The Immortal Courtyard was quiet.
Clouds drifted below the mountain's edge, slow and unhurried, their movement neither random nor directed. Lin Yuan stood at the railing, hands resting lightly against pale stone, his gaze unfocused—not because there was nothing to see, but because distance itself no longer mattered to him.
Behind him, Qingshi waited.
"You have returned," Lin Yuan said.
"Yes," Qingshi replied.
"Their decision?"
"All major sects and cultivation families have agreed," Qingshi said calmly. "There was dissent. Fear. Accusations of deception. But none could offer an alternative."
Lin Yuan nodded once.
"And the mortals?"
"They do not understand," Qingshi said. "But they sense that something is coming."
Silence followed.
Not heavy. Not tense.
Simply complete.
Lin Yuan's gaze shifted downward, toward the layered clouds beneath the mountain—toward a world that was no longer fully separate from this place.
"Then begin alignment," he said.
There was no gesture.
No seal formed.
No visible command issued.
Yet the Heaven of Resting Peaks responded.
The first to feel it were the mortals.
It began without warning.
Across fields and villages, roads and riverbanks, clouds gathered—not dark with storm, not heavy with rain, but pale and endless. They rolled in gently, flowing between buildings, over rooftops, through forests.
Sound softened.
Wind faded.
A farmer paused mid-step, hand still gripping the wooden handle of his plow. He frowned, confused—not afraid. His chest felt lighter. His breathing slowed.
In a nearby town, a child who had been crying fell silent, eyes widening as mist curled around her ankles. She did not scream. She laughed once, uncertain, then reached out as if to touch it.
Old men sat straighter.
Animals lay down.
Fires burned steadily without flicker.
It felt as though the world itself was being wrapped.
Not swallowed.
Not erased.
Held.
The cultivators sensed it moments later.
Within sect halls and cultivation chambers, Qi shifted.
Not violently.
Not chaotically.
It settled.
An elder circulating his Qi frowned as the familiar resistance vanished. The strain he had grown accustomed to—absorbing, refining, compressing—was simply… gone.
His circulation slowed.
Not because it was suppressed.
Because it no longer needed force.
"What is happening?" someone shouted.
Another cultivator attempted a breakthrough, instinctively pushing harder—only to find there was nothing to push against. The energy around him did not resist.
It waited.
Sect Master Lu stood upon the Guardian Sect's highest platform, robes unmoving as clouds climbed the mountain slopes below. Vice Sect Master Shen stepped forward, his expression tense.
"The spiritual energy…" Shen said slowly. "It's no longer turbulent."
Lu closed his eyes briefly.
Cultivation had always been struggle.
Scarcity.
Competition.
Now—
"It isn't fighting us anymore," Lu said.
That realization spread like a quiet shock.
Clouds consumed the world.
The sky vanished.
The horizon dissolved.
Direction lost meaning.
Yet the ground did not shake.
Buildings remained whole.
Mountains did not crumble.
Rivers flowed as they always had.
Some cultivators attempted to fly.
They failed.
Not pushed back.
Not struck down.
They simply… did not rise.
The world no longer responded to will alone.
Fear rose—then faltered.
Because beneath it all, there was no sense of danger.
Only transition.
No one saw the boundary.
There was no flash.
No collapse.
No instant they could later point to and say that was when it happened.
For some, it felt like a single breath.
For others, like the passing of several heartbeats.
Time slipped.
Then—
Light.
The clouds thinned.
They parted slowly, retreating like a curtain drawn back by unseen hands.
Above them, the sky revealed itself.
A sun hung high—bright, steady, warm without harshness. Its light did not scorch the land. It illuminated it.
Mountains rose in the distance—vast, layered, their peaks resting among drifting clouds. The air felt deeper. The space above felt… taller.
The world had expanded.
Mortals stood frozen.
Some knelt without knowing why.
Others stared upward, tears forming unbidden.
Cultivators extended their senses instinctively—
And stopped.
Their perception did not spread endlessly as before.
Nor was it cut off.
It was acknowledged.
Measured.
Boundaries existed now.
Not limits imposed from above—
but rules that were complete.
An elder exhaled slowly.
"We didn't ascend," he whispered.
Another answered, voice hoarse, "We were accepted."
No voice spoke from the heavens.
No figure appeared.
Yet everyone felt it.
The land responded to something greater than cultivation.
The laws of the world no longer wavered.
Chaos had no foothold here.
Somewhere beyond sight, beyond distance, the Immortal Realm endured.
And with it—
The Lord.
The clouds fully dispersed.
The fragment was no longer a fragment.
And for the first time in generations, the world breathed freely beneath an open, resting sky.
End of Chapter 20