"This must be the Teaching Hall, then?"
Looking at the towering hall before him, Ye Lin thought to himself.
As Ye Lin stood before the Teaching Hall, he had the illusion—
that the great hall was watching him.
This was no metaphor.
It was the unmistakable sensation of being observed, as though a pair of ancient eyes had opened from every inch of brick and stone in the hall, scrutinizing him from top to bottom, from left to right.
There was no hostility in that gaze, yet it carried a heavy weight, as though the mere fact that he stood here at this moment bore some significance stretching across the long river of time.
Ye Lin lowered his head and looked ahead.
The entire hall was pitch-black, so black that even sunlight falling upon its walls would be swallowed whole, without leaving the slightest reflection.
That blackness was neither paint nor the natural color of the stone. It was a deep undertone formed after being steeped again and again in the aura of countless generations of sword cultivators, layer upon layer of aged patina, like sediment accumulated at the bottom of an ink pool over untold ages.
The hall stood square and upright, its three-tiered eaves drawing inward level by level. The corners of the eaves jutted out extraordinarily far, like four enormous swords extending horizontally, all pointing toward the four directions.
At the tip of every eave hung a tiny bronze bell. The bells had no clappers, yet when the wind passed through, they gave off an exceptionally clear hum.
It was the sound naturally stirred by the airflow passing through the Sword Intent lingering within the bells.
Ye Lin took several steps closer, and the patterns on the hall walls gradually became clear.
Those patterns were vague human