Clang!
Ding Songyan rose and drew his longsword. Its crystalline blade reflected the midnight moonlight, clear and translucent, steeped in a forbidding chill.
With that movement, the dense woods within twelve or thirteen zhang suddenly darkened. Countless stars lit up overhead, densely scattered, dreamlike and beautiful.
To Bai Zhaolin, this differed slightly from the outward manifestation of the Law Realm Tao Wenshu had displayed. The stars were higher, closer to the backdrop, while Ding Songyan, standing beneath that dark "starry sky," naturally radiated a warm, yellowish glow, like a candle flame driving back the night.
His main cultivation is the Illuminating the Long Night Scripture? No, isn't he a Martial Grandmaster who reached heaven in a single step? Did he consume a divine object compatible with the Xiaoming Sect's arts, or one that could accommodate them? No wonder he caught up with me. He really was using Northern Dipper Guides the Way. Bai Zhaolin paused in surprise, then found a reasonable explanation.
His family's Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas was incomplete, so he could not immediately identify a corresponding case.
Then a new doubt arose in Bai Zhaolin's mind:
That still isn't right. Why does he only have the double-pupiled anomaly? Surely this brat can't be a martial prodigy who became a Martial Grandmaster in his early twenties? The Xiaoming Sect has kept this tightly under wraps...
Ding Songyan looked about twenty-one or twenty-two, but his bearing was distinctly more mature than that of his present peers. Bai Zhaolin thought twenty-three or twenty-four was also possible. In that case, he could just barely accept that Ding Songyan was a martial prodigy who had entered the Law Realm early.
Ding Songyan's reputation currently circulated only within his sect and among a handful of people. No outsider would idly read through