A blade of light drifted from Yu Ke's hand. It carried no air of slaughter, only remembrance, a sigh, and bewilderment.
Suddenly, boundless sorrow surged through Yu Ke's eyes like a tide, as though it would drown heaven and earth in a lonely dream that had lasted a thousand years.
People were like mayflies, struggling over Heavenly Mandate.
With finite lives, they pursued an infinite Dao Legacy.
Like white dew, and like a mayfly's fleeting dream!
A mayfly was light as dust.
White dew was born at dawn and gone by dusk, leaving no trace.
"A mayfly is light as dust and gone in an instant." Yu Ke chanted softly, "The reeds grow lush and green; white dew turns to frost—"
This was Zhou Jing's Dao.
"Ten years separated by life and death, both lost in the distance. If I ask my original heart, is it the first day or the fifteenth?"
He had once lost everything and been driven to the depths of isolation—his divine abilities, cultivation, friends and family, name, and nearly his very existence.
Though he had forgotten the past and lost all else, that one spark of devotion to the Dao had never gone out.
What made a person human? How should one spend a lifetime?
The confusion vanished from Yu Ke's eyes, leaving only fierce resolve. He said, each word distinct, "My heart is no stone. It cannot be turned!"
As his words fell, the blade's radiance surged to its peak.
A tyrannical sword intent that hated the heavens crashed into a blade intent that pressed toward the Dao without looking back, shaking the wilderness.
The two overwhelming forces tangled and collided, then vanished together into nothingness.
Inside the blood-colored pearl, the weathered man in a mask seemed utterly unprepared. That thread of blade intent