Those who paid attention soon discovered that an expert at Foundation Establishment had appeared in Broad Cloud Ward.
He looked to be in his early thirties, with a martial bearing and the archaic, unusual features and burly physique common among the Shaman Folk. Yet he also possessed a steady composure, and the light of wisdom often shone in his eyes, like an old man weathered by the vicissitudes of life.
The Shaman Folk leaders, Shan, Bao, Yan, and the others, were all astonished when they saw him.
"You... you're the Great Shaman Yan!"
This man looked exactly like Wushi Yan in his youth!
Wushi Yan cast a complicated glance at those who had hurried over upon hearing the news, then called out to the startled Shaman Folk gathered around him, "The Ancestral Spirit has blessed me. I have awakened from the land of eternal sleep!"
"Heaven has granted me everlasting life. If you find the proper way, you too may be reborn as heroic spirits and live forever!"
Shan's expression changed drastically, and he rebuked him angrily. "I don't believe it! How could you be the Great Shaman? Could you be an evil fiend wearing his skin to deceive us?"
"A Shan, you've grown. You've learned caution and doubt..." Wushi Yan looked at Shan without the slightest reproach, only gratification. "But I truly am Yan."
After a moment's consideration, he recounted, one by one, many of the things he had once taught Shan.
Shan had once been Wushi Yan's student. Hearing his teacher's words now, and seeing several elders step out of the crowd to ask all manner of questions that the man answered fluently, he could not help feeling an inexplicable dread.
He, too, began to believe that the person before him was Wushi Yan.
The mountain folk around