Between Heaven and Earth, the Past Recedes; On Yin Yang Mountain, Old Friends Arrive

They were the mountain rains and Fog Ghost along Jinyang Road; the stone carvings and dusk atop Hand Crawl Rock; Yidu City as he had first seen it; the songs and dancing shadows in the little courtyard; the upright constable across the way; and the Prefect in the Tile House, pretending to run into him by chance as he asked about immortality.

Who could have imagined then that the constable would follow Zhou Leigong's old path, while the Prefect would become both a worthy chancellor of his generation and a lord of the underworld?

In Liujiang, Xuzhou, a small boat drifted through a thousand-li stretch of painted scenery over several days.

Lingbo delivered the letter. For the first time, the similarly trustworthy woman of the martial world clasped her hands to him in greeting:

"Those of us in the martial world introduce ourselves before all else. My surname is Wu, and I took the two-character name Suowei. I am a disciple of Yizhou's Xishan Sect. How should I address you, sir?"

Looking back now, Anqing beneath the misty rain was still one of the world's most breathtaking sights. The Liujiang Grand Gathering had fully deserved its name as a grand martial occasion. Those martial artists, seeming to dance as they fought, still stood before his eyes, as did his encounters with Old Swallow Immortal and Little Swallow Immortal, vivid as yesterday.

He had happened upon an unmatched swordsman in a charity graveyard and visited an innate mountain god deep in the mountains. Looking back, though, what had left the deepest impression was still the ginger-park flowers covering the hills.

He lingered through Southern Painting's night rain, then sought immortality through enlightenment atop the clouds.

He first met Zhou Leigong by Mirror Island Lake. At the time, Zhou Leigong had not