She had endured, lain low, and held on to hope all along.
Countless days and nights woven from apprehension, anxiety, despair, and hope finally reached their end today.
Yun Wanlan stood in the corridor of the Administration Building at Pengcheng High Martial Arts.
The door to the honorary principal's office was right before her. Dark wood, a brass handle, and a plaque that read "Honorary Principal... Chen Hao."
She had been standing in front of this door for almost two minutes.
There was no one else in the corridor. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the left, cutting bars of light across the corridor and dividing it into alternating squares of light and shadow. She stood in one of the dark squares.
The tribe chief's words before her departure kept circling in her mind.
"Go to the Nine Provinces and find that person. The one with the highest cultivation, the one who governs all the Nine Provinces."
"How do I find him?"
"You'll know once you get there."
Only after arriving did she realize that she did not know.
The person the tribe chief had described might no longer exist.
But if it was not Chen Hao, who else could it be?
She dared not consider the possibility that she had found the wrong person. That would mean everything had come to nothing.
Yun Wanlan exhaled and raised her hand.
She knocked three times.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Come in." A woman's voice came from inside. It was Chen Siyao.
Yun Wanlan pushed the door open.
The office was not large. A desk stood by the window, with a man seated behind it. Chen Siyao and Yang Wanqing sat on the sofa to the desk's left.
The first people she noticed were those two—the only two girls in the entire