When Lu Xiaoying and Gong Qing disappeared through the doorway, the heavy wooden door was gently closed.
Only three people remained in the antique, elegant study.
For a time, the room fell into true silence, broken only by the faint chirping of birds outside the window.
Huang Tangshi personally picked up the teapot and poured Lu Xuan a cup of clear tea. Wisps of steam curled upward between them.
Elder Huang looked at Lu Xuan, the solemn bearing he had displayed before everyone else now gone.
What remained in his eyes was the pure emotion of old friends reunited, along with deep, inescapable envy.
"Brother Xuan," he spoke again, his voice more relaxed and sincere than before, "now that there are no outsiders around."
"Your vigor... I truly envy it. Looking at you, it feels as though those days when we stood shoulder to shoulder on the snowfields were only yesterday."
To say he was not envious would have been deceiving himself.
Elder Huang clearly remembered that, in terms of actual age, Brother Xuan was already ninety years old—nearly ten years older than himself.
But now?
He himself could barely walk and needed support, while Brother Xuan remained as vigorous as a dragon and fierce as a tiger, his Qi and Blood brimming.
He had watched the video footage sent over a few days ago—this ninety-year-old Brother Xuan had walked atop the several-hundred-meter-high Yingnan Tower as though on level ground. The strength and agility he displayed with every gesture had simply surpassed the bounds of humanity!
How was this an aged old man? He was clearly a Land Immortal from myth and legend!
Elder Huang looked at Lu Xuan, his voice filled with complicated emotions—reflection, and a trace of loneliness that was difficult to detect.
"Brother Xuan, this body of