Jiang Ding walked through the campus of Clearwind University.
Everywhere he looked were young students in their teens. The occasional older face belonged to a parent bringing a student to school. Another academic year was beginning.
Year after year, the cycle repeated.
The flames of war in the Horn Nether Domain seemed never to have touched this place. Citizens of the Immortal Sect grew up here, studied, lived, and went on to become powerful figures throughout the realm.
Students became powerful cultivators, then teachers, before their lives ended or they entered slumber.
That was the life of a powerful cultivator of the Immortal Sect.
Zhang Junsheng, True Lord Dinghai, and the others had lived it before them. Now Great Sun True Lord, Golden Bell True Lord, True Lord Siyan, and the others were doing the same, leaving students throughout the land as they entered the Slumber Secret Realm.
Before anyone knew it, a full cycle had passed.
"Hello, Dean Jiang..."
"Hello, Teacher Jiang..."
"Hello, teacher..."
The greetings drew Jiang Ding back from his distant memories. Students, teachers, and professors of Clearwind University all greeted the sixteen-year-old boy in azure walking among them.
That was what nearly a thousand years of teaching in the Adult Swordsmanship Department at Clearwind University amounted to.
Every student, teacher, professor, and staff member on campus was his junior. There was not a single person there he could address as a fellow Daoist. He had watched them all grow up from little children. With the slightest effort, he could recall how innocent each of those Golden Core, Foundation Establishment, and Nascent Soul cultivators had been when young.
This was why Sun Slayer Heavenly Lord had once feared Great Sun True Lord might harm the interests of the Immortal Sect's citizens.
A thousand years of teaching, a