"Xu—Xu Beimu?!"
Yun Qianzai's voice rang out behind him, so excited it nearly cracked, his shock utterly undisguised.
Ji Yuan stood with his back to him, his black robe whipping through the wind and snow like an ink-dark cloud. The smile at the corner of his mouth deepened.
He did not answer at once. Instead, he kept facing the sea of clouds, holding the aloof pose of a man listening to the Heavenly Dao's celestial decree. He remained silent for three full breaths.
Just as Yun Qianzai could no longer hold back and was about to speak again, a voice deeper than before slowly rose, as though echoing from the far end of countless ages. "He who calls my true name—"
The voice drew out the pause.
"Shall behold eternal life in the cycle of reincarnation."
Yun Qianzai: "!!!"
It was as though an invisible bolt of heavenly lightning had struck him. He froze where he stood, his pupils contracting violently once more, his breath catching in his chest!
Call my true name and behold eternal life?!
This—this was no longer a matter of bearing or grandeur!
This touched directly upon reincarnation and eternal life, the highest Laws in the cultivation world.
And he had said it with such imperious certainty, as though his true name itself held the secret to eternal life.
This way of binding oneself directly to the fundamental truths of heaven and earth, to the ultimate fruit of the Dao, through "divine manifestation"—it was—
It was practically made for me, Yun Qianzai!
Yun Qianzai felt his understanding of the Divine Manifestation Path being overturned all over again!
If that earlier line of verse had crushed him through sheer profundity, this one had raised Xu Beimu straight to godhood through the stature it claimed.
Just what kind