Dressed in white robes embroidered with swords, Ge Yiming stepped through the open study door, turned right, and saw someone behind the desk, head lowered as he reviewed documents.
At that same moment, the man raised his head, and their eyes met.
Before this, Ge Yiming had imagined countless possibilities, but only upon meeting the man himself did he realize how vastly the person before him differed from his imaginings.
The person behind the desk should clearly have been a young man of twenty, yet at first glance he seemed a middle-aged man nearing thirty. Looking more closely, Ge Yiming found that his skin and appearance were indeed no different from those of a twenty-year-old, but his eyes seemed to hold the lofty remoteness of a mountain summit, the boundless vastness of a journey across ten thousand ages, and the majesty of a sovereign ruling all beneath heaven. There even seemed to be the keen edge of a sword drawn from its sheath.
For a moment, Ge Yiming's thoughts fell into disarray. He could not tell what sort of person stood before him-a Grand Academician? A historian? A monarch? Or a general who had slain countless demons?
An unprecedented shock rose within Ge Yiming. Even when he had first met his uncle Ge Million, he had merely been moved by his uncle's wisdom. Yet looking into these eyes, he felt something he could not describe.
The man opposite him blinked, and only then did Ge Yiming pull free of that bewildering sensation and secretly breathe a sigh of relief. At the same time, however, he keenly noticed that in the instant the other man blinked, he seemed to catch a faint trace of exhaustion.
Precisely because he caught that trace of exhaustion, Ge Yiming felt an inexplicable shame surge in