The world felt heavier these days — as if even the stones sensed the approaching storm.
Lin Xian moved through the ruins quietly, Gourdo perched on his shoulder like a squat little sentinel, vines twitching at every sound.
Behind him, the whispers followed.
Rumors.
Accusations.
Warnings.
The Sect’s eyes were turning toward him, slow but inevitable.
He needed to grow faster.
Stronger.
But the Spirit Garden within him, though healthier, still struggled.
He lacked knowledge.
He needed techniques — real techniques — not the broken scraps left in crumbling scrolls.
The Sect’s current teachings — all built around violent conquest, not patient nurturing — would kill his garden as surely as fire kills seedlings.
He needed something older.
Something true.
Something forgotten.
The Sealed Grove could give no more.
Its spirit had thinned to little more than memories and rot.
Lin Xian needed to search elsewhere.
He needed to risk going deeper.
And so, one night, under the cover of heavy mist and distant thunder, he slipped through the fractured gates leading to the Sect’s oldest, most abandoned quarter.
The Sunken Archives.
Most disciples avoided this place.
The grounds were unstable — riddled with sinkholes and choked by thorns.
The air reeked of damp mold and forgotten failure.
Here, in the blackened shells of once-grand libraries and meditation halls, the bones of the Verdant Heart Sect’s true past lay moldering.
Lin Xian moved carefully, Gourdo riding low against his back.
Each step sank slightly into soft, treacherous earth.
Twisted trees clawed at the crumbled stonework, vines swallowing entire buildings whole.
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Somewhere deeper, faint lights flickered — will-o'-the-wisps or worse.
Lin Xian pressed on, following something more certain than sight.
The Spirit Garden inside him tugged at his senses — a faint hum of recognition.
A pull.
He rounded a collapsed archway and froze.
There, hunched before a shattered wellhead, sat an old man.
Or at least, Lin Xian thought it was a man.
The figure was draped in ragged grey robes stitched with vine patterns so faded they were almost invisible.
His hair hung in tangled cords down his back.
His face was shadowed by a wide, broken straw hat.
In his hands, he cradled a pot of soil from which a single, sickly vine dangled.
He rocked slightly as he tended it, humming under his breath — a song so old Lin Xian could not understand a single word.
The air around him shimmered faintly with Verdant Qi — ancient, battered, but enduring.
A Spirit Gardener.
A true one.
Hidden here, forgotten like the gardens themselves.
Lin Xian hesitated.
The old man made no sign he noticed him.
Gourdo let out a questioning croak, gripping Lin Xian’s shoulder tighter.
Lin Xian stepped forward.
The old man’s head tilted slightly — not in alarm, but in quiet acknowledgment.
"You smell of broken soil and stubborn roots," the old man rasped, voice like dry leaves scraping stone. "Good."
Lin Xian bowed low, heart hammering.
"Senior," he said, voice steady. "I seek to walk the Verdant Path."
The old man chuckled — a dry, brittle sound.
"Many seek paths," he said. "Few tend them. Fewer still survive them."
He tapped the side of the pot.
The sickly vine inside twitched.
"You have roots. But roots alone are not enough."
He set the pot aside and rose to his feet with surprising grace.
The mist coiled tighter around them, muting the outside world into silence.
"You carry a Spirit Garden inside you," the old man said. "Newborn. Hungry."
Lin Xian nodded, throat dry.
"Good," the old man said. "Good."
He raised one hand.
From the crumbling well behind him, thin green vines snaked upward, twining into strange, intricate patterns in the air.
Diagrams.
Forms.
Techniques.
Lin Xian’s breath caught.
The Verdant Sect’s manuals spoke of Root Grasping and Field Bloom — basic manipulations of Spirit Qi for battle.
But this was different.
Older.
Wilder.
Alive.
"You seek strength," the old man said. "But true Verdant strength is not in crushing. It is in binding. In blooming. In enduring."
He gestured, and the vines wove themselves into rough shapes:
- A sapling weathering a storm.
- Roots binding a predator’s jaws shut.
- Thorned vines ensnaring a blade mid-swing.
"The sword cultivators teach: strike faster. Hit harder. Break more."
The vines shattered under an unseen force, curling into dead ash.
"But we teach: Grow deeper. Bind tighter. Outlast."
New vines sprouted from the ashes, stronger and greener.
"Roots do not fear storms," the old man said, voice low. "They welcome them. They drink deep of rain and blood alike."
He stepped closer.
Lin Xian could see his eyes now — pale green, shot through with silver.
Old beyond imagining.
"You are young," the old man said. "Your garden is smaller than a sigh. Your Qi flows like a trickle from a cracked cup."
Lin Xian stiffened — but said nothing.
The old man smiled faintly.
"But you have heart. Patience. Will."
He thrust a hand forward.
A withered seed, dark and hard as iron, dropped into Lin Xian’s palm.
"A gift," the old man said.
"A weed-seed. Hardy. Hated. Enduring. Plant it in your garden. Tend it. Learn from it."
He turned away, retreating into the mist.
"Return when you can make it bloom," he called back. "Not before."
And then he was gone.
Lin Xian stared at the seed in his hand.
It pulsed faintly, stubbornly.
He smiled, closing his fingers around it.
A challenge.
A lesson.
A path.
He tucked the seed carefully into his pouch, bowing once toward the empty mist.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Gourdo croaked approvingly.
That night, back at the hollowed tree of the Sealed Grove, Lin Xian slipped into meditation.
Inside the Spirit Garden, he knelt before the sapling.
Carefully, reverently, he planted the weed-seed at the sapling’s base.
The soil shivered.
The seed sank deep.
And somewhere in the distant darkness of his soul’s soil, something stirred.
Roots shifting.
Growth beginning.
Slow.
Patient.
Inevitable.
Outside, the first true winds of the coming storm rattled the Sealed Grove’s dead branches.
But inside, Lin Xian smiled.
He was ready to grow.
Verdant Sovereign is a story about stubborn growth, about finding strength where others only see weakness — and I’m honored you're here at the start.
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