Black Snake's little brain could not make sense of it.
The monastery was still there, all of it.
He Ning gazed up at the monastery buildings rising in tiers along the mountain. In the highest hall, a speck of candlelight shone like a lone star in the night.
She sighed softly.
"Master said she would leave someday, and she wanted you to protect the Azure Cloud Monastery for a hundred years."
Black Snake flicked his tongue, utterly bewildered. The Abbot's vital warmth was still abundant. Why would she say she was leaving?
A hundred years was a long time, but it hardly counted as a difficult task.
"Why not two hundred years, or five hundred?"
If she was entrusting the monastery to him, would it not be better to ask for longer outright? Anyone else would probably have wanted him to guard the mountain until his body perished and his Dao vanished.
He Ning gently cracked a pine nut with a stone and found the kernel by the lantern's warm glow.
"Affection cannot withstand the grinding of the years. Once the people coming and going are unfamiliar faces, your old ties to the Azure Cloud Monastery will fade too."
Not everyone could calmly accept a Demonic Beast. Whether they worried about worldly reputation or harbored a faint fear deep inside, the longer time passed, the thinner those ties would grow, until they gradually drifted apart.
"Besides, you ought to have a life of your own."
Black Snake fell silent. The Abbot would leave, and He Ning would leave too. Someday, everyone at the Azure Cloud Monastery would be a stranger.
He felt unable to adjust to that.
If he had no memory, if he could remember nothing at all, perhaps he would not have felt this way.
Memory brought growth,