On a dark and windy night, Li Changshou quietly returned to Lesser Qiong Peak. He wandered about and looked around, and only after finding everything as it should be did he return to the pill chamber at ease.
Though the Taiji Diagram protecting him had now doubled in power, Li Changshou's true body had still spent half the night hiding and evading, leaving behind enough misleading clues before using an escape art to return to the sect...
The first thing he did upon returning was check on Ling'e.
Clearly, he had done nothing, yet he somehow felt a subtle sense of guilt...
Even though the one before him was merely a steam player who loved dragons as Lord Ye did.
After returning to the underground chamber, Li Changshou picked up his brush and painted a portrait—the instant Fairy Yunxiao looked back beneath the peach blossom tree.
He hung the portrait beside his desk, and...
Hung two rows of large characters meaning "steady" beside it.
After thinking for a moment, Li Changshou picked up his brush again and painted Ling'e barefoot by the lakeside, catching fish.
Willows swayed softly. In the painting, the young girl had rolled up her sleeves and bent over to stare intently at the spirit fish swimming beneath the lake's surface. Her expression was exceptionally serious, a few drops of water still on her cheeks, her long hair falling at her side...
That had been when she was seventeen. To train her reactions, Li Changshou had sealed her cultivation and made her catch spirit fish from the lake barehanded one hundred times.
It had also been the first time Li Changshou realized that the junior sister he saw every day had already blossomed into a graceful young woman.
However...
Li Changshou looked at the two portraits and