Five Aggregates Sect, summit of the Ninety-Nine Ringed Mountains.
Back mountain.
A gravestone stood here, still uninscribed. A coffin lay beside it, not yet buried.
The mountain breeze was tender, and flowers bloomed across the slopes.
This had once been the first place Frog Daoist and White Spirit had tended. It was beautiful, open, and quiet enough to suffocate.
Candles flickered beside the gravestone.
Nangong Hueling stood silently beside it, looking at the coffin whose lid had yet to be sealed, looking at the skeleton whose identity could no longer be told apart. In the blink of an eye, merciless years had divided countless people between yin and yang.
They had also completely embarked upon two different immortal paths, arriving at different endings.
Her face was expressionless as she quietly gazed at the skeleton in the coffin, as though gazing upon their past.
"With me here, at least you'll have someone to talk to!"
Before she knew it, an ethereal voice seemed to drift through the ages, floating quietly with the mountain wind. It brushed across He Ling's cheeks and passed by her ears.
The words had become prophecy. After all these years, she truly no longer had anyone with whom she could speak freely, chat casually.
Her eldest brother and the others bore the world upon their shoulders, laying plans that spanned the ages. They also had far too many juniors to look after. Powerful figures of all races watched every word and action of theirs from the shadows. The days when they could banter and speak freely were already far too distant.
He had also buried far too many stories in his heart. Now that she had grown up, she naturally could not disturb him as she had in childhood.
As for those around her, because of her