Last night, the Qing Qiu Fox Lord, traveling under the name Madam Xu, had arrived at this human world Zhu Lian had called half old and half new.
Mountain blossoms drifted silently from their branches. Bright moonlight and murmuring water carried the fallen flowers through the hills to the edges of fields, beneath stone bridges, and beside ancestral shrines.
Zhao Tianlai asked with a smile, "After ten thousand years, how does Fellow Daoist Qing Qiu feel about finding a Fox Kingdom safe and sound in a foreign land?"
"The heart I'd held in suspense has finally settled," said the Qing Qiu Fox Lord.
When she had seen the Fox Kingdom with her own eyes earlier, she had been beside herself with joy. Only her profound cultivation had let her conceal it; if Zhu Lian had not been traveling with her, she might have wept her heart out. This Dojo could hardly be called flourishing. There was not even an Earth Immortal, and its ruler, Pei Xiang, had only reached the Nascent Soul Bottleneck. But its Dao lineage had survived. That was enough, more than enough. In ancient times, the continuation of a Dojo's lineage, great or small, had always hung by a thread. That perilous state had been the norm.
"Just as Old Mr. Zhu said," the Qing Qiu Fox Lord remarked, "it truly is... joy and sorrow intertwined."
Besides, Luopo Mountain had not treated the Fox Kingdom like a shop, nor regarded the Fox Clan's descendants as goods with prices marked on them. Whether Chen Ping'an had acted out of regard for his Literary Vein or merely to win a good name and put on a show, she would remember the kindness.
If there were people she had to thank, there were also people against whom she held a