Outside the Divine Capital, the demonic formation shattered.
The earth collapsed, its scorched soil covered in a thick layer of insect corpses.
Drenched in blood, Zhou Chunfeng stood above the devil cultivators' corpses strewn across the ground.
Blood soaked his clothes, wounds covered his body, and hair matted with filthy blood obscured his entire face.
A gust lifted his hair, exposing a corner of his chin. His once jade-like skin was caked with dried blood.
Through the torn clothes on his back, an azure sword with a broken hilt could faintly be seen emerging from his spine.
Dense clusters of blood vessels grew along both sides of the broken sword, slightly raised, black and red interwoven like tree roots.
Slowly, the broken sword melted, merged into his blood vessels, and vanished.
In the void, fate-thread after fate-thread snapped.
Zhou Chunfeng slowly raised his head and looked toward Azure Cloud Mountain.
The Seventh Rank Azure Cloud Examination was being held there.
His vision blurred. He sniffed lightly, and a faint scent of grass seemed to drift on the wind, mingled with the fragrance of wine.
Just as in that early summer, when that man had raised a cup to him from afar.
Only after that had Zhou Chunfeng understood: with an old friend in the cold land of exile, even the capital could be as warm as Jiangnan.
Zhou Chunfeng slowly raised his right hand, holding an imaginary wine cup between two fingers, and offered a distant toast.
"Chunfeng's three-foot sword returns to you a cup of wine."
Zhou Chunfeng tossed out his magical carriage, forced his stiff body inside, and whispered to the puppet driver, "To Prince Yuan's Residence."
The magical carriage raced along, charged through the Divine Capital's gates, and stopped outside Prince Yuan's Residence.
Zhou Chunfeng walked slowly