The lingering echoes of "a way to hold on until tomorrow" had yet to fade.
Yet the river wind through the Ink Wash Mountains suddenly turned frigid in that same instant, as if harsh winter had descended.
The river waves churned.
Deep within the mist, a shadow slowly rose.
First came a strand of disheveled white hair, wetly scattered across the river tide like a tuft of lingering snow in the wind. Then came half of a hunched back, staggering out of the darkness—
He leaned against the river water to support himself, his steps like withered branches on the verge of snapping.
At last, an old man drenched in the rust stains of old blood stood atop the surging waves.
His Daoist robe was tattered, still bearing the patterns and stitching of that era. Time had torn the entire garment into something like a ragged banner dragged back from an ancient battlefield.
The cloth was stiff, cracked, and stained with blood marks too ancient, too old, too dark—
The blood had seeped so deeply into the robe that even the river could not wash it away.
His white hair was a tangled mass of wild grass, every strand jutting out in all directions, as though he had long lost the heart to tidy it after countless bloody battles.
He was barefoot, broken chains wrapped around his ankles.
Every trace left by those iron chains looked as though it had been hammered by heavenly lightning tens of thousands of times.
Stranger still, his eyes were so clouded that he seemed liable to forget who he was at any moment. He muttered to himself like a madman:
"How dare the likes of you call yourselves immortals?!"
"The immortals of all races have fallen, the history of heaven has sunk into ruin,