The hospital corridor smelled faintly of disinfectant and old paint.
Lin Yuan stood near the window at the end of the hall, his reflection faintly visible in the glass. Outside, traffic moved slowly under a gray sky. Inside, the air was still, broken only by distant footsteps and the low murmur of voices.
Room 407.
He did not go in immediately.
From where he stood, he could already sense the change.
Xu Ran was no longer the child he remembered.
Seventeen now—his body had grown taller, his frame less frail than before, though weakness still lingered beneath the surface. His breathing was steadier. The illness that once clung to him like a shadow had loosened its grip, even if it had not fully released him.
Lin Yuan observed quietly as the door opened and a nurse stepped out. Through the brief gap, he caught a glimpse of Xu Ran sitting upright on the bed, listening as his mother spoke. The boy nodded occasionally, expression calm, eyes alert.
Too alert.
The spiritual root was still there—thin, dormant, untouched by any guiding method. It had not faded with time, nor strengthened. It remained exactly as it had been.
Unclaimed.
Lin Yuan felt no satisfaction at confirming this.
Instead, a different thought surfaced—one he could not ignore.
He is still a child.
Xu Ran lived with his parents. His days were accounted for by school, treatment, routine. If Lin Yuan were to speak now, explanations would follow. Questions. Fear. Resistance. Even if permission were given, what then?
The cave heaven was not a place for half-measures.
Nor was Earth ready to accept an answer it had not yet asked for.
Lin Yuan turned away from the door.
He left the hospital without making his presence known.
The idea came to him later, not all at once, but pieced together from fragments.
It began with a conversation overheard on a bus.
"…the mountain roads are a mess lately."
"Too much fog. Comes out of nowhere."
"They say it's because of the cold fronts."
"Hospital's already full. People slipping, getting lost."
Lin Yuan looked up.
The bus rattled forward, carrying students, workers, elderly passengers returning home. No one spoke of anything unusual beyond inconvenience. Fog. Cold. Weather.
Yet the word lingered in his mind.
Fog.
Mist.
A condition that concealed, that confused, that gathered people into the same uncertainty.
That night, Lin Yuan stood alone in an open field beyond the village, looking toward the distant outline of the mountains. Their peaks were barely visible, swallowed by low-hanging clouds.
Instead of searching endlessly…
…why not let them come?
He chose a place where paths converged.
A mountain trail not too famous, but not abandoned either—used by students, researchers, hikers. Cold enough for mist to form naturally. Remote enough that oddities could be dismissed as environmental.
Lin Yuan did not build anything.
He did not mark the land.
He simply opened a narrow passage.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Spiritual energy flowed outward—not violently, not visibly. It spread thinly, like breath in cold air, merging with the natural mist that rolled down the slopes. To an ordinary person, it was nothing. To the sensitive, it was discomfort. Pressure. Confusion.
And to someone with a spiritual root—
A test.
Lin Yuan withdrew to a distance and waited.
People came.
They came in groups, warned by news reports and advisories. Some complained about the cold. Some laughed it off. Some turned back early, claiming headaches or blurred vision.
A few stopped walking entirely.
One man sat down on a rock, dizzy, swearing the fog was too thick to see through. Another rubbed his eyes repeatedly, convinced something had entered them. A woman clutched her chest, unsettled but unable to explain why.
Most felt nothing.
Some felt wrong.
None awakened.
Lin Yuan observed each reaction carefully.
No resonance.
No pull.
No instinctive absorption.
The mist dispersed after a time, thinning naturally as weather shifted. People left. Reports faded. The mountain returned to normal.
Lin Yuan did not repeat the attempt immediately.
He waited.
Two months passed.
Lin Yuan returned to his routine—weekend visits, quiet cleaning, brief absences that required no explanation.
Inside the cave heaven, time moved differently.
Stillwater advanced. Slowly. Steadily.
On Earth, however, nothing answered him.
No one crossed the threshold.
No one knocked on the door he had opened.
Lin Yuan stood one evening at the edge of the fields, watching mist settle low over the ground as the sun appeared.
He did not feel frustration.
He felt certainty.
This was not failure.
It was confirmation.
Earth would not yield cultivators easily.
And those who could walk this path—
Would not come when called lightly.
End of Chapter 35