In the dim night, the two walked out of the mountains on foot.
Du Pingsheng reined in his cultivator's aura, becoming an ordinary elderly man of the mortal world.
Su Mo borrowed Yu Gu's Jade Pendant to conceal the aura that marked him as Su Mo, revealing only Su Mo's face.
Only his flowing Confucian Robe and head of white hair invited speculation. But there were so many people in the world that he was not worried about being found by anyone from the Cloud Sect.
And so, the two of them, one old and one young, walked like ordinary mortals for several months, covering an unknown distance.
Time seemed to slow all at once. Su Mo's aura grew increasingly unremarkable; throughout the journey, he traveled on foot like an ordinary mortal.
At last, the two arrived outside an extremely remote mortal town. Few people lived there, and occasional wisps of cooking smoke rose, only to scatter at a sweep of the wind.
Beside a bamboo grove outside the town lay a stretch of dilapidated walls and ruins.
Presumably, someone had once lived here... but after untold years of wind and rain, it had long since become a wasteland of rubble.
Du Pingsheng led Su Mo up to the broken walls. Looking at his old home, now long reduced to ruins, he could not keep a trace of sorrow from his expression.
"Is this your hometown, Elder Du?" Su Mo turned to ask Du Pingsheng.
Du Pingsheng nodded and sighed at the ruins. "The past is like smoke..."
Even he did not know how long it had been since he last returned. It felt as though a very, very long time had passed.
If Su Mo had not needed a quiet place to reach Spirit Transformation, perhaps he would never