Orchid Pond Garden, Phoenix Palace.
Li Xiangge had been back from the banquet for some time.
Yet her thoughts still remained in Clear Wind Hall, and she could not pull herself free.
She could neither rest nor focus on cultivation.
So she went to the terrace behind Phoenix Palace and silently stared blankly at the lake.
"Drip!"
A round teardrop fell into Orchid Pond Lake.
"Drip!"
Another drop.
It was not raining.
Li Xiangge realized that they were her own tears.
Even she did not know why she had suddenly begun to cry. Her heart was filled with an indescribably complicated feeling, one that made her chest clench with stabbing pain.
That pain seemed to possess some kind of magic. Like a string of pearls with its thread snapped, her tears fell drop after drop, sliding down her slightly round cheeks and into the lake.
By the lake at night, the young woman wept soundlessly.
Across Orchid Pond Lake, Xu Nian emerged from the lakeside pavilion opposite, her Dao sword in her arms.
Her gaze was as calm as usual, but beneath the cover of night, one could faintly glimpse the grief she was suppressing.
"Senior Ye, where exactly are you now..." she sighed softly.
Then she spotted Li Xiangge sitting by the lake on the opposite shore.
With her eyesight, she could naturally see clearly that Li Xiangge was crying.
The sight of the weeping woman resonated with the sorrow Xu Nian had always hidden in the depths of her heart, unwilling to reveal.
Knowing what the other woman had gone through made Xu Nian feel even more like they were two sufferers sharing the same illness.
Her figure rose into the air and drifted lightly across the night sky, arriving before Li Xiangge.
"What is wrong? Do you