Transmigrated into a Grandpa, Embracing the Laid-Back Life

The old man’s movements weren’t truly slow. It was the “time” in this space that was different from the outside. One breath outside might be a day here, or a year.

Lin Yu couldn’t determine which. The only thing he could confirm was that the temporal rules of this space belonged to the old man.

This was the old man’s world; Lin Yu was merely a guest.

Lin Yu stood still.

He didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t mobilize his soul power to probe his surroundings. Recklessly using power in a place like this was something every survival instinct accumulated over his five hundred years of life desperately urged him not to do.

He simply watched.

He watched the old man inscribe a formation plate.

The distance the blade tip moved was probably no longer than a grain of rice.

Yet, for that single grain of rice’s distance, the old man spent an unknowable amount of time. In this gray-white space, devoid of the cycle of day and night and any point of reference, time was a meaningless concept.

But Lin Yu could feel it—a long, long time.So long that his thoughts gradually settled from their initial vigilance into a quietness that bordered on meditation. It wasn’t the kind of calm you force upon yourself; it was a quietness soaked through by the very atmosphere of this space.

No one knew how long it took.

Perhaps one breath. Perhaps one day.

The old man’s hand stopped.

The engraving knife lifted from the formation plate, its movement agonizingly slow. So slow that Lin Yu could make out every angle of the blade leaving the stone—first the tip tilting slightly upward, then the blade body following at an angle, until finally, the entire knife detached from the plate’s surface, turning slightly between the old man’s fingers.

Then—the old man put the knife down.

He placed it on the edge of the stone table.

The process of the knife slipping from his fingers was drawn out by the space’s time. Lin Yu saw the moment the knife left his thumb pad, the shallow groove worn into his fingerprint over long years; he saw it slide across his index finger, the calluses on the knuckle glinting faintly; he saw it touch the stone table’s edge, making an incredibly light *clink*—a sound that might be utterly inaudible outside, but in this space of ultimate silence, it was like a pebble dropped into an empty valley.

*Tap.*

Then the old man lifted his head.

His movement was still slow. His neck straightened gradually, his chin rising bit by bit. Lin Yu finally saw his full face.

He wasn’t transcendent with an immortal aura.

Nor was he majestic and compassionate.

He was just… old.

Very, very old. So old that even his wrinkles had lost their edges, becoming a layer of loose, grayish skin draped over his bones. His eye sockets were deeply sunken, his eyebrows so sparse that only a few strands remained. His lips were chapped, their corners drooping slightly.

But his eyes were bright.

Not the sharpness of a cultivator’s concealed spiritual light, nor the cunning gleam of a master schemer, but something simpler—like an oil lamp whose wick had burned extremely short. The light was weak, small, but it was still burning.

The old man’s gaze pierced the gray-white void and landed on Lin Yu.

He looked at him in silence.

The old man’s lips didn’t move.

But Lin Yu “heard” it.

It wasn’t sound. It wasn’t divine sense transmission. It wasn’t any method of communication he knew.

It was a thought.

An idea, directly appearing in his consciousness. Like a stone silently dropping into water, ripples spreading from the center, each ring crystal clear.

“You have come.”

Three words.

Just a calm statement.

Like someone who had waited a long, long time, and had finally been found.

Lin Yu stood still.

His soul body was far more condensed here than outside—he could feel it himself. In this space, his soul body had become more stable. It wasn’t due to any external power being added, but because the environment here… was very suitable for a soul body to exist. Like a container tailor-made for a soul.

“I… have intruded.”

Lin Yu spoke. His voice had no echo in this space; it simply vanished upon leaving his lips, as if absorbed by the gray-white void.

The old man didn’t answer his words.

The old man just looked at him. With those eyes that had already clouded over, he gazed at him in quiet stillness.

Then, the old man raised his right hand.

He extended his index finger.

The withered finger lifted slowly, pointing at Lin Yu.

The movement was agonizingly slow.

Exactly the same slowness as when he had been inscribing the formation plate. Every inch of movement was stretched out by the time rules of this space.

But Lin Yu knew, it wasn’t slow.

It was fast.

So fast that he couldn’t dodge it at all.

Because in this space, “time” belonged to the old man. The old man decided how fast it went, and the old man decided how slow it went. The “slowness” Lin Yu saw was only what the old man allowed him to see. If the old man so wished, that finger could have pressed against Lin Yu’s brow before he even had time to react.

Lin Yu didn’t dodge.

He couldn’t dodge anyway.

He just stood there, watching the finger point at him, inch by inch.

The old man’s fingertip lit up.

A particle of light floated out from the fingertip.

It traversed the ten steps of gray-white void between them, drifting slowly towards Lin Yu.

Lin Yu watched it.

That particle of light floated before him.

Then—

The light particle sank into his brow.

Lin Yu’s consciousness began to tremble.

He “saw” it.

He didn’t see some cultivation technique. He didn’t see some formation diagram. He didn’t see anything that could be recorded with words or symbols.

What he saw was—understanding.

The old man’s understanding of the path of formations.

Not knowledge. Not method. It was that deeper layer, that foundation beneath all knowledge and methods, the thing that supported everything.

Like a tree.

The ancient tree formation lines he had seen before, the patterns on the stone path, the Spirit Gathering Array at the lakebed, the methods of Void Formation—those were the branches and leaves. He had been looking at branches and leaves all along. Looking closely, looking a lot, and indeed deducing many things from them.

But now he saw the roots.

The roots of the path of formations.

Not any specific rune, not any specific structure. It was a feeling—when you face the operating principles of heaven, earth, and all things, how you should “listen” to them, how you should “flow” with them, and how to find that node where a gentle nudge can be applied within the process of flowing.

This feeling could not be taught.

It could only be soaked in.

Like rain soaking into soil. You can’t force the rain into the dirt with your hands; you can only wait for it to seep in on its own.

Lin Yu stood in the gray-white void, his entire soul body trembling slightly.

He didn’t know how long he had been in this state.

When the particle of light finally merged completely into his soul body—the vision dissipated.

The gray-white void shattered.

Like a mirror cracking from the center, fissures spreading to the edges, then the entire mirror disintegrating into countless fragments that fluttered down, each shard reflecting a small piece of the old man—the engraving knife, his fingers, the wrinkles, those still-bright eyes.

The fragments fell away.

The void vanished.

Lin Yu’s consciousness, like a stone that had sunk into the deep sea, was abruptly shot back out.