Hu Yucheng froze awkwardly where he stood, caught halfway through lowering himself, suddenly unsure what to do.
Lin Jiaojiao smiled instead. "Yu Cheng, let it go. Let's do as Senior says. Besides, he saved all our lives. How could a mere word of thanks possibly express our sincerity?"
Hu Yucheng thought it over, then nodded. "True enough. In that case, please forgive my lack of courtesy for now."
With that, Hu Yucheng turned his gaze back to Lin Jiaojiao. As his eyes swept over her dantian, some of the light in them dimmed.
"Jiaojiao, I'm sorry..."
Lin Jiaojiao stiffened slightly for a moment, then curved her lips into a smile. "What is there to apologize for? I've only become an ordinary person again. Besides, I still have several decades of lifespan left. If I take another Lifespan Pill, I might even live for a hundred years.
"With that much time, there will always be a chance to find a way to restore my cultivation."
Lin Jiaojiao spoke with unwavering conviction, but everyone knew these were merely words to comfort Hu Yucheng.
A Lifespan Pill was relatively easy to find, but repairing Lin Jiaojiao's severed meridians and her dantian, ninety percent of which had been destroyed, was another matter entirely.
It was scarcely any less absurd than a fool babbling about his dreams.
Yet perhaps precisely because everyone understood this so clearly, no one had the heart to utter a single word of denial.
A silent gloom gradually spread among the disciples of the Mystic Dharma Immortal Sect.
No one would have expected Hu Yucheng to be the first to shed tears. "I'm sorry. Jiaojiao, I'm truly sorry. If not for the mistakes I made when I was young, you would never have ended up like this."
A glimmer of tears