Cultivation starts with picking up attributes-Chapter 129: Ch-: Sometimes

The next dawn brought with it a sharp clarity. The mist that had blanketed the orchard the past few mornings lifted in thin ribbons, revealing the full breadth of the valley beyond.

Sunlight spilled like honey over the hills, golden and slow, casting long, warm beams through the orchard canopy. The air was thick with the scent of plum blossoms and incense.

Tian Shen woke before the bell, as always. He moved through his forms slowly, deliberately, letting his breath guide his movements. Today, each motion felt heavier. Not in the body—but in the spirit. The Vault was stirring. And with it, the world.

By the time the others emerged—yawning, stretching, their robes tucked and belted for the day—he was already waiting by the training tree. Drowsy watched from above, her ears twitching lazily in the breeze.

Ji Luan approached first, staff in hand. "Are we telling them today?"

Tian Shen didn’t look away from the horizon. "Yes. But gently."

The news spread during breakfast. Not as an announcement, but as a conversation.

Feng Yin shared the details of Lian Hua’s visit with the older scouts while Little Mei passed around fresh melon buns to the younger ones.

Ji Luan, ever the tactician, explained the Dungeon’s nature without dramatics—an ancient repository of artifacts, knowledge, and power sealed beneath mountain and spell.

But it wasn’t the treasure that concerned them. It was the calling.

"I don’t hear anything," one scout admitted, fidgeting with his cup.

"You wouldn’t," Ji Luan said kindly. "It doesn’t speak with words. It hums beneath the skin. It invites choice, not conquest."

Tian Shen spoke only once, but his words stayed with them:

"The Dungeon isn’t a test of strength. It’s a mirror. If you step through its threshold unsure of who you are... it will show you."

The rest of the morning passed in preparation—not frantic, but intentional. Some scouts reinforced their armor.

Others gathered tools, maps, and old scrolls. Elder Su taught a crash course in spiritual mapping, while Drowsy snuck off with a satchel of sweetbread tucked beneath one wing.

Feng Yin, meanwhile, disappeared into the forest beyond the orchard. When she returned hours later, she held a crystal vial containing a sliver of starlight—a rare reagent used to bind intention to spirit threads.

"This is for anchoring," she told Tian Shen. "In case any of us lose our way."

He nodded, not asking how she’d obtained it.

By twilight, the division gathered beneath the sigil-banner. It fluttered in the wind, steady and resolute.

Tian Shen stood before them, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

"I won’t command you," he began. "That’s not what we are. This path—into the Dungoen—is one you choose. And if you don’t choose it, you stay here, and you keep building what we’ve made. No shame in that. No rank lost."

Then Ji Luan stepped forward, staff slung across his back.

"I’ve fought ghosts and befriended mirrors. Might as well meet a vault."

Laughter echoed.

One by one, hands rose. Some confident. Some trembling. But all raised with intention.

Even Little Mei, who was still chewing a sesame bun, raised hers.

"Can we bring snacks?"

"Essential supplies," Feng Yin deadpanned.

That night, Tian Shen didn’t draw. He wrote.

A new list. A new Chapter.

Names of those who had chosen. Not ranked. Not sorted. Just listed, as equals. As one.

...

They departed two days later.

The path to the Hidden Sky Vault wound through terrain both familiar and wild. Meadows they’d trained in. Cliffs they’d mapped.

Forests where leyline beasts whispered in their sleep. But as they ascended higher into the veil-covered ridges, the air began to shift.

It wasn’t cold. Not yet. But the world began to quiet.

Birdsong vanished. Even the wind softened.

On the fourth night, they camped beside a glacier-fed lake. The water shimmered with strange hues, and the stars overhead seemed closer, sharper. Drowsy refused to perch, instead gliding in slow loops above the water, tail trailing patterns in the mist.

Tian Shen sat beside the lake with Feng Yin and Ji Luan. None of them spoke for a long time.

Finally, Feng Yin broke the silence. "Do you think the Vault remembers who sealed it?"

"Maybe," Ji Luan said. "Or maybe it remembers who was lost to it."

Tian Shen didn’t answer. He was listening—to the quiet beneath the quiet.

...

The entrance appeared at dawn.

Not carved. Not built. Simply there.

A cleft in the mountainside, draped in mist. Its arch was etched with runes so old they had no meaning, only emotion. Awe. Grief. Hope.

The scouts approached with reverence.

Elder Su lit incense and scattered spirit sand. Ji Luan stepped through first, with a laugh that belied his tension. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Feng Yin followed, her spirit thread tied to Tian Shen’s wrist.

When it was his turn, Tian Shen paused at the threshold.

He looked back.

The scouts behind him were no longer recruits. No longer fractured, hiding, scarred. They stood tall. Together.

Then he stepped inside.

...

The Dungeon was not a single space. It was a shifting spiral, a living construct of memory and choice. Each step led to a new chamber, a new trial—not always of battle, but of self.

One scout faced a memory of the family he’d abandoned. Another, a version of herself who never left her village.

Little Mei was asked to bake something using only scent—her resulting pastry somehow brought everyone to tears.

Feng Yin walked through a forest of mirrors and saw every life she might have lived. She emerged weeping—but smiling.

Ji Luan fought no battles. He debated a philosopher spirit for six hours straight, and won by making it laugh.

Tian Shen found himself alone.

His trial was not a fight, but a room. A simple room, with a single chair and a blank scroll.

"Write what you are," a voice said.

He stared at the page for what felt like hours.

Finally, he wrote:

"I am the breath between battles."

The scroll burned to light, and the room opened into stars.

...

When they emerged days—or perhaps lifetimes—later, they were changed. Not brighter. Not darker. Just... clearer.

The Dungeon gave nothing for free. But it returned those who entered with the weight they were meant to carry.

And at the foot of the mountain, where the orchard once lay dreaming, a new garden had begun to bloom.

They did not speak much on the way back.

Words, after all, felt brittle compared to what they had walked through.

The path from the Hidden Sky Vault wove differently now. It wasn’t shorter, or longer—but it bent. Bent around quiet revelations, private burdens, and small, solemn victories no one could quite name aloud.

Feng Yin hummed occasionally. Ji Luan stopped every now and then to scribble something in his travel notes, muttering half-sentences like, "The laughter theory holds..." and "Spiritual gravity isn’t theoretical anymore."

Little Mei, unusually quiet, stayed close to Drowsy, who seemed tired but content—her wings folded low, steps grounded.

Even she had changed. Or maybe, she had simply remembered who she was before.

Tian Shen walked at the front, not as a leader, but as a thread—binding them without pulling. He didn’t look back, but he didn’t need to.

He could feel them.

And for once, that was enough.

...

They arrived back at the orchard at sunset.

The valley greeted them gently. Plum blossoms had bloomed wider in their absence, their fragrance heady in the summer air. The lantern tree had shed several petals, as if counting the days.

No one rushed to unpack. No cheers or declarations met their return.

Instead, the scouts moved naturally—some to their quarters, some to the kitchens, some to the roots of the tree where silence still waited to be shared.

Feng Yin lit the hearth. Ji Luan put on tea.

Tian Shen sat beneath the training tree and leaned back, letting the branches shade his face.

He could hear wind in the leaves, the quiet steps of scouts practicing in the background, and the rustle of Little Mei trying—and failing—to sneak an extra honey cake from the cooling tray.

He smiled, faintly.

Then Elder Su approached.

"You came back."

She said.

Tian Shen opened one eye.

"Everyone did."

"Yes," Elder Su replied. "But you—especially. The others still walk forward. You... are standing still."

He didn’t answer.

She sat beside him, hands folded in her sleeves.

"Tell me. What did the dungeon show you?"

He hesitated, then replied, softly.

"Nothing I didn’t already know."

"Still," she said. "Knowing a truth and living with it are not the same."

He glanced up.

"Is that your insight as an elder?"

"No," she said. "That’s my insight as someone who has failed to live her own truths. More than once."

That made him chuckle, tiredly.

After a moment, he said.

"I wrote: I am the breath between battles."

Elder Su nodded.

"And did that answer satisfy the dungeon?"

He thought for a moment.

"It let me go. I don’t know if that means satisfied."

"Letting go," she said gently, "is often the greatest gift."