And ahead, at the very end.
There lay a vast, surging Yangtze River. An old bamboo raft had been left there, as though pointing out the road by which he had come.
He slowly turned back.
Reeds stretched endlessly, and snowy winds buried loyal bones.
Still, no one came to see him off.
Yet it also seemed as though the countless loyal bones of all heavens were seeing him off. He had cultivated here and left from here. The future was filled with unknowns, and he did not know what posture, what identity, would truly make him worthy of setting foot once more upon this land where he had cultivated in his youth.
Splash!
Wang Qicang lightly flicked his robe, slowly bent down, and with a bang!, kowtowed heavily. This was the grand rite of the Immortal Dao, offered only to the sages and venerable elders of the past, never to the powerful of all heavens.
In the distance.
At a mountain pass stood a broken flight of stone steps.
Elder Ye stood quietly there, draped in a suit of old armor so ruined it had long lost its shape.
The snowy wind tossed his white hair into disarray, like the last banner on a battlefield that had yet to fall.
He gazed from afar at that lad who had cultivated in the Ye Clan Ancestral Land for thirty thousand years. He said nothing, but at this moment, frost flowers entered his eyes, blurring them slightly. Yet it seemed he was not looking at Wang Qicang—
But at the final generation of Ye Clan disciples from ancient years.
After finding success in the Dao, they had crossed the river and left these mountains one after another. Some looked back; some rushed onward without turning their heads; some left behind their