Returning once more to the familiar Sea God Island, he felt truly relaxed beneath the rich power of the light element enveloping him.
"Mu En, I'm back."
Standing beneath the Golden Ancient Tree, Chen Ping instinctively scanned it with his Spiritual Power, but all he sensed was peace.
Cozy, comfortable, warm, unchanging through the ages, reassuring.
Chen Ping could not say whether his Spiritual Power had yet to reach a sufficient level, or whether these truly were the emotions the Golden Ancient Tree was feeling at that moment.
But on reflection, since even someone as powerful as Mu En could not detect anything unusual about the Golden Ancient Tree, it seemed only natural that he could not discover anything either.
"It's good that you're back. Come in, hehe."
Mu En's aged voice rang out. Hearing that familiar voice, Chen Ping was delighted at first, but immediately afterward, he sensed the exhaustion and weakness in Mu En's tone.
Chen Ping's heart tightened. He hurried up to Mu En's room. As the door opened, the first thing he saw was Mu En lying in his recliner with his back to him.
Resting flat on the recliner's armrest was Mu En's right hand, now aged and withered.
Mu En looked even thinner than when Chen Ping had left the Academy, and the skin on his body had grown rather wrinkled.
This was a sign that Mu En's bodily functions were gradually collapsing. There was no other reason; he was simply approaching the end of his allotted years.
Perhaps the disruption to the timeline caused by Chen Ping's arrival had allowed Mu En a few more years of medicinal cuisine that offered a tiny bit of benefit, and spared his already aged body the torment of fighting once.
But there was no denying that,