Wei Lingyue looked at the familiar yet unfamiliar daughter seated in the seat of honor, his heart filled with complicated feelings.
His daughter had returned to the family after forming her Nascent Soul, yet he, her father, had been the last to learn of it. Had Du Ruolan not wept and pleaded outside his secluded cultivation chamber, he would not even have known that his daughter was currently within the residence.
Faced with Yunxi's question, he merely sighed and said:
"Your father has been in seclusion all this time. I only learned today that you had returned to the clan, so I came out of seclusion."
Yunxi merely nodded after hearing this and said nothing.
After being driven out of the council hall, Du Ruolan had returned to her own courtyard and knocked upon the formation around Wei Lingyue's secluded cultivation chamber. Through tears, she told him of what had happened, hoping he would inquire about her daughter Yunqing's whereabouts.
Yunxi looked at the man who no longer possessed his former high spirits, a flicker passing through her eyes. Although the Dharma robe on him remained crisp, his cultivation had stayed at Foundation Establishment Late Stage all these years, and he had never been able to form a core. This had become a knot in his heart—the more anxious he became, the more impossible it was for him to break through the bottleneck.
Although Wei Lingyue had supposedly been in seclusion all these years, Yunxi had not seen the slightest result from it. Instead, she saw several more strands of white hair at his temples.
A brief silence fell over the council hall. Yunxi did not wish to speak, while Wei Lingyue did not know where to begin. The pressure radiating from his daughter made him feel as though he