Chapter 127

Morning sunlight leaked through gaps in the canopy, scattering broken gold across the ground in front of the Dormitory Building.

Mu En lay on the lounge chair, his gray-white cloth robes warmed by the sun, eyes half narrowed, looking as if he were asleep and as if he were lost in a daze.

He was like this every day. From Xue Lingyun's first day of enrollment until now, more than three hundred days had passed, and he had never changed.

Xue Lingyun crouched down beside Mu En and reached out to press his shoulders. It was a habit he had developed over the past year. There was no need for pleasantries—he crouched, then kneaded. The old man's shoulders were as hard as stone, eroded year-round by the White Dragon's hostile energy, his muscles twisted together so tightly that an ordinary person's strength could never move them. But Xue Lingyun's fingertips carried an extremely faint chill, seeping into the muscle fibers with perfect precision, kneading apart those rope-twisted strands layer by layer.

Mu En sighed comfortably, a vague hum sounding in his throat.

Halfway through the massage, Xue Lingyun did not stop moving his hands and casually started chatting with Mu En about cultivation. Over the past year, every time he gave the old man a massage, he would seize the chance to exchange a few words with him. Mu En spoke little, but the occasional sentence or two he tossed out was always enough to leave Xue Lingyun pondering for a long time afterward. Today, Xue Lingyun took the initiative to mention the move he had created in the Far North and told Mu En its name.

"Imperial Zen Shock," he said.

Mu En did not even lift his eyelids. He slowly repeated it under his breath. "Imperial... Zen Shock."