Countless semi-transparent strands of Sword Qi roamed the sky.
Jiang Wang, his hair bound beneath a jade crown, and Lu Shuanghe, white hair spilling over his shoulders, faced each other across this Jambu Sword Prison.
As the Sword Qi drifted past, it seemed like that afternoon so many years ago.
At the bottom of a small river, he had struggled helplessly, and there before him were those eyes... How cold and tranquil those eyes had been!
Back then, through the rippling water, he had watched those eyes shift away. Then came a frost-white flash of sword light, startling up like lightning, cleaving through the heavens and vanishing into the distance.
It was a scene he often recalled, one that had planted an extraordinary seed in his heart.
After all these years, Lu Shuanghe had not changed in the slightest.
But Jiang Wang, now standing within the Jambu Sword Prison with Sword Qi coiling around him, was no longer that child from back then.
He would not be helpless. He would not be afraid. He simply hung in the air, one hand resting on his sword hilt.
This renowned sword of the realm, named Longing, had accompanied him through campaigns north and south, and now accompanied him as he faced his childhood.
The person he had once only been able to look up to, gaze at from afar, and remember—was now before his eyes, no longer distant.
"True Person Lu," Jiang Wang said in a measured voice. "Why have you blocked my path?"
There was still some distance between Lu Shuanghe and the Jambu Sword Prison. He stopped walking, but his gaze pierced into this domain like sword light, meeting Jiang Wang's red-gold eyes.
"I've waited for you a long time," he said.
Jiang Wang merely smiled. "I only said a