Wang Xian, blind in both eyes, vanished just like that before Ye Honglian's very eyes.
Like a snowflake in the cold wind, swept into the sky by a gust and blown off to some unknown place. Or like a pebble sinking into an abyssal pool, not even stirring a ripple before returning to eternal silence.
Ye Honglian sat there in a daze for the entire night.
She sat on that cold bluestone, letting the wind and snow turn her brows and hair white, letting the chill seep into her bones, her gaze fixed on the direction in which Wang Xian had disappeared.
She refused to believe that a blind man could get very far through this vast expanse of wind and snow.
She waited for him to reach a dead end, waited for him to stagger back, waited to see that familiar, helplessly bitter smile appear on his face.
The night passed, and the wind and snow gradually subsided.
The eastern sky paled with dawn, but that figure never appeared again.
Ye Honglian rose to her feet and stretched her stiff limbs, an expression on her face that was impossible to tell whether it was anger or disappointment.
She opened her mouth, wanting to call out something, but in the end, she merely exhaled a puff of white mist that scattered in the morning breeze.
Left with no other choice and unwilling to accept it, she could only leave resentfully, heading toward Sunset City.
After walking a long way, she could not help looking back once more—across the boundless snowfield, only her own footprints wound toward the distance, then wound away again.
This time, she was alone again.
A thousand miles away lay a place called Black Tortoise Town.
The town was not large and had been built against