"Jiutian."
Hearing that call spanning endless ages, Zhou Yan's heart suddenly began racing, though he did not know why.
A flicker of instinctive emotion crossed his eyes, but his reason quickly suppressed it.
Zhou Yan cupped his fists and offered the man before him an impeccable junior's bow.
"This junior is Zhou Yan of the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion."
"Senior Shi Yin, I have long heard of your great name."
The smile on his face was like a spring breeze brushing against the skin, yet carried an aloofness that kept others a thousand miles away:
"But you must have mistaken me for someone else, Senior. My name is not Jiutian."
His meaning was clear: you could call for your Jiutian, and he would be his own Zhou Yan. They had best keep things polite, stick to business, and stop trying to claim a connection.
Hearing him draw the line so decisively, Shi Yin froze for a moment.
He quietly studied the young man whose face plainly said, "Stay the hell away from me," his thoughts unreadable.
After a long while, he suddenly chuckled.
"Zhou Yan... Very well."
With a measure of acceptance, he shook his head and sighed:
"Having commanded the Law of Time for so long, I once thought that standing at the end of the river would let me see every future."
"But the future is infinite, while our eyes can ultimately see only so much."
Shi Yin's gaze swept back and forth between Zhou Yan and Xie Changsheng twice, and he smiled self-mockingly:
"For instance..."
"I foresaw that the reincarnation would succeed, and that karma would converge, but no matter what, I could never have foreseen..."
"That my reincarnation would become so... vulgar."
"..."
"What the fuck?!"
"Who the hell are you calling vulgar?!"
Xie Changsheng, who had