At last, ripples stirred in the depths of Lu Qing's eyes.
This thread of Destiny was ordinary, yet not ordinary. Only when he saw the final moment of the man's true death—the exceedingly complicated expression upon his face—did Lu Qing confirm the thought that had surfaced in his mind earlier.
Lu Qing was not the cultivator himself, so naturally he had no way of fully knowing what the man had thought when his lifespan ran out, when he secluded himself within his Cultivation Cave and felt life fading away, the Great Dao turning void.
But You Zhengyang had tempered himself for so many years within that Destiny, serving as an elder cultivator for so many years.
His state of mind had been honed to the point where wind and frost could not stain it.
Yet when his death Tribulation arrived, that complexity revealed upon his face had welled up naturally, beyond the control of his Dao Heart. Lu Qing had no need to understand what the man had been thinking.
So long as he saw that expression, he could likewise feel that complexity.
For no other reason than that there had been both shock and sorrow in the man's expression.
And a trace of sudden enlightenment.
That realization was likely not the calm acceptance of sitting still and awaiting death once one's life had reached its end.
It was more like the sudden understanding that came after learning certain things.
Because Lu Qing had experienced a similar state of mind.
From first sensing that familiar, soaring Karmic Affinity, to seeing those figures perish and realizing that their destruction was unlike the deaths of other cultivators.
After seeing through it, he discovered it was the backlash brought by the passage of time.
It was the price of cultivation incurred by forcibly