The Missing Thing

Understanding is one thing.

It doesn't mean Gu Chengyin accepts it, and it certainly doesn't mean he'll act on it.

He is Gu Chengyin.

Not Empress Lin.

He won't give up cultivation for anyone.

Not Lin Qingyan, not Shangguan Yunying, not Luo Zhao, not Gu Xiaoli, not Cui Zilu.

It's not because he doesn't care about them — quite the opposite.

It's precisely because he cares about them that he must possess the power to protect them.

Those things will come for him sooner or later.

Who they are, he doesn't know.

How strong they are, he doesn't know.

All Gu Chengyin knows is that when they come, if he isn't strong enough.

It won't just be him who dies — it'll be everyone around him too.

So he must keep climbing, must break through the Golden Core stage, the Nascent Soul stage, and even higher realms.

Not just for the sake of cultivation, but for the sake of survival.

To keep the people around him alive as well.

And Empress Lin gave up her cultivation, which means she can no longer provide a sample.

Originally, Gu Chengyin had thought that if Empress Lin reached a certain realm.

Then whatever happened to her would most likely occur at that realm.

He would only need to know what that realm was, so he could prepare in advance.

Before reaching that realm, he'd frantically raise his strength. When that realm arrived, he'd lay down every possible defense.

Like a man who knows the flood level in advance, building his levee higher than the water.

But Empress Lin had no cultivation, no realm.

She hadn't even truly begun to cultivate.

When they found her, Empress Lin faced them as an ordinary cultivator.

Or rather, she never even had the chance to face them.

Because she died.

No sample. No point of reference. No water level.

The only remaining option was Gu Xiaoli. She hadn't sealed her memories in a heart demon like Lin Qingyan had.

So she should know who they are. With that in mind, Gu Chengyin asked directly:

"Xiaoli, do you know who they are?"

Gu Xiaoli's gaze was calm. She nodded, but then shook her head.

"Xiaoli knows, but Xiaoli can't say."

"Because the moment she says it, they'll find us."

Gu Chengyin narrowed his eyes. He didn't press further and simply switched to a different question.

Gu Xiaoli also tacitly dropped the subject.

"What about Her Majesty's hypnosis? What was it like? Did she ever hypnotize anyone?"

This time Gu Xiaoli didn't hesitate. She spoke almost before the words left his mouth.

"Her Majesty only hypnotized one person."

"The Emperor. But she lifted it later."

Gu Xiaoli seemed to think of something and added one more line.

"But Her Majesty's hypnosis isn't the same as brother's."

Gu Chengyin blinked. He sensed this might be a crucial piece of information.

"How is it different?"

Gu Xiaoli tilted her head, thinking. Her big eyes narrowed slightly.

Her gaze landed on some nonexistent point in the air — the look of someone recalling something.

"Brother's hypnosis — is it eye contact?"

Though phrased as a question, her tone was certain, as if confirming an answer she already knew.

Gu Chengyin nodded. There was nothing to hide about this.

The people around him now all knew this about him, and each had their own way of dealing with it.

When Lin Qingyan spoke to him, her gaze always rested slightly below his brow — never deliberately avoiding, but never meeting his pupils directly either.

Luo Zhao was more straightforward. Every time they were alone, she'd stand sideways.

Facing him with half her face, she'd look out the window or at the memorials on the desk when speaking.

Shangguan Yunying was the cleverest. She never avoided his gaze.

But every time she looked at him, there was an extremely faint ripple of spiritual energy behind her eyes.

That was the Qingyun Art in motion. If she detected even a trace of spiritual power in Gu Chengyin's eyes that didn't belong to the Qingyun Art.

Shangguan Yunying would immediately look away.

As for Gu Xiaoli, she'd already proven with her actions just how afraid she was.

From the moment Gu Chengyin told her himself, her gaze fluttered around his face like a startled sparrow, refusing to settle on his eyes.

"But Her Majesty's hypnosis isn't like that."

Gu Xiaoli's voice grew somewhat uncertain.

Not uncertain about the facts, but uncertain about how to describe them.

Her brows furrowed slightly, her spiritual-force cat ears tilting forward, the tips trembling.

As though trying to dredge up a blurred image from the depths of memory.

"How should I put it..."

Gu Xiaoli raised her hands.

She used the thumbs and index fingers of both hands to form a rectangle, then looked up at Gu Chengyin.

"Her Majesty has a box that glows."

"Whenever she shows this glowing box to someone, they get hypnotized."

Gu Chengyin's pupils contracted sharply.

He didn't speak. He didn't ask anything.

Because Gu Xiaoli wasn't done yet.

There was still more in her big eyes, where the second half of her sentence was being organized.

Still searching for a way to express it in words she could manage.

"And no treasure can undo it. Even an immortal artifact can't."

Gu Xiaoli paused, her spiritual-force cat ears pressing back slightly.

"Even just one glance — that's enough to get hypnotized instantly."

Gu Chengyin understood the meaning of these words better than anyone.

His hypnosis was decent, but it had several fatal flaws.

First, it required five breaths of sustained eye contact.

If the other person refused to meet his eyes, his hypnosis couldn't take effect at all.

But Empress Lin's hypnosis needed no eye contact. It didn't even require the other person's cooperation.

All it needed was for them to see it. A single glance, and they'd be hypnotized.

No threshold. No conditions. No way to avoid it.

That was true hypnosis.

"Only Her Majesty can undo it, by pressing a few times on that glowing box."

Gu Xiaoli added this final line.

Her fingers tapped a few times in the air over the rectangle she'd traced.

The motion was casual, as if imitating a gesture she'd seen countless times but never understood.

Gu Chengyin froze. Not the kind of freeze where his mind went blank.

Quite the opposite — his mind was flooded with too much information at once.

All the gears were spinning at full speed in the same instant, so his face couldn't keep up with the expression.

A rectangle.

A glowing box.

Show it to someone and they get hypnotized.

And a one-handed tapping gesture.

This looked more and more familiar.

Gu Xiaoli didn't know what that thing was, so she could only describe it with words she understood.

Like how ancient people would describe an airplane as an iron bird.

Or a television as moving little figurines.

It wasn't that they didn't want to describe it more accurately — their vocabulary simply had no words for it.

But Gu Chengyin did. If he guessed correctly.

If Empress Lin's hypnosis really was that thing.

Then Gu Chengyin thought he might know...

What his hypnosis had been missing all along.