Chapter 27 – When Silence Hears Your Heart
From Zhuge Su Yeon's Perspective
The judge's announcement still lingered in the arena like a newly struck bell when I realized what my face was doing without permission: smiling.
Not the polished, courteous arc I use for clan politics.
It was an imperfect smile, alive, born from the collision of things too vast for a single word: relief, pride, ancient tenderness… and, I admit, a certain amusement at the shamelessly clichéd plot fate had chosen to write for my brother.
Murmurs spilled from the stands. Flags cracked in the wind. Fresh blood stained the granite where Yu Jin had stopped his opponent with a single blow. And I, seated beneath the Zhuge pavilion's canopy, simply breathed—a breath that sank, and sank, until it touched that place within me that never speaks to the world: the calm lake where I keep what weighs too heavily.
Within my dantian, the Silent Void Martial Soul opened its eyes inside my chest. The first martial soul I awakened in this life, capable of amplifying inner peace, reducing distractions, and guarding against mental attacks.
A martial soul perfectly suited to me.
The arena's noise receded like a tide in my mind. I felt the circle of stillness expand a few paces around me—not to push people away, but to make room for what mattered. And what mattered, at that instant, was to listen to the heart.
I remembered when he was born.
I was eleven years old—at least in this world—too young to enter the room, but old enough to stay with my new family. The corridor smelled of warm herbs and sandalwood oil. My father, the clan's strongest man, paced back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to look like a mountain—but I saw the faint tremor in his jaw, a very human anxiety.
When the cry came, it was thin and fierce, like the first spark convincing fire to exist.
My mother smiled through luminous exhaustion. "He is warm," she said. That was the first thing I knew of my brother. The first, across two lives.
I remembered his first steps.
It was in the plum courtyard. The leaves still clung to spring's green that afternoon. I was studying a scroll on formations when I heard the rustle of cloth and the small stumble. Yu Jin rose from the mat like a newborn calf, legs unsteady, will unbroken. He walked toward my robe, hands outstretched as though born to hold both earth and sky at once. He fell before reaching the hem—and I let him fall. He needed to learn. But he stood again before my reflex finished blaming itself, and he came again, and fell again, and came again.
I placed a piece of dried plum on the table, as if by chance. He grabbed it, sat down right there, chewed with seriousness, and looked at me. There was a purity in his gaze only children can carry.
I remembered when he began following me through the clan.
A small shadow, eager for light, discovering my shortcuts as if they were his own. If I walked the stone corridor, he walked within the columns, imitating my shoulders' rhythm. If I paused on the stair's curve to listen to bamboo in the wind. Sometimes, he left childish notes tied with string to beams—little treasure maps that always ended where I was. I pretended surprise. He pretended I didn't know. And life went on, simple as it must be at the beginning.
I remembered when Qi refused to obey his body.
The training room smelled of damp wood. Yu Jin was still more bone than muscle. I sat in the back, silent, while he attempted the basic circulation for the two-hundredth time. The flow struck his meridians and recoiled, furious, like water against badly set stone.
I remembered when they first called him trash.
It was in the small courtyard near the well. Two youths of side branches, arms too large for their shoulders, shouted the bravado their fathers had planted. I arrived at the end—enough to hear the laughter and the word stripped of compassion. Yu Jin didn't answer. His face had already learned to hide wounds with a dignity I had never taught.
For a moment, I thought of ending it, but as any teacher knows, interference can make things worse. In certain limits, even I was bound.
Still, that night, I found my brother sitting on the well's parapet, feet dangling. I sat beside him. I didn't speak of destiny, or strength, or honor—words too heavy to fit in boys. I pulled from my pocket a poorly made honey cake, broke it in half, and we ate in silence.
Something inside me began to shift. The Golden Core in my dantian turned slowly, then faster—faster still—until incandescent. Then, like a flame consumed, it slowed until it stopped… no longer golden, but white.
I had broken through.
Now at the 1st sub-level of the Refined Core—the 5th great cultivation realm.
The 4th and 5th stages were close in essence, both preparing the birth of a seed that would only sprout in the 6th.
But in terms of strength, the difference was like comparing a cat to a lion.
Inside me grew the conviction that there were few opponents left in the White Flame Empire worthy of me—and none that could threaten my life.
For the first time, I felt even fate had decided to reward me.
After all…
The truth is, I could have left the Zhuge clan long ago, if cultivation had been my only goal.
The truth is…
I could have gone far away, hidden in some sect of another land, cultivating in peace, far from all.
The truth is…
I chose to stay.
I chose to watch my siblings grow with the time cultivators rarely afford in a world that worships strength.
I chose to become patriarch to protect the family I had known for twenty-five years.
I chose, today, to smile inwardly at something that could only be described as a "terrible cliché."
And if that is naïveté, then I can only hope the Dao forgives me.
Even so, I still felt I owed my family something—even if they were a family of protagonists.
I closed my eyes. The Silent Void Soul slid to the surface once more, and one last flash came unbidden: an old night, when Yu Jin, after a failed training, had gone alone to the garden and kicked a plum tree's base until his foot hurt. I found him there, silent, pride chewed down like bone. I sat beside him without speaking. After a long while, he asked:
"—Brother, what if it's true?"
"What?"
"That I'm worthless."
I thought long to answer briefly.
"There is no 'worthless,'" I said, looking at the moon on the garden's pond. "There is 'not yet.' And there is 'in another way.'"
He said nothing more. The next day, he trained again.
Perhaps I had wasted precious cultivation time with the Zhuge.
But I was somewhat satisfied with that, and I had even been rewarded with my own transmigrator's system, so I found little right to complain.
I opened my eyes to the present.
A Han clan elder was already approaching the urn, long sleeves swaying like curtains heavy with wind. The smile shaping his face was no simple courtesy; it bore the polish of one who knows the next act of the play and waits only for the moment to pull the strings. To me, it was clear—the show was far from over.