"Chen'er...?"
Si Shuo's eyes widened. This was his own nephew, whom he had watched grow up. There was no way he could mistake him!
But... something felt wrong.
Si Chen had always made people feel as though they were basking in a spring breeze.
Yet the person before him felt nothing but cold.
"You...?" Si Shuo instinctively took a step forward.
"Don't go near him!" Jiang Ling stopped him.
She watched the white-robed young man warily and said:
"You're not him."
"He never looked at people with eyes as... empty as yours."
That man might have stood high above everyone, but his eyes held all living beings. They held warmth.
The being before her had nothing in his eyes.
At Jiang Ling's challenge, the young man merely released the peach blossom petal. "You're perceptive."
"My name is Taichu."
Si Shuo and Jiang Ling exchanged a glance.
By now, however slow they might have been, they understood that the person before them was not Si Chen at all!
But when had such a being appeared in the Myriad Heavens and Worlds-someone who looked exactly like Si Chen, yet was utterly different?!
"Were you behind all of this?"
Jiang Ling tightened her grip on her short blade. "You trapped us in this wretched place, stripped away our cultivation, and made us endure birth, aging, illness, and death like mortals..."
She roared, "What are you after? What exactly is this place!?"
"Me?"
Taichu looked at her and slowly shook his head.
"What does this world becoming like this have to do with me?"
"As for this place..."
With his hands clasped behind his back, Taichu slowly paced through the peach grove. "No spiritual energy, no cultivators, cut off from the Heavenly Dao, with none of the myriad arts remaining..."
"Jiang Ling, you've lived