Da Xia, We Will Not Fail the Trust

Behind Elder Feng, Wu Gong had just entered the room, holding his breath in nervous silence.

Suddenly, Elder Feng spun around, his sharp eyes locking onto Wu Gong with an intensity that could pierce steel.

"You were the one who said there was no need for me to take time out of my busy schedule to come here personally, weren’t you?"

Cold sweat instantly drenched Wu Gong’s back.

With a trembling, skeletal finger, he pointed at Yun Huang, who still had her back turned to the group.

"If I hadn’t made the time to come today, a discovery that could rewrite the history of Great Xia would have been squandered by your recklessness!"

"You—"

Elder Feng’s chest heaved with fury, his words choking off before he could finish his reprimand.

Wu Gong bowed his head even lower, wishing the ground would split open and swallow him whole.

After venting his anger, Elder Feng turned back to face Su Qi.

The storm of rage on his face vanished in an instant.

"My child..." The old man’s voice cracked with emotion.

"This... what exactly is..."

Before he could finish, Su Qi interrupted him.

"Elder Feng, please calm yourself first."

Su Qi’s voice was steady, but laced with exhaustion.

"This... cannot be replicated."

A single sentence drained the feverish excitement from the room.

Elder Feng’s expression froze.

"It can’t be taught to others," Su Qi repeated, leaning heavily on the table as he lowered himself back into his chair. "This isn’t about hoarding knowledge."

At that moment, Yun Huang finally turned around.

Her gaze fixed on Su Qi as she listened intently to his next words.

Su Qi’s face was deathly pale. He took a slow breath before continuing.

"To carve this ‘canal’ based on what I call the ‘Sourceflow Construction Method,’ an external force must provide precise guidance."

He lifted his eyes to meet Elder Feng’s.

"The guide must be able to directly ‘see’ another person’s energy pathways—every strand of flesh’s affinity for source energy, every neural reaction."

"Then, using their own mental energy like a chisel, they must forcibly etch the first outline of the riverbed into the other’s body."

"There can be no deviation in this process."

"Even a fraction of misalignment, and the guided person’s energy will run wild, reducing them to a pile of mangled flesh."

"A hair’s breadth off, and the guide’s own consciousness will be devoured by backlash, leaving them a mindless husk."

Su Qi spoke as if describing something entirely unrelated to himself.

But to Elder Feng and Yun Huang, his words struck like thunder.

Directly "seeing" another’s energy pathways?

Using mental energy to "sculpt"?

This went beyond cultivation—it defied comprehension.

Su Qi looked at Elder Feng and asked, with deadly seriousness:

"Can you do it?"

The question silenced Great Xia’s pillar of stability.

Elder Feng said nothing.

He couldn’t.

Not just him—no one in the world, as far as he knew, possessed such perception and control.

This level of mastery wasn’t meant for mortals.

The room plunged into a suffocating silence.

Su Qi added one final remark, as if sealing the matter.

"Moreover, each act of guidance takes a tremendous toll on the guide."

He gestured weakly to his own pallid face.

"This is the price."

"Just to help her carve the first ‘canal,’ I nearly collapsed on the spot."

So... that was how it was.

Elder Feng studied Su Qi’s weakened state for a long, long time.

The balding man—Wu Gong—opened his mouth to speak. "But earlier, you—"

"Enough."

Elder Feng cut him off.

The fire in his eyes dimmed, replaced by something far more complex—a mix of regret, awe, and above all, a heavy understanding.

He realized now.

What Su Qi had brought wasn’t some endlessly reproducible manual.

It was a miracle—unique, untransferable, belonging to Su Qi alone.

All he could do was "gift" fragments of this miracle to others, at great cost to himself.

"I see..."

Elder Feng exhaled deeply, as if aged a decade in that breath.

He approached Su Qi, abandoning all talk of replication.

Instead, he simply looked at the young man, placing a gnarled hand on his shoulder.

"Rest now, child."

His voice held no anger, only a bone-deep weariness.

Su Qi allowed himself to be guided back into the chair without resistance.

Elder Feng pulled up another seat across from him, his presence settling like sediment in still water.

His clouded eyes fixed on Su Qi—or perhaps, through him, at something far beyond.

"You don’t understand," Elder Feng began slowly.

"You don’t understand what you hold in your hands—what it means for us, for all of Great Xia."

"Humanity didn’t reach this point by relying on lone geniuses."

"A single prodigy, no matter how brilliant, isn’t enough."

"For Great Xia to mobilize its full strength for your sake is impossible."

The old man’s voice dropped lower, as if recounting a buried history.

"People often say humanity’s potential is limitless..."

"That statement is both true and false."

"A compliment, and a mockery."

"Humanity doesn’t have infinite potential."

"What we have is accumulation—layer upon layer, generation after generation."

"The first awakened, barely past twenty, could master all existing theories of their time."

"Then they spent the rest of their lives experimenting, refining, forging new paths—laying sturdier steps for those who came after."

"Each successor climbed higher, standing on those steps, finding the ascent hundreds of times easier than those who built them."

"But even so, as the tower grew taller, the climb grew harder."

A profound sorrow seeped into Elder Feng’s words.

"Centuries of accumulation left our knowledge vast—but bloated."

"Now, even a genius who begins studying from infancy would need until nearly fifty to digest all prior wisdom, to finally stand at the frontier and contribute."

"Half a lifetime spent climbing. The prime of their youth, gone."

"Mortality is the shackle on humanity’s progress."

"Our path is a towering spire. Each generation must exhaust themselves scaling what their ancestors built, just to add one brick at the summit."

The room was tomb-silent.

Yun Huang stood motionless, but her mind reeled.

She’d always thought cultivation was a personal journey—a race between talent and effort.

But Elder Feng had revealed a darker, grander truth.

With a weary gesture, he pointed at her.

"What you carved into her—this ‘canal’—isn’t just another brick."

"It’s an entirely new foundation."

"It means we no longer have to climb that tall, crumbling tower. We can build something far grander on entirely new land, using the most advanced knowledge to complement this foundation."

Liu Yuan listened in confusion, yet she could feel the suffocating weight in the air.

She stole a glance at Su Qi and noticed he had remained silent the entire time.

His pale face betrayed no emotion.

After Elder Feng finished speaking, the room sank into prolonged silence once more.

Everyone expected Su Qi to say something—to defend himself or offer reassurance.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he smiled. For the first time, a flicker of something different crossed his pallid features.

It wasn’t weakness, nor was it forced bravado—just pure, lucid amusement.

He understood the underlying message.

Some things couldn’t be spoken plainly; they had to be conveyed in roundabout ways.

He also understood why Elder Feng had come personally.

Neither the simplified version nor the optimized one he’d given Yun Huang truly mattered to the old man.

Or rather, they weren’t the only things that mattered.

What Elder Feng truly cared about was the malleability of the "Sourceflow Construct" itself.

The fact that Su Qi could modify it at will, creating different versions, proved this wasn’t just a stroke of luck—it was a grounded, logical, and rigorously tested new system of knowledge.

A true foundation capable of supporting a towering edifice.

Finally, Su Qi spoke, shattering the oppressive atmosphere.

"So what you really want is the underlying logic of the Sourceflow Construct?"

His words cut like a blade, slicing through all the unspoken pretense.

For the first time in a century, Elder Feng’s weathered face flushed with embarrassment.

Put nicely, this was for the future of Great Xia.

Put bluntly, it was a mighty nation coveting something from a junior.

But this request had to come from him.

In all of Great Xia, he was the only one who shared even the faintest connection with Su Qi.

Anyone else would have stood even less of a chance.

The old man took a deep breath, his murky eyes filled with grim resolve.

"Great Xia is willing to offer anything in exchange."

Su Qi shook his head.

"I want nothing."

What was freely given often carried the heaviest price.

He knew this. Elder Feng knew it even better.

Leaning back in his chair, Su Qi gazed at the ceiling as if speaking to himself.

"But if I just hand it over, you’d never rest easy."

"I should ask for something."

Elder Feng’s head snapped up, his eyes alight with renewed intensity as they locked onto Su Qi.

Wu Gong gulped nervously.

Yun Huang’s body tensed imperceptibly.

The room plunged into dead silence—but this stillness was different from before.

Earlier, the quiet had been heavy with sorrow and resignation.

Now, it was charged with the weight of an unpredictable, monumental shift.

Yun Huang studied Su Qi—his frail, almost lethargic demeanor.

She couldn’t fathom what thoughts lay behind that unreadable expression.

What would he demand?

Power? Wealth? Some privilege beyond the rules?

Great Xia could grant any of it, and more.

At last, Su Qi spoke again, his soft voice striking like thunder in their minds.

"My parents died in the Source Realm upheaval."

"From that day on, a seed took root in me."

He paused, slowly lowering his gaze from the ceiling to sweep over everyone present.

His eyes held no hatred, no grief—only a terrifyingly calm determination.

"If I have the ability..."

"I wish to erase the Source Realm from existence."

Elder Feng shuddered violently.

He stared at Su Qi, lips trembling, unable to utter a word.

Su Qi continued, as if reciting an oath rehearsed countless times in his heart.

His voice seemed to pierce through the small lounge, declaring to the heavens themselves.

"If I have the ability..."

"I will establish the heart of heaven and earth."

"Secure the fate of all living beings."

"Carry forward the wisdom of the sages."

"And open an era of peace for ten thousand generations."

Boom—

Yun Huang’s mind went blank.

She stood frozen, her blood turning to ice.

Suddenly, all her life-and-death struggles, her pain and fear, seemed trivial—almost laughable—in the face of Su Qi’s words.

They had been fighting for personal breakthroughs.

For meager points, for meaningless rankings, they had risked their lives.

Yet this man’s vision had long surpassed them all—transcending the competition, even Great Xia itself—to gaze upon something far vaster.

Wu Gong gaped, utterly dumbfounded.

He was just a messenger—how had he ended up witnessing history?

Elder Feng, the guardian who had shielded Great Xia for nearly a century, trembled faintly.

He had devoted his life to strengthening Great Xia’s supernatural systems. No one understood the weight of "legacy" better than he did.

And no one grasped the enormity of Su Qi’s words more acutely.

This wasn’t empty rhetoric or grandiose posturing.

It was the conviction of a pioneer… his very Dao heart.

No exchange was necessary.

Because from the beginning, his goal had aligned perfectly with Great Xia’s ultimate purpose.

No—it went beyond theirs, seeing further, thinking deeper.

Su Qi rose to his feet.

The soul-deep exhaustion remained, yet his back was straight as a blade.

"So, Elder Feng."

"My condition is for Great Xia to help me fulfill this wish."

"Alone, I may not be strong enough..."

"Can Great Xia agree to this?"

Elder Feng studied the young man before him.

His grizzled brows quivered; his eyes grew moist.

Slowly, solemnly, he nodded.

"Yes."

A single word, resolute as steel.

Then, after a long pause, he spoke again: "Great Xia will spare no effort."

Elder Feng composed himself.

His deeply lined face now bore only an unprecedented gravity.

And then—

Under the stunned gazes of Wu Gong and Yun Huang—

The revered elder, who had protected Great Xia for nearly a century without ever bowing to anyone—

Bent at the waist in a deep, profound bow to this young man.

His voice held no paternal expectation, only equal, heartfelt respect.

"Great Xia will not fail you."