Cultivation starts with picking up attributes-Chapter 139: Ch-: How many lives?

The traveler who stepped through the door that night did not know their name.

Not fully. Bits of syllables floated at the edges of their mind—something with an "r," perhaps, and something soft at the end like a sigh.

They had wandered long through places too quiet to echo and too loud to think, chasing a warmth they’d only dreamed once as a child and never since dared to seek again.

The orchard received them without demand. No ceremony, no trials. Only wind and whispering leaves.

Tian Shen welcomed them with open arms, and Feng Yin offered them a space by the fire that wasn’t made of flame, but of listening. They sat, trembling. And they stayed.

In the days that followed, others arrived. Not all from far lands. Some came from within the orchard itself, as if the roots had remembered old promises and grown them into people again.

A girl who had once been a bird. A man who spoke only in the laughter of others. A dancer whose steps fell in impossible rhythms, like the breath of stars.

They did not gather to conquer, to categorize, or to command. They gathered because something inside them had been called back into motion.

And so the next circle began.

...

Feng Yin began weaving dreamsongs into thread. Her scroll, once a quiet place for others to write upon, now pulsed with patterns that shimmered between memory and music.

She no longer wrote upon it. She sang into it. And those who heard the melody often awoke remembering truths they had never lived, but always known.

Tian Shen walked further each day. He followed the curve of petals that fell not downward, but sideways.

He listened to the way moss changed color when touched by certain names. And when he came upon a clearing that hummed with stillness, he knelt and planted a small wooden carving.

It was shaped like a door. But it was not meant to open.

"What is it for?" asked Rui, now taller, his eyes marked by the ash-dreams he still painted into the air.

"It’s for when someone needs to remember they were already inside," Tian Shen replied.

...

They began to call it the Memory Orchard.

Not because it remembered everything. But because it helped people remember just enough to begin again.

And as the seasons turned—not in a circle, but a spiral—the orchard changed. New groves grew where questions had been asked.

Old roots lifted themselves and danced beneath moonlight. Fruit bloomed not on branches, but on words spoken aloud by those who dared to believe in beauty again.

A group of children began crafting kites that only flew during sunset. Each kite carried a wish written in a language no one taught, yet all understood. Some wishes became birds. Others became roads.

Ji Luan, now no longer hiding behind laughter, taught a class on how to speak with shadows. "They’re not scary," he told them. "They’re just truths waiting for light to touch them."

Myrrh tended a garden that grew instruments. Harps that sprouted from stone. Flutes from feathered reeds. Her music no longer needed an audience. It echoed into the orchard itself, and the trees would sway in gratitude.

Lan remained silent most days. But wherever she walked, new seeds found the courage to break ground. It was said that she spoke only when a name had found its truest shape.

...

Silas built a spiral path through the orchard—not to walk upon, but to sit within. He called it the Spiral of Listening. Those who entered left behind stories they didn’t know they carried. When they exited, they often paused and smiled, not because they had answers, but because they felt whole.

And through it all, the Heartroot pulsed.

Not with power. Not with prophecy. But with presence.

It listened more than it spoke. But when it did speak, it did so with leaves, light, and longing.

...

One morning, a storm arrived.

Not of rain or wind. But of forgetting.

It came as a wave across the orchard, erasing paths, unraveling dreams, muting song. Trees bowed under the weight of absence. The Listening Spiral echoed only silence.

Tian Shen stood beneath the Heartroot, unmoving.

"It’s not death," he whispered. "It’s doubt."

Feng Yin closed her eyes and began to hum. A single note at first. Then two. Then a chord of memory.

The note danced through the orchard. It touched Rui, who was staring at a wall gone blank. He blinked. Then reached for his ash.

It touched Ji Luan, whose shadow had grown too still. He laughed—a brittle sound, then warmer. "You almost had me," he told the forgetting.

It touched Lan, who placed her hand upon the earth and simply said, "No."

And the storm recoiled.

Because forgetting, powerful as it was, could not endure where remembering was chosen.

...

The orchard survived.

But it was changed.

Some memories did not return. Some names were lost. Some trees did not bloom again.

But in their place grew new questions. New paths. New possibilities.

Silas planted a new spiral, this one incomplete. "Let others finish it," he said.

Myrrh played a new song—one that held pauses longer than notes. "Let silence teach too," she murmured.

And Tian Shen began carving doors again. Some he buried. Some he floated down rivers. One he set upon a cloud.

When asked why, he said, "Because someone, somewhere, is dreaming of here."

...

The Sanctuary of Becoming was never meant to be a kingdom. It had no ruler, no map, no temple. It was not a place to stay. It was a place to begin from.

So when the next door appeared—woven from wind and memory—Feng Yin looked at Tian Shen and smiled.

"Shall we go again?"

He nodded. "Not because we’re done. But because we never will be."

They walked toward the door, and behind them, the orchard pulsed.

Roots stretching.

Branches lifting.

Hearts opening.

And somewhere far away, a child dreaming alone felt warmth press against their chest, and whispered, "I think... I think I can start."

The door bloomed.

The dream continued.

...

The door shimmered like a thought half-remembered, woven from the kind of dream that lingered after waking—not as image, but as feeling. As Tian Shen and Feng Yin approached, the weave of memory and wind unraveled just enough to allow passage.

This door was not made to lead away. It was made to guide deeper.

The orchard did not protest. It did not mourn their leaving. It listened, as it always did, and responded the only way it knew how: by growing.

Behind them, Rui watched the shifting veil with a paint-stained hand over his chest. "Wherever they go," he whispered, "the ash will follow." He turned back to the children who now painted with their eyes closed, their brushes guided by belief rather than vision.

Ji Luan sat atop a stone, one leg dangling, one tucked beneath him. A student was sharing a secret with their shadow, laughing quietly. Ji Luan grinned. "Good. Let the dark listen first."

Lan stood at the orchard’s edge, where roots touched desert and silence. She planted three seeds and said no words. The wind replied, carrying her silence like a lullaby into unknown lands.

And high above, Myrrh plucked a single note from her harp grown of skybone. It arced across the branches like starlight and fell like a sigh across the orchard. The trees responded, not with fruit, but with memory.

In the center of it all, the Heartroot pulsed. Still. Present. Becoming.

...

Tian Shen and Feng Yin stepped through.

The world beyond was not another realm, but a different layer of this one—a veil between the unspoken and the waiting. It looked like a forest wrapped in clouds, but moved like thought.

Shapes flickered in and out of form. A staircase that led nowhere. A lantern burning with laughter. A whisper made of color.

They didn’t speak at first. They simply walked.

Each step rewove the dream around them. Each breath shaped the next moment.

Then Tian Shen paused beside a pool where his reflection showed not his face, but a thousand doors behind him. "How many lives," he murmured, "have we passed through to get here?"

Feng Yin stepped beside him. Her scroll sang gently, its melody a map of emotion rather than place. "Does it matter?" she asked. "Each one was part of the becoming."

He nodded. "Then let’s keep becoming."

They moved again, side by side, letting the dream shape itself not from power or plan—but from presence.

A temple bloomed in the sky above them—not stone or gold, but woven music. As they entered, it shifted to become a hall of memories never lived. Their pasts did not define them here. Their presence did.

Inside, they met no guardians. Only questions.

Not spoken aloud, but felt.

"What have you left behind?"

Feng Yin closed her eyes. "A place that can remember without me."

"What do you carry forward?"

Tian Shen touched the carving in his pouch—a door, small and unfinished. "A question still worth asking."

The temple accepted these truths, and the path opened again.

...

Elsewhere, in a village not yet touched by wonder, a child woke from a dream. They had seen a place where trees spoke in music and shadows danced kindly. Their hands reached for brush and ink, drawing symbols they did not know how to read.

Behind them, a door began to form—not outside their house, but within their heart.

The Sanctuary was growing again.

And the dream had only just begun.