"How strange." Fang Yun rubbed the spot between his brows again, turning the matter over in his mind but finding no clues.
Tian Songshi asked cautiously, "You completed the mission the Saints entrusted to you, didn't you?"
"I did," Fang Yun said.
"Good, then. Could you... tell me a little about it?" Tian Songshi asked with a smile, his expression remarkably like those of the neighborhood gossips discussing household affairs.
Fang Yun thought for a moment, then said, "Once we return to the Sacred Academy, I can."
Tian Songshi's face fell at once. The little old man turned away gloomily, then suddenly said in a low voice, "Look who's here."
Fang Yun turned to look as well and saw a middle-aged man approaching in purple robes. His hair was half black and half white, and his feet were bare. Each step carried him several miles. Although he moved at an astonishing speed, he seemed to be strolling through a quiet courtyard, exceptionally graceful.
Spotting Fang Yun from afar, the man smiled and cupped his hands. "Kong He greets Void Sage Fang and Master Pine and Stone."
Like an old drunk nursing a hangover, Tian Songshi lazily clasped his hands in a perfunctory greeting.
Fang Yun, however, solemnly cupped his hands and said, "Greetings, Patriarch Lei."
Despite this distant form of address, Lei Konghe continued to smile. "I have returned to the Blood Tomb Mausoleum to enter the Sacred Mausoleum and pay my respects to the Saints. But why, just after I saw you two emerge from the Sacred Mausoleum in the distance, did the Saint Spirit suddenly collapse, turning the land into a lake?"
By the end, the smile on Lei Konghe's face had almost entirely vanished.
When the various races entered Burial Saint Valley, they could forgo the Dragon