Shen Yuxi suddenly came back to his senses.
He stood rooted to the spot, utterly motionless, as though he had been struck by lightning.
Sunlight fell over him, making that clear, otherworldly face appear ever more immaculate. The habitual detachment between his brows and eyes seemed to have been shattered by something, leaving behind only blank emptiness. His usually indifferent eyes lowered slightly, his lashes casting a small shadow over his eyelids and concealing the surging emotions in their depths.
His heart skipped a beat.
Then it began to pound wildly.
The instant that inner voice exploded, Zhou Wan's back went rigid. She walked ahead of him, only two or three steps from Shen Yuxi, and that thunderclap of a thought poured straight into her mind, making her temples throb.
"He's that handsome?!"
Shen Yuxi's inner voice had completely let itself loose. The fervor in his tone nearly overflowed, carrying the wild joy of something lost and found again.
"Senior Brother Jing truly is a man among men, a male among males, a human-shaped, self-propelled hormone launcher!!!"
Zhou Wan: "..."
She struggled to keep her expression steady and continued walking, though the corner of her eye twitched beyond her control.
"I remember now!" Shen Yuxi's inner voice continued. His excitement was ten times greater than when he had been explaining the battle earlier, every word trailing with delighted energy. "Something happened to Senior Brother Jing back then, and his cultivation directly fell back to Golden Core—"
Zhou Wan's brows furrowed faintly, a trace of gravity rising in her heart.
His cultivation had regressed? Cultivators traveled their path like sailing against the current; they had to bow and kowtow with every step to gain even an inch, yet falling took no more than an instant. Once cultivation regressed, it was often