Eighteen years had passed in the present age; for the time when the Patriarch had been at the beginning of heaven and earth, three hundred and sixty years had gone by.
More often than not, when people had nothing to strive for, nothing to persist in, they grew slack and listless. Long years instead became a kind of torment. Yet crueler still was the loss of meaning in life—this human world had become an eighteen-layer hell.
Today, Li Xiang sat in a small courtyard formed with simple spells. Flowers and grass, brush, ink, paper, inkstone, spirit tea, and spirit fruits—the arrangements outside the residence looked remarkably like Zhien Village when the family had first begun to flourish.
He sat there blankly for quite some time before finally taking out, one by one, the letters delivered through the incense burner from his Storage Ring.
At the other end of the river of time, many things had happened.
When Li Xiang saw how his children had narrowly escaped death, his heart leapt into his throat. When he saw that the clansmen had obtained the Bronze Gate and the Innate Void Origin, he was filled with doubt, because he had never done such a thing. He attributed it to his "future" self.
Later, when he heard that the family had weathered the crisis and that Great Dragon had broken through to the Mahayana Realm, he felt joy and relief, yet an inescapable sense of loss lingered in his heart.
The children no longer needed him. They had always been the pillars of the family, and now each of them could stand on their own. The children had done well; they no longer needed his guidance.
This old man had fallen out of step with the times. Even less could he interfere in Azure