Within the Sword Sect's inner sect, amid peaks wreathed in cloud and mist.
On the stone steps rising straight up from the mountainside, two figures walked side by side toward the Sword Ancestor Hall atop the mountain.
They were none other than Xu Xing and Bie Xuening.
"Why did Senior Sister feel like coming out for a walk today?"
Usually, he was the one who went to the Sword Venerable Hall to find Senior Sister.
Bie Xuening was not someone who liked to move around much. When she had nothing to do, she mostly stayed in the Sword Venerable Hall, much like Ning Ruo usually preferred to remain in her laboratory.
Perhaps it was precisely because they shared this same "trait" that she and Ning Ruo had gotten along so well over the years, even building the Ascension Platform together.
"I suddenly wanted to take a walk, so I came out."
Put simply: Because I felt like it. There was no other reason.
"How are things beyond the world?" Bie Xuening asked casually.
Earlier, her junior brother had redeployed the Sword Intent Spirit Body and sorted through the situation beyond the world, yet the third ascender had still not appeared.
"There are a few who fit the requirements, but they still need to be examined."
The realms they had explored so far were only the nearby ones. Talents like Li Ming—those with both exceptional aptitude and character, whose cultivation had already reached perfected Void Return—were not so easily found.
There were, however, a few people like Chen Yan.
If this had been before, perhaps they might have allowed them to "ascend."
But now, that would not do.
While he had been in seclusion refining Heavenly Will these past years, Xuan had been laying out plans across the chaotic Boundless Realm.