Everyone seemed to see the woman open her eyes. Naturally... Immortal Ziyu saw it too.
Immortal Ziyu watched blankly as the woman in the pool opened her eyes, then watched blankly as she slowly rose and walked up to him.
Two tears suddenly slipped from his eyes.
"Mother..." Immortal Ziyu gazed at the familiar face before him, his voice choked.
He had waited over ten thousand years, all for this moment...
"Why put yourself through this?" With tears in her eyes, the woman looked at the disheveled figure before her, his body insubstantial. Her voice held reproach and anguish.
Immortal Ziyu gazed at her, entranced, as though he had returned to that little town in an instant and become that mischievous child again.
"It was no hardship. As long as I could see you again, Mother... even waiting tens of thousands more years would have been worth it."
"I still want to eat the egg-drop congee you cooked, Mother, and listen to your earnest teachings..."
"Without you, Mother, what meaning would cultivating hold for me?"
Immortal Ziyu smiled happily, just as he had when he first returned home after beginning his cultivation.
With tears in her eyes, the woman watched Immortal Ziyu grow fainter and fainter. Seeing the weathered look covering his face, her heart ached in countless ways.
"But... you killed so many people to save me... how could I bear such sins?"
His eyes bloodshot, Immortal Ziyu shook his head. "You need not bear them, Mother. If there are sins, I will bear them..."
Whenever he killed someone, how could he himself not have suffered...?
Those he had known, those who had been strangers to him.
Their despairing screams before death and their resentment afterward were all engraved within his soul.
But his obsession...
Compared to his mother,