Lu Yin stared blankly at the thorn before him as it crept closer and closer.
Gray Crow was drawing closer too, its presence just beside his ear.
Lu Yin really hoped it wouldn't bite him. If it did, it would be dead for sure.
Still, down here beneath the earth, he rather hoped to have a living companion.
Another ten years passed.
Gray Crow still didn't dare bite down.
It had lingered beside Lu Yin for more than ten years, impulse and reason constantly fighting for control of its body.
Lu Yin had never imagined he would spend so long with a gray crow. He kept wondering what it would do next. The feeling was truly... fascinating.
After all those years of cultivation, he would eventually become food for a gray crow. Whether or not it dared to eat him, that was how things would end for him.
If that was true for him, then it could be true for a master as well.
Was that how it worked?
Cultivation was a circle.
So was the cycle of living beings.
There was no absolute distinction between higher and lower, because there would always come a moment when you stood on equal footing with every level of life.
That was truly...
As he pondered, the thorn before him suddenly lifted. A sliver of light pierced through, drawing Lu Yin's gaze.
He hadn't seen light in more than two hundred years. It wasn't all that long, but when you were constantly waiting to die, time stretched endlessly. Now, he found himself almost unaccustomed to the light.
"Long time no see, human."
Lu Yin looked toward the source of the light and listened to that familiar voice. Though he couldn't move, he still wanted to laugh. So you really were alive, Saint Rou.