At the bottom of the Abyss, black mist churned like a living thing. Hou Ming's aura, carrying a bone-piercing chill, drifted from the depths of the endless Netherworld.
A faint ripple in that aura, like a wave in the night, silently but unmistakably revealed that she had already sensed Jiang Yun's return.
For beings like them, who stood at the pinnacle of Dao Ancestors, ten thousand years were but a splash in the River of Time, gone in an instant.
Yet for Hou Ming, their once-in-ten-thousand-years appointment to cultivate together was vital to sustaining her life and resolving the danger within her. It was also a rare comfort on her long road of cultivation.
Jiang Yun's eyes flickered. He took a step, and the laws of time and space twisted beneath his feet.
In an instant, he appeared at the heart of the Black Bird Dao Field.
Hou Ming still sat cross-legged atop that slab of Netherworld Frost Jade, unchanged through the ages, like an eternal statue.
The Hell Netherfire swirling around her was stronger than it had been ten thousand years ago. Eerie blue light leaped within the pitch-black flames, but they had grown even less stable, surging and shrinking by turns. Like a primordial beast on the verge of breaking free, they could turn on their master at the slightest misstep.
Hou Ming did not open her eyes, but her ink-black hair stirred without wind, mysterious runes flowing among its strands.
"You're back," she said, her cool voice threaded with complicated emotion.
Her voice seemed to rise from the depths of the Jiuyou Yellow Springs, carrying the weariness of countless ages and a trace of joy she could scarcely conceal.
Jiang Yun nodded slightly. Without another word, he walked straight to her, sat opposite her, and crossed his