The Treasure Monastery Shall Rise! The back mountain.
A solitary meditation hut of withered wood lay hidden deep in the clouds and mist.
Its furnishings were sparse. There was only a wooden Buddha, blackened by incense smoke.
And an old monk with white hair and brows.
The old monk sat cross-legged on a cushion with his back to the door. He was thin as a stick, like a length of rotten wood about to burn out.
The three abbots who had once shaken Longyou's martial world stood to one side with their hands lowered, not daring to raise their heads.
Only the young monk remained at ease.
He walked slowly up to the wooden Buddha without bowing.
He merely pinched a little ash from the incense burner and rubbed it between his fingertips.
"Seas turn to mulberry fields, white clouds to gray dogs... Senior Brother, you've grown old."
The old monk did not take offense at the young monk's disrespect.
He struggled to lift his eyelids and searched the young monk's face.
From his brows and eyes to the bridge of his nose, then the slight lift of his lips.
As though trying to fit it over a face buried deep in his memory.
At last.
The old monk's shriveled lips trembled. "...Wangchi?"
At those words.
Wangfan and the other two jerked in shock.
Wangchi?!
How could that be?!
He had vanished without a trace sixty years ago!
Some said he had gone mad and fallen from a cliff, leaving not even his bones behind.
Others said he had betrayed his sect and died in a foreign land long ago.
Whatever the rumors said, if the man called Wangchi were still alive, he would have to be seventy or eighty at the very least!
How could he...
Be this rosy-lipped,