He recognized the portrait. It was the work of the founder of the Glazed Sword Sect, a self-portrait the man had painted with his own hand. It hung in the highest place in the Sword Pavilion and had been passed down through the generations as the sect's most important token of inheritance.
And now, the man in the portrait stood before him.
It wasn't just Great Emperor Black Flame. Among the crowd by Heavenly Lake below, the elders and disciples had frozen too.
They looked up at the figure in the sky, identical to the founder's portrait. Their eyes held shock, disbelief, and a trace of reverence, as though they were pilgrims gazing upon a sacred site.
Great Emperor Black Flame stared at the Glazed Immortal King and asked, his voice trembling with emotion, "Are you the Glazed Ancestor?"
The Glazed Immortal King nodded gently.
"Senior Glazed, this is my Uncle-Master Black Flame..."
Fang Chen told the Glazed Immortal King who Great Emperor Black Flame was.
"Good, good!"
The Glazed Immortal King nodded gently, then raised his head to look at the people around him.
"Heavens! It's the Glazed Ancestor! The Glazed Ancestor has returned!"
"My heavens, am I dreaming? The Glazed Ancestor has actually come back?"
Everyone around them was stunned by the sight.
The founder of the Glazed Sword Sect had been a peerless genius. Before Fang Chen came to the sect, he had been the most renowned figure of the Human Race in the Southern Wastes, hailed by all as the man most likely to become a Great Emperor.
Yet at the height of his power, he had vanished as though overnight. He left behind only the damaged Glazed Sword and Glazed Mirror, and Glazed Peak, once the strongest of the sect's peaks, had fallen into decline.