At that moment, Yun Qing crouched beside Yun Si, just as a little child had crouched before the orphanage director all those years ago.
He gazed into her beautiful phoenix eyes, yet always felt a faint indifference and weariness within them, as though a veil stood between her and everything she saw.
No one believed that Yun Si—the foremost of the Twelve Young Masters of the Yun Clan, the greatest prodigy of her generation, bearer of the great sun scripture wheel physique, and Lady Sovereign of two clans whom countless Immortal Venerables dared not slight—could have any trouble with her state of mind.
Yun Si lowered her eyes to the young boy crouching beside her hand.
To her, he truly was far too young. She had lived for over a thousand years, watched clans rise and fall, seen prodigies ascend and perish, and witnessed far too many people go from soaring spirits to the listless gloom of old age. Yun Si was also exceptionally perceptive and intelligent. A thousand years was enough for her to grow detached from everything in the world.
Yun Si's fingertips slowly slipped from the crown of the boy's head, and she asked herself, Have I been good to him?
The answer was that she could hardly claim so. At least in the beginning, she certainly had not.
A chasm separated the strong from the weak. Proud and aloof by nature, Yun Si knew her bones were steeped in scorn and disdain. Just as with the vast majority of cultivators in this world, few could catch her eye. Back then, she had brought Yun Qing home from the banks of the Wei River merely because he had briefly piqued her interest. It was like ordering someone to pluck an unfamiliar, exotic flower by the roadside and