Inwardly, Lin Tian was panicking like an old dog, yet outwardly he remained utterly composed in Zhunti Pavilion's Grand Hall, watching Jiubao and Qijue's affectionate display of filial devotion as though nothing were wrong.
Jiubao and Qijue chatted about all the changes over the past ten years.
The hundreds of disciples in the hall, meanwhile, were silent as cicadas in winter, not daring to utter a word.
All his thoughts were occupied with searching for and determining who exactly Daoist Jieyin was, a question that left Lin Tian uneasy.
After all, in all his deductions and calculations, there were no conditions whatsoever to support or confirm the claim that he, Lin Tian, was Daoist Jieyin.
Yet Lin Tian discovered that he could use indirect calculations: rather than making himself the principal condition of the deduction, he could approach it indirectly.
The further removed the conditions of his deductions were, the more clearly he could discern the outline of a future in which he became Daoist Jieyin, one of the Two Western Saints among the Six Heavenly Dao Saints.
Lin Tian found this result somewhat impossible to accept.
After all, neither his body, his sea of consciousness, nor his Six-Gate Life-and-Death Purple Mansion, nor even his time and fate in the past, present, and future, yielded the slightest trace suggesting that he was Daoist Jieyin.
Yet the ultimate conclusion was that, if Lin Tian could not change the future fact that Jiubao was Zhunti...
Then his own becoming Daoist Jieyin would likewise be a fact that could neither be changed nor overturned.
This left Lin Tian somewhat disheartened about the course of his future.
It was as though some unseen hand and invisible observer were guiding everything Lin Tian did toward that future.
This sense of dejection rose silently in Lin