The Taste of Turning One's Back on All Living Beings? The Dao Ancestor's Unease: What Exactly Was He Doing?

Dusk spread slowly over the East Sea, as though someone were laying out layers of dark blue gauze across the horizon.

The sea breeze blew in from the east, carrying salty moisture as it swept over the beach in waves, lifting the fine sand slightly before letting it settle back down.

Qingyuan sat in a bamboo chair, his back lightly resting against it, the teacup in his hand sitting on his knee. The tea had already gone cold, and an extremely thin film floated on its surface.

He raised his eyes toward the sea.

In the distance, sea and sky met as low-hanging clouds drifted overhead. Sunlight leaked through gaps in the clouds, shattering into golden scales that covered the sea.

The ocean stretched so far its end could not be seen, leaving only that dark golden line moving slowly onward.

Seabirds stood on distant reefs, crying out now and then. Their calls were stretched long by the wind and scattered halfway through their journey.

He looked like a recluse stealing a moment of leisure.

The wind lifted and dropped the hem of his robe, but the tea on his knee had gone cold, been refilled, and gone cold again, as though he had been waiting for a very, very long time.

He spread open his other hand.

Resting in his palm was a broken section of an axe handle.

It was pitch-black throughout, its surface covered in mottled dark-red patterns, as though the blood of countless eras had been pressed layer upon layer into the grain of the wood, drying, seeping back out, and finally becoming those gleaming lines.

Only a tiny piece of the tip remained, yet it was astonishingly heavy.

That heaviness was not one of weight, but an oppressive force seeping out from the depths of