"!!"
Hearing Daiyu's words and seeing her actions, the old man knew there was no way this would end peacefully. Terror seized him, nearly making his soul leap from his body.
At that moment, not only had Daiyu's words left his face alternating between red and white, but her actions had also driven him to stumble backward several more steps. He was nearly at the steps leading up to the main hall, with nowhere left to retreat.
To be honest, he wanted to fight back, to battle his way to a sliver of hope. But they had been outnumbered before, and their opponents had killed everyone but him. Now there were four of them, and only one of him. How could his aged body possibly stand against four vicious female demons?
"..."
Unwilling to simply bow his neck and await execution, he continued stumbling backward. His sinister eyes, sunken in their sockets, darted about, and he thought of a ploy. He hurriedly cried out in protest:
"Y-You must have been deceived by your master!"
"Young immortal!"
"Think about it. Even if your master has some ability, could she really understand the truth better than the powerful figures plotting in secret?"
"Even with your extraordinary talent and brilliance, under the Heavenly Court's suppression, you can forget about truly attaining the Dao and becoming an immortal in this lifetime!"
"In the end, you'll have no more than a hundred years. All your painstaking cultivation will come to nothing. D-Do you really accept that?!"
He made one last desperate attempt, using the immortality most sought after by cultivators to shake Lin Daiyu's faith in the Dao and help him escape with his life.
Although he was already over a hundred years old, he didn't want to die. And with the help of the