Secret Matters and Surprise Attacks

"Changtian, what did you see?"

"Father, your cultivation is constantly rising."

"..."

Rain pattered against the window lattice, and the wind stirred the incense.

Xu Yinhe sat upright, his expression calm. His deep, even voice carried no ripples of emotion:

"Wrong."

Xu Yuan hesitated slightly, staring intently at the middle-aged man before him.

"What does that mean?"

"It is no easy feat to observe the changes in your father's cultivation."

Xu Yinhe smiled faintly and suddenly sealed away his cultivation.

At the same moment, Xu Yuan's Spirit Sight instantly sank into darkness. Just as he was taken aback, he heard his father slowly utter:

"But your father's cultivation is not rising. It is recovering."

"..." Xu Yuan's eyelid twitched.

Xu Yinhe raised his cup and drained the wine before him, a trace of recollection in his eyes.

"When your father traveled the world alone, I once met that woman surnamed Wen at Heaven Gate Mountain. When I climbed to the summit of Hanging Heaven Cliff, I found her standing beneath that birch tree, gazing at the Heaven Gate on the main peak.

"She said she had come to commemorate an old friend, and that if I found her presence disruptive, she could leave at once.

"That was the first time your father had faced a Sage, yet that Sage spoke with me as though we were equals."

"..."

Xu Yuan fell silent.

If the woman surnamed Wen had spoken truthfully, then the instant she saw Xu Yinhe again, she might already have determined that the Xu Yinhe who had not yet even become a youth could become one who walked the same path as her.

That was why she had conversed with him as an equal.

But according to the timeline Xu Yuan knew, his old man had entered the