After paying their respects to his grandmaster, master, and junior brother, Yan Bo led Yuan Zhaoning back down the way they had come.
For Yan Bo, this was a homecoming after many years. Yet here in his native Great Yan, his family and friends had all passed away. Even if some descendants remained, there was no need to disturb them.
Just as when Yan Bo left Great Yong, his stroll through the market had really been a chance to see that youngster from the He Household, who was now elderly and enjoying the company of his children and grandchildren.
Thus, planting flowers might have mattered more to Yan Bo than painstaking cultivation. Or perhaps this, too, counted as his cultivation.
For Yuan Zhaoning, an old man in his eighties, this was a new life at the end of his days. In Yan Bo's words, it was not too late, even if Yuan Zhaoning might not truly have understood what "not too late" meant.
Yan Bo used no spells to tidy up the house. Instead, he and the elderly Yuan Zhaoning cleaned the stilt house little by little, letting him experience something of what his master and his junior brother's family had felt when they built it together.
The process also polished the dust from Yuan Zhaoning's heart, helping him recognize his own new beginning.
The flock of white cranes lingered in the nearby wetlands, seemingly intending to make this an important stop on their migration and stay until the weather turned cold.
Some of the white cranes might not leave at all. After all, Yuan Zhaoning was an old eunuch with an extraordinary wealth of experience raising cranes, and Hele Mountain had a pleasant climate. They might even spend their winters here in the future.
Yan Bo and Yuan Zhaoning