After the Yang Fire Ancient Altar, the wind in the Ye Family's rear mountain seemed finally to have gained warmth.
Ye Zhong stood outside the ancient altar, gazing at the slowly flowing golden-red firelight deep within the mountain's belly, and said nothing for a long time.
In his life, the old man had seen the Ye Family at its most glorious, and he had also watched it decline bit by bit. When he was young, he had once thought the Ye Family would always stand among Danta's Five Great Families, that their ancestral fire would never go out and their household's honor would never fall. But later, they lost assessment after assessment, one descendant after another sank into obscurity, and the Ye Family's lamp seemed to be battered by the wind until only he remained, using his old bones to guard it with all his might.
Until today.
That old lamp had finally brightened a little again.
Ye Xinlan stood beside him, her eyes still a little red.
She was not someone who loved to cry.
Over the years, she had grown used to swallowing her grievances, hiding the humiliation of asking others for help, and treating the Cao Family's mockery as nothing more than wind passing her ears. But today, watching the Yang Fire Ancient Altar light up once more, watching her grandfather's trembling hands as he gripped the Ancestor Key, she suddenly realized that perhaps she was not as strong as she had imagined.
She had simply had nowhere she could be weak.
"Grandfather," Ye Xinlan said softly, "does the Ye Family really still have a chance?"
Ye Zhong did not answer at once.
He looked toward Xiao Fan not far away.
Xiao Fan was standing by the mountain path, saying something to Xiao Yi Xian.
After being