"Those lanterns are back!"
At the sight of those dozen or so red globes drifting leisurely through the air, Qiong Rong, who had never managed to sit still, sprang up at once, clapping and laughing.
Though the young man's eyes were tightly shut as he entered the profound realm of Refining Spirit into Void, he seemed to possess a third eye, seeing Qiong Rong's hopping figure with perfect clarity.
Heh, Qiong Rong still calls those elders lanterns. How disrespectful.
Now, even while practicing Refining Spirit into Void, Xing Yan had a little leisure to think of other things.
These lanterns Qiong Rong spoke of had lately appeared often while Xing Yan cultivated his Great Splendor Dao Power. Their first appearance had truly surprised him; he had no idea what sort of beings these ethereal, drifting things might be. Only after he told Chen Ziping of this strange sight did he learn that these translucent globes, shaped like the jellyfish of the Dragon Palace, were the souls of people who had died in Shangqing Palace.
Shangqing Palace on Mount Luofu was a great sect with a thousand years of history. Through the generations, many of its members had possessed profound virtue and formidable magical power, yet only a scant few had found the opportunity to ascend. To most mortal cultivators, longevity and everlasting vision were little different from flowers in a mirror or the moon upon water. Those accomplished Daoists whose names passed from mouth to mouth among the people had, at most, merely lived longer than ordinary men.
Yet along the endless Dao Path, there were always a few outstanding souls who, even a hundred or several hundred years after death, did not scatter when their bodies dissolved and returned to dust. Their spirits endured, drifting among the grotto-heavens and