"Why was young friend Li here too?"
As soon as the old Daoist entered, his gaze swept over everyone in the hall. He spotted Li Xiang seated on the right, glanced at Guo Bingfu resting with his eyes closed and Yang Yuan in the corner, then slapped his forehead as if realization had struck. "Ah, so you came about that matter."
"Daoist Lin, your appearance..."
Li Xiang straightened in his chair, his brows knitting tightly.
The man before him was Lin Shouzhen, the master who had taught Lin Xuanshu and Lin Xuanguang.
Yet Li Xiang clearly remembered that the last time he had seen Lin Shouzhen, the Daoist master had looked middle-aged, his black hair flowing like a waterfall. Every movement had carried the vast Daoist grace of serene nonaction.
But now, after only a few months apart,
Lin Shouzhen's hair had turned completely white.
It was not just his hair. The flesh of his face had grown loose and shriveled, covered in fine wrinkles like walnut skin. His eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, as though the blood and vitality within his body had been drained in a very short time.
These were no marks of natural aging. It looked more like the decay of heaven and man's five declines.
Faced with Li Xiang's undisguised shock, Lin Shouzhen seemed unconcerned. A gentle smile tugged at his withered cheeks.
"A small problem with my cultivation. It's nothing serious."
Nothing serious?
Li Xiang's heart tightened.
Such a sheer collapse of the body was nothing short of the Dao Foundation crumbling—a calamity that could destroy everything. Anyone with a little less composure would likely have lost their Dao Heart and gone mad at the horror of their life force draining away.
Yet Lin Shouzhen's eyes remained clear, and there was nothing