Transmigrated into a Grandpa, Embracing the Laid-Back Life

Su Ming was stunned.

“A door?”

“Mm.”

Su Ming looked around. The stone walls extended into darkness on both sides, above was the impenetrable canopy of trees, below were the last few ink-gray stone slabs densely etched with horizontal lines. There was nothing that looked like a door anywhere.

“How do I open it?”

Lin Yu rubbed his chin. Su Ming was far too familiar with this gesture—every time his master was mulling over some tricky problem, he would unconsciously rub his chin. Just like those middle-aged men in his past life who sat at their desks frowning over spreadsheets.

“It probably requires Golden Core cultivation.”

Su Ming fell silent.

He was currently at mid-stage Foundation Establishment. He was still a whole major realm away from Golden Core, with a complete Foundation Establishment stage in between, as well as the bottleneck of forming a Core that he couldn’t even attempt right now. The Kintsugi crack on his Dao foundation was still there—forcibly forming a Core would be suicide.

“Then I...”“You can’t open it.” Lin Yu was very straightforward.

Su Ming swallowed the rest of his words.

Lin Yu stared at the stone wall.

His expression was changing. Su Ming had known his master long enough to read a lot from those subtle shifts. A slight frown at the brow meant he was thinking, relaxed corners of the eyes meant he was confirming, pressed-tight lips meant he had made a decision.

Right now, his master’s lips were pressed tight.

“Let your teacher give it a try.”

Su Ming looked up.

“Master?”

Lin Yu didn’t turn around.

He floated to the front of the stone wall, stopping only half a foot away from the surface. His soul body began to solidify, the folds of his robe becoming like real silk, the texture of his hair strands becoming distinguishable one by one.

The curve of his fingertips—the bending angle of each knuckle, the outline of each nail, even the extremely fine lines on his finger pads—all solidified like a living person’s hand.

Su Ming could feel it.

A profound pressure radiated outward from Lin Yu’s soul body in every direction.

That was Golden Core-level soul power.

No—more accurately, that was the oppressive feeling corresponding to the human cultivator system’s Golden Core level after a peak Ghost General fully unleashed its power. Standing three steps away, Su Ming felt the spiritual energy lake in his Dantian gently pressed down, ripples spreading across the surface. Shadow’s feathers instantly fluffed up, her entire body stiffening on Su Ming’s shoulder, her golden eyes wide open.

Lin Yu raised his right hand.

Palm facing up, fingers slightly curled.

A ball of deep blue light condensed in his palm. That light didn’t flow gently like spiritual energy—it carried a sharpness that Su Ming had never seen in his master before.

The deep blue light spun twice in Lin Yu’s palm, condensing into a fist-sized orb that wrapped around his hand.

Lin Yu turned his palm over.

His right hand slowly reached toward the stone wall.

Su Ming instinctively stepped half a step forward and opened his mouth—he wanted to say something, but the words died at his lips. He knew his master’s personality. Once he’d made up his mind, nothing you said would matter.

The moment the orb of light touched the stone wall.

Silent. Soundless.

Lin Yu’s right hand, along with that ball of deep blue light, slowly merged into the stone wall like a drop of ink falling into clear water.

Lin Yu’s right hand sank into the stone wall bit by bit, until even his wrist had disappeared into that mirror-smooth stone surface.

Then—

The stone wall lit up.

Tens of thousands of formation lines surged forth from within the stone wall, densely packed, layer upon layer, covering every inch of the entire wall’s surface. Some were extremely thick, winding like tree roots; some were extremely thin, entwining like strands of hair. They interlaced, converged, separated, and converged again, forming a gigantic pattern that Su Ming couldn’t comprehend.

The light was blinding.

Su Ming squinted instinctively.

Then, Lin Yu’s body swayed.

His soul body suddenly became transparent for a moment. Su Ming’s heart leaped, and he was about to shout, but Lin Yu’s soul body solidified again.

But Su Ming noticed—Lin Yu’s eyes were closed.

...

Lin Yu didn’t know how he had gotten here.

There was no feeling of traversing, no dizziness from being teleported, not even any transition. One moment his right hand was pressed against the stone wall, the next moment—he was standing here.

What kind of place was this?

Grayish-white.

Everything was grayish-white.

There was no sky. Looking up, what he saw overhead was a uniform, textureless expanse of grayish-white. Like an infinitely large ceiling, or like a layer of fog that had been flattened. Not high, not low. It just hung there, neither near nor far.

There was no ground. What he was standing on looked like stone slabs, but they were also grayish-white, blending into the same color as everything around. No cracks, no boundaries, no telling how far they extended.

The space was empty.

Empty to a point that made one uncomfortable. Not because of fear—Lin Yu had lived for over five hundred years; there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen.

Then he saw an old man.

Sitting in front of him, about ten paces away.

A grayish-white Daoist robe, almost the same hue as the surrounding environment. Hair and beard both white, so cleanly white they looked bleached. His face was gaunt, his cheekbones slightly prominent, the wrinkles on his cheeks extremely deep, carved into his skin one line at a time, like cracks in dry earth. His back was slightly hunched—not the stooped kind of hunch, but the natural curve of a spine from sitting too long and bowing one’s head too much.

The old man wasn’t looking at Lin Yu.

He was doing something.

In front of him was a stone table. The table wasn’t large, about a foot square, with a height that just reached the old man’s chest when he was sitting cross-legged. There was something placed on the stone table—it took Lin Yu a moment to recognize it—a formation plate.

A formation plate that was only half-finished.

The lines on the left half were already complete, precise and meticulous. Even from ten paces away, Lin Yu could tell that the flow of those lines was no ordinary handiwork. The right half was still blank, with only a few shallow marks at the edges, as if it had just been started.

The old man’s right hand held an engraving knife.

The knife wasn’t long, about four inches, its entire body grayish-white—grayish-white again—the blade narrow and thin, the tip extremely sharp. The old man’s fingers were bony, the knuckles prominent, his skin covered in calluses. That engraving knife was held between his index finger and thumb, in a posture so practiced that it was reassuring.

As if this engraving knife had never left his hand.

The old man was carving.

The tip of the knife pressed against the blank space on the right half of the formation plate, moving extremely, extremely slowly.

How slow?

Lin Yu stared for a long time before he could confirm that the tip was indeed moving—it was moving at a speed so slow it was almost imperceptible. If Lin Yu hadn’t been staring with the full soul power of a peak Ghost General, he would have thought it was just a still painting.

The tip of the knife traced across the formation plate’s surface, leaving behind an extremely shallow and fine mark. The flow of that mark was some kind of more complex curve. Lin Yu’s eyes locked onto that line, trying to use his own knowledge to determine which category of rune it belonged to.

He couldn’t tell.

Not because he couldn’t see it clearly. He could see it very clearly. Clearly enough to count every tiny fluctuation the knife tip made, every change in angle during each turn.

But he simply didn’t recognize it.

The flow of those lines didn’t belong to any rune system within his knowledge. Not among the three thousand six hundred basic runes, not among the variations of the ancient tree formation lines on the Ancient Path, not even among the three layers of structure beneath the stone path that he had studied for months.

It was completely unfamiliar.

Lin Yu suddenly realized something.

His consciousness had been pulled into a place where time flowed extremely slowly.