[GL] I'm Just A Side Character... So Why Is The Heroine Chasing Me?!-Chapter 35: The Elder’s Summons

The note arrived at breakfast.

Chen Mei brought it in, slightly out of breath, holding a folded piece of parchment sealed with the Academy’s official stamp. "For the Young Miss. From Elder Su’s office."

Zhao Lingxi took the note and read it. Her expression didn’t change, but Lan Yue had learned to notice the small things. The slight tightening of her jaw. The way her fingers pressed just a little harder on the paper.

"What does it say?" Lan Yue asked.

"Elder Su wants to see me. This morning. Privately."

Tang Xiaoli, who had been mid bite on a sesame cake, froze. "Elder Su? The head examiner? The woman who looks like she could turn you into ash with her eyebrows?"

"That’s the one," Zhao Lingxi said.

"What does she want?" Lan Yue asked.

"She didn’t say." Zhao Lingxi folded the note and stood. "I’ll go now. No point in making her wait."

Lan Yue started to rise. "I’ll come with you."

"No. She said privately."

"But what if it’s..."

Zhao Lingxi looked at her. Calm. Steady. That quiet confidence that said she had survived worse than a meeting with an old woman.

"I’ll be fine, Lan Yue."

"You always say that."

"And I always am."

She left before Lan Yue could argue further.

Tang Xiaoli leaned over. "She’ll be fine."

"I know."

"Then why are you crushing that sesame cake into powder?"

Lan Yue looked down. The cake in her hand was completely destroyed. She set it down and wiped her hands.

"I wasn’t worried."

"Of course not."

"I wasn’t."

"Nobody said you were."

"Good."

Tang Xiaoli smiled into her tea.

Elder Su’s office was located at the very top of the Academy’s main pagoda.

The room was circular, lined with shelves of ancient scrolls and cultivation texts. Spiritual formations glowed faintly on the walls, keeping the temperature cool despite the morning sun pouring through the windows.

Elder Su sat behind a carved wooden desk, her white hair pinned neatly, her sharp eyes watching as Zhao Lingxi entered and bowed.

"Sit," the elder said.

Zhao Lingxi sat.

For a long moment, Elder Su simply studied her. The silence was heavy, deliberate. A technique Zhao Lingxi recognized immediately. It was meant to make the other person uncomfortable enough to speak first.

She waited.

Elder Su’s lips twitched. Just barely. "You have patience. Good. You’ll need it."

She reached beneath her desk and produced a scroll, old and yellowed with age. She unrolled it across the desk. Inside was a diagram of a human body, meridian lines drawn in careful detail. But unlike any cultivation diagram Zhao Lingxi had seen before, the meridian lines weren’t the standard blue or red.

They were gold.

"Do you recognize this?" Elder Su asked.

"No."

"This scroll is over eight hundred years old. It describes a spiritual root condition so rare that most modern cultivators believe it to be a myth." Elder Su’s finger traced the golden lines. "It’s called Shattered Heaven Roots."

Zhao Lingxi’s breath caught. Just slightly.

"Shattered Heaven Roots occur when a cultivator’s spiritual roots break apart during formation in the womb. To any normal physician, this looks like a crippling defect. Three shattered roots. No proper foundation. Cultivation speed that is painfully slow." Elder Su’s eyes met hers. "Sound familiar?"

"Very," Zhao Lingxi said quietly.

"But the scroll tells a different story." Elder Su leaned forward. "Shattered Heaven Roots are not broken roots. They are roots that fragmented because they were too powerful for the body to contain. Like a river that shatters its dam. The water doesn’t disappear. It floods everywhere."

She tapped the golden lines on the diagram.

"A cultivator with Shattered Heaven Roots absorbs spiritual energy differently. Slower at first, yes. Painfully slow. But the energy they absorb doesn’t just fill the standard meridians. It fills everything. Muscles. Bones. Blood. Organs. The entire body becomes a vessel for spiritual power."

Zhao Lingxi stared at the diagram. The golden lines ran everywhere. Not just through the traditional twelve meridians but through every fiber of the body like roots of a tree spreading through soil.

"That’s what the Spirit Measuring Stone detected," she said. "The golden light."

"Correct. The stone couldn’t categorize your spiritual energy because it doesn’t follow normal patterns. It’s everywhere. In everything." Elder Su rolled the scroll closed. "In eight hundred years, only four cultivators have been confirmed to possess Shattered Heaven Roots. All four of them reached the highest realms of cultivation. One of them founded this very Academy."

The weight of those words settled over the room like snowfall.

"Why are you telling me this?" Zhao Lingxi asked.

"Because knowledge is armor, child. And you are going to need it." Elder Su’s expression hardened. "If word spreads about what you are, powerful people will come for you. Some will want to study you. Some will want to use you. And some will want to destroy you before you become too strong to control."

"I’ve had people trying to destroy me my entire life."

"Yes. But now you’ll understand why." Elder Su stood, signaling the meeting was over. "Train hard. Trust carefully. And for the love of all cultivation, do not let anyone else see that golden light until you can defend yourself."

Zhao Lingxi stood and bowed. "Thank you, Elder Su."

"Don’t thank me yet." The old woman’s eyes softened just a fraction. "The path ahead of you is harder than anything you’ve faced so far. But I believe you can walk it."

---

Meanwhile, Lan Yue was having a very different kind of morning.

Tang Xiaoli had dragged her to the Academy’s market square, a bustling area near the main gate where students could buy cultivation supplies, snacks, and various odds and ends.

"I need fire crystals for my furnace," Tang Xiaoli explained, weaving through the crowd with practiced ease. "The old ones burned out after we made those gold pills. Also I want to buy Zhao Han some candied hawthorn. That kid is too thin."

"You don’t have to keep feeding us," Lan Yue said.

"I like feeding people. It’s my love language."

They browsed the stalls. Tang Xiaoli haggled like a seasoned merchant, arguing the price of fire crystals down by thirty percent while the shopkeeper looked like he regretted opening his store that morning.

Lan Yue wandered to a nearby stall selling simple accessories. Hair pins, ribbons, jade ornaments. Nothing expensive, but some of them were genuinely pretty.

Her eyes landed on a hair pin. It was carved from dark wood, simple and elegant, with a single small pearl set at the tip. Something about it reminded her of Zhao Lingxi. Clean lines. Understated beauty. Nothing flashy, but impossible to ignore.

"That one’s three spirit stones," the shopkeeper said.

Three spirit stones. Lan Yue had exactly five to her name, saved from the allowance the Academy gave to servants of enrolled students.

She bought it before she could talk herself out of it.

Tang Xiaoli appeared beside her, a bag of fire crystals in one hand and a stick of candied hawthorn in the other. She glanced at the hair pin in Lan Yue’s hand and her eyes lit up.

"Ohhh. Who’s that for?"

"Nobody."

"It’s for Zhao Lingxi."

"I said nobody."

"Dark wood, pearl accent, elegant but not showy. That screams Zhao Lingxi." Tang Xiaoli grinned. "You’re buying your mistress a gift. That’s adorable."

"It’s practical. Her current hair pin is cracked."

"Practical. Sure. And the fact that you spent three spirit stones on it, which is most of your money, is also practical."

"Tang Xiaoli."

"Yes?"

"If you tell anyone about this, I will put General Fluffbottom on a strict diet."

Tang Xiaoli gasped and clutched her chest. "You wouldn’t."

"Try me."

"Your secret is safe." Tang Xiaoli mimed locking her lips. Then immediately added, "But you should give it to her tonight. After dinner. When the light is soft and romantic."

"There is nothing romantic about this."

"The pearl literally glows in moonlight. I can see it from here."

Lan Yue shoved the hair pin into her pocket and walked faster.

---

Zhao Lingxi returned from Elder Su’s office just before lunch.

Lan Yue could tell something had changed. Not in her expression, which was the same mask of calm it always was. But in the way she moved. There was something new in her stride. A weight that hadn’t been there before, but also a steadiness. Like someone who had just been handed a heavy truth and had already decided to carry it.

"How did it go?" Lan Yue asked.

"Informative." Zhao Lingxi sat at her desk. "I’ll tell you tonight. When we have privacy."

"Is it bad?"

Zhao Lingxi looked at her. Really looked at her, the way she did sometimes when she forgot to keep her guard up. Open. Searching. Almost vulnerable.

"No," she said. "It changes things. But it’s not bad."

Lan Yue nodded. "Okay. I trust you."

Something warm passed through Zhao Lingxi’s eyes. She looked away quickly and picked up her brush.

"You smell like the market," she said.

"Tang Xiaoli dragged me shopping."

"Did you buy anything?"

The hair pin felt like it was burning a hole through Lan Yue’s pocket.

"Nothing important," she said.

Tonight. She would give it to her tonight.

If she didn’t lose her nerve first.