Even after the scene before her gradually faded, Jiang Yuechu remained seated cross-legged on the rock, her white robe gently rising and falling, motionless for a long time.
Only after a full incense stick's worth of time had passed did she let out a long breath and rub the space between her brows.
Things seemed to be getting stranger and stranger.
If that earlier scene had merely been some sort of recorded image, why had the Cloud Dream Immortal Lord been able to tell at the end that she was not his original young disciple?
Jiang Yuechu fell silent for a moment, and the old man's final words to her surfaced in her mind again.
At least judging by that scene, he really had taken them to question Heaven.
As for whether he had lived or died afterward, the answer was already obvious...
There was no Cloud Dream Immortal Lord in the Cloud-Dream Realm now.
Only the Nine Great Dao Sects.
And the Cloud-Dream Palace, which held sway over the Cloud-Dream Realm and stood as an equal rival to the human Dao Sects.
"Jieqing, Baihua, Wusang, Lingxu, Yuanshan..."
Those boys' and girls' names had later become the names of Dao Sects.
This meant the Nine Great Dao Sects very likely originated from that valley, from the disciples under the Cloud Dream Immortal Lord.
If that was true, then tracing the Cloud-Dream Realm's supposed countless millennia of heritage back to its source would lead to that Cloud Dream Immortal Lord.
Yet the outside world called this realm the Immortal-God Cave Abode.
Who, then, was the abode's master?
If the Cloud Dream Immortal Lord had left the abode behind, why not simply leave it to humanity? Why let demons contend for it too?
Thinking deeper still, the Heavenly Court offered no salvation