Inside the secret chamber.
Seeing Fu Shengwen arrive, the elderly Foundation Establishment cultivator who had led Li Ping in murmured an apology, then respectfully withdrew.
Before leaving, he deliberately shut the chamber door, leaving only Li Ping and Fu Shengwen inside.
Fu Shengwen leisurely sat down across from Li Ping and said with a smile, "I am Fu Shengwen, honored to oversee the cave abode rental office here in Heavenly Dao City. How should I address you, fellow Daoist?"
Li Ping's expression remained unchanged, but inwardly, he felt a faint pang of emotion.
More than two hundred years ago, although Fu Shengwen had concealed it well on the surface, his unsmiling manner and habit of treating every word like gold had long since betrayed his inner arrogance and distance from other cultivators.
Of course, back then, he had every right to be proud.
He came from a distinguished family within the Confucian Sect and was the descendant of a Nascent Soul middle-stage cultivator. His own aptitude was excellent, and he had reached the Core Formation late stage at a young age, standing just one step away from Nascent Soul formation.
As for Li Ping's identities back then, whether Xiong Dahai or Yan Buping, even if they possessed some ability, how could rogue cultivators compare to him?
Anyone else with his background might have been even more arrogant!
Yet more than two hundred years had passed, and who knew what had happened to Fu Shengwen during that time?
Li Ping looked up and saw no trace of the young cultivator whose arrogance had once radiated from his very bones.
All he saw was an aged face, its skin dry and shriveled like dead bark, now looking at him with a businesslike smile. Where was that former sternness, that reluctance to spare