightning, no thicker than a thread, dance across his fingertips.
The reaction from the grove was instantaneous and violent. The calm, bubbling spring recoiled as if struck. The gentle mist hissed and dissipated. The Ironwood trees groaned, their own placid energy shrinking away from the raw, untamed power of the storm he held in his hand.
Elder Maeve gasped, her hand flying to her chest. Her eyes, wide with shock, stared not at Lian, but at the tiny, captured star of lightning crackling in his palm. She understood. He was not just a different kind of cultivator. He was a different kind of nature. He was the storm that shattered the forest, the fire that consumed it. Her power was of the earth, of life, of endurance. His was of chaos and conquest.
Then, Lian did something else. He extinguished the lightning and summoned a different energy. From the deepest part of his Dantian, he drew upon the original power of the Heartwood, that pure, verdant life force. A soft, gentle green light enveloped his hand. He held it over the spring, and the water, which had recoiled from the lightning, now surged towards his touch, drawn to this echo of its ultimate source. The mist returned, thicker and more vibrant than before.
He had shown her, without a single word, that he held both the storm and the seed within him. The power to annihilate and the power to nurture.
Finally, he looked at her, his green-ringed eyes holding a depth that seemed to swallow the dim light of the grove. His voice, when it came, was the rasp of stone on stone, the sound of a being unused to the mechanics of speech, yet it carried an unshakable weight.
"I am the answer," he said slowly, "to a question this world has forgotten to ask."
He let the cryptic statement hang in the air. He then answered her second question with the same brutal, enigmatic honesty.
"I want," he said, his gaze sweeping over her, the grove, and then seemingly past her, towards the distant, sleeping village, "everything you are guarding. And everything you are hiding from."
Elder Maeve stood frozen, her mind reeling. He was a paradox, a monster of impossible contradictions. He wielded the power of a sky demon, yet his touch could soothe the very spirit of the earth. He spoke in riddles, yet his intent was as clear and terrifying as a naked blade. She realized, with a certainty that chilled her ancient bones, that he was not a threat she could fight. He was a force she could only hope to endure, or perhaps, to guide.
Her own will, hardened by decades of secret cultivation and loss, reasserted itself. Fear gave way to a weary, pragmatic resolve.
"You are a storm," she whispered, her voice filled with a reluctant awe. "And I am too old to stand against the wind." She straightened up, her demeanor shifting from that of a cornered protector to a savvy negotiator. "You seek knowledge. I can see it in your eyes. The 'ant hill' down there has nothing for you. Their secrets are worth less than the dust on your feet. But I... I have lived many lives. I have seen the rise and fall of sects, the birth of techniques you cannot imagine."
She made her offer, her voice a low, careful murmur. "Leave my grove in peace. Let it be your sanctuary, your place of cultivation. Drink from its spring. Do not harm my villagers; they are ignorant, but they are my flock. In return... I will be your library. I will answer your questions. I will teach you the ways of this world, so that you do not crush it out of simple ignorance."
It was an unconditional surrender disguised as a negotiation.
Lian considered her words. She was offering him exactly what he needed: a safe harbor, a source of pure Qi, and a guide. All for the price of not destroying things he had no immediate interest in destroying anyway. It was a good bargain.
He gave a single, slow nod.
A truce was struck. Not of friendship, but of mutual interest. An alliance of monsters—one ancient and hidden, the other young and rampant.
He turned and walked back towards the Spirit Spring, kneeling to drink again, his back now turned to her. It was a sign of dismissal, but also a sign of acceptance. The conversation was over. The alliance had begun. Elder Maeve watched him for a long moment, the strange, powerful boy who was both a storm and a sanctuary, and wondered if she had just saved her world, or merely brokered the terms of its destruction.