The elderly man in Daoist robes was Ma Daoliang, the current sect master of the Taihua Sect.
He was now seven hundred years old, two sixty-year cycles older than Chen Xuanzi.
In his early years of cultivation, Ma Daoliang had been unremarkable. It had taken him a full three hundred years to overcome the First Nine Heavenly Tribulation.
At that pace, he had lagged far behind the prodigies of the Outer Dao, nowhere near Chen Xuanzi, who had overcome his tribulation within a single sixty-year cycle.
Yet he was the one who had ultimately taken charge of the Taihua Sect and become one of the nine leaders of the Unorthodox Nine Schools.
The previous sect master had once explained why: "Calmness Within, a Late Bloomer. The Taihua Sect's fortunes for the next thousand years can be entrusted to him."
But that sect master likely had not expected that, eight hundred years later, the Taihua Sect would have fallen to the bottom of the Unorthodox Nine Schools.
For centuries, the present master of the Taihua Sect had lived in seclusion and kept a tight rein on himself, scarcely concerning himself with the sect's mundane affairs.
He had left everything to his Dao companion, True Person He Ming. Over time, hearts throughout the sect had grown restless.
He Ming was also in the Founders' Hall at that moment, a lovely woman.
She and Ma Daoliang were both great cultivators who had overcome the Second Nine Heavenly Tribulation.
Apart from the Supreme One elder who lived in seclusion and Chen Xuanzi, who had been forced to wander abroad, the two of them possessed the highest cultivation in the Taihua Sect.
He Ming looked at the old Daoist, surprise and doubt flickering in her eyes. "Senior Brother, your injury... has it healed?"
Ma Daoliang's