"Give and take—only by giving something up can you gain something." Li Zhōujūn smiled.
Huangfu Yixin smiled sweetly. "Fellow Daoist Li is right."
After chatting for a while, Huangfu Yixin took her leave.
Just after Huangfu Yixin departed, an old man with a stooped, aged figure slowly walked over and sat down beside Li Zhōujūn.
"Young friend, this old man has a question. May I ask you for your advice?"
The old man turned to Li Zhōujūn with a smile.
"I dare not call it advice. Perhaps I can offer my opinion." Li Zhōujūn smiled.
The old man smiled. "If a flower blooms brilliantly, is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Of course it's a good thing!" Little Cai, who was sitting nearby, could not help saying.
The old man looked at Little Cai with a beaming smile. "Then why does this old man feel that it's a bad thing?"
"What's bad about it?" Little Cai asked, puzzled.
The old man said nothing. Instead, he looked toward Li Zhōujūn, as though waiting for his answer.
Li Zhōujūn merely smiled. "Since you already have your own answer, why ask Li Mou?"
The old man nodded. "If a flower blooms too brilliantly, it easily attracts attention. Its eventual fate is to have its stem snapped and become someone's plaything."
With that, the old man smiled at Li Zhōujūn. "The Azure Emperor is just like this flower—far too conspicuous. I am Qi Jianxi, and I came today to pluck it."
The instant Qi Jianxi finished speaking,
Qi Jianxi merely waved his hand, and the surroundings around them began spinning continuously until they became afterimages.
When the scene came to a stop,
the two of them appeared in a boundless white world. Each sat on a stone, with an endless expanse of