Students of the Literary Sage Lineage

The old Taoist priest squatting by the roadside had just finished half a watermelon. It was barely ripe and tasted ordinary. He was about to pick up the other half when those two names made him shudder. He bent, reached out, and scooped it up, the back of his hand brushing the ground and his palm supporting the melon like an Immortal's hand supporting a mountain. How was that not the bearing of an Immortal? Stroking his beard, he smiled. The melon might be neither ripe nor sweet, but his Daoist arts and spells were still passable. He had not grown rusty in the slightest.

Those two names, however, had little to do with Young Daoist Chen, whom he had taken to at their first meeting and now counted as a close friend. They were Ascension City and Ning Yao.

The old Taoist priest had seen plenty of Sword Immortals.

But the undisputed foremost person of an entire continent carried far more weight than the half-watermelon in the Green Ox Taoist's hands.

Where did Old Brother Sun of the Great Xuan Du Temple rank in the Azure Sky World? Fifth, perhaps?

And Talisman Yu Xuan, that younger brother Yu of his, with both sleeves stuffed full of talismans—where did he rank in Vast Heaven and Earth? Did anyone even have a definite answer yet? Whatever the number, he was quite far down the list.

If Ning Yao had only been Ning Yao of the Sword Qi Great Wall, that would have been one thing. Talk of a promising future on the Great Dao was, after all, talk of a future fraught with accidents. But Ning Yao was already in Ascension City, already in the Ascension Realm. That was a reality right before their eyes.

Since she had reached the Ascension