Xu Household Market, once a bustling farming settlement, had grown even more prosperous.
Paths crisscrossed a thousand qing of fertile fields, houses stood in orderly rows, and the calls of chickens and dogs carried from one home to the next.
The villagers passing to and fro had ruddy faces and neat clothes, making this truly a rich and happy haven.
Sadly, the place remained, but its people had changed. The familiar faces from the years when Xu Xuan had managed affairs here had all turned to yellow earth.
Only their names remained, inscribed on spirit tablets in the ancestral hall, receiving incense offerings from their descendants.
The three characters of "Xu Daocheng."
Here, they were nothing short of legendary.
Everything the Xu Lineage had today had been founded by this man alone.
Xu Xuan quietly entered the market without alerting any villagers or clan elders.
He strolled along and soon arrived before the familiar mansion with its five successive courtyards.
This was still the main residence of the Xu Household's direct line, but its air differed from that of an ordinary wealthy family.
Its vermilion gates were tall and broad, with a faint spiritual radiance flowing over them.
Though the guards were dressed as ordinary household servants, their eyes gleamed and their breathing was steady.
Clearly, cultivators were mixed among them.
Xu Xuan employed a little evasion magic, his figure turning like blue smoke as he slipped past the many eyes and ears and silently infiltrated the depths of the inner courtyards.
Outside a secluded courtyard screened by flowers and trees, he suddenly stopped.
In the courtyard, an old woman lay in a bamboo chair.
Her white hair was sparse, her face withered, like a candle guttering in the wind.
Her breathing was already as faint as a silken thread. She was at death's door.
A girl stood attending her, her precise age impossible to tell. She wore a plain white dress and had delicate features.
On closer inspection, she bore a seventy- or eighty-percent resemblance to the young Liu Yun in his memory, only looking more youthful.
At this moment, grief filled her face, her eyes were red, and she was fighting back tears.
Xu Xuan's gaze returned to the old woman.
His eyes grew gentle and heavy.
"Yun'er..."
This old woman was Liu Yun.
His first wife in his second life.
Xu Xuan was now only half a step from the third level, the "Life Palace." His divine sense was powerful, and he discerned Liu Yun's cultivation at a glance.
She, too, had reached the Yellow Court stage of the Spiritual Treasury, extending her lifespan by sixty years.
Only this had allowed her to hold on until now, living for over a hundred and fifty years.
Now, she suffered neither illness nor calamity. Her lifespan was simply drawing to its end.
Xu Xuan stood silently outside the door, looking at that face scored with the furrows of time, with not a trace of its former loveliness remaining. A hundred conflicting feelings filled his heart.
Husband and wife in his previous life, lovingly entwined; strangers in this life, separated by ten thousand miles.
Nearly a hundred years had quietly slipped away, like a white steed flashing past a crack.
She had borne and raised his children and managed the family's affairs. Since he had "departed," she had remained faithful to this day, holding up the Xu Household.
He, meanwhile, had passed through reincarnation and stepped onto the immortal path again, struggling in the Azure Wood Sect for opportunities to cultivate.
Time was a blade, severing far too many bonds of affection.
Entering this home again, Xu Xuan's heart, usually still as an ancient well, trembled again and again.
Humans were neither immortals nor gods. How could they truly be without feeling?
As though sensing something in her heart.
Liu Yun's clouded, lifeless eyes moved slightly.
They actually turned toward the empty space outside the door.
Her shriveled lips moved gently, producing a faint sound that was almost inaudible.
"Who... who is outside?"
Hearing her, the girl attending at her side suddenly grew alert and turned toward the door.
Seeing an unfamiliar old man standing there silently, his aura deep and unfathomable, she knitted her delicate brows and asked in a clear voice:
"Who are you, senior?"
"Why have you entered the inner residence without permission!"
Xu Xuan walked slowly into the courtyard, his gaze remaining on Liu Yun, and said calmly:
"An old acquaintance has come to visit, to see the madam through her final journey."
Hearing this, doubt appeared on the girl's face, and she was about to question him further.
Unexpectedly, Liu Yun struggled to lift her withered hand and waved it gently.
She signaled for the girl to say no more.
The old woman gazed steadily at Xu Xuan.
Her eyes were clouded, yet seemed able to pierce through his outward appearance and reach the depths of his soul.
As though she saw a figure branded deep within her life.
That bearing, that expression, that faint composure at the corners of his mouth and those unfeeling eyes...
Liu Yun had never forgotten them in all her life.
"You came after all..."
Liu Yun's breathing was faint, her words broken.
Yet a trace of indescribable relief rested between her brows.
"I waited so long... several times, I almost couldn't hold on..."
"I knew... you would come..."
"Come a little closer... I can't see clearly anymore..."
Xu Xuan's heart suddenly trembled.
Had she recognized me?
Or was her mind flaring one last time at death's door, producing a hallucination?
Xu Xuan stepped forward silently and gently clasped that cold, withered hand.
A stream of gentle spiritual power, like a trickling rivulet, quietly entered her meridians, nourishing this body whose oil was nearly spent and whose lamp was about to go out, granting her a moment of peace.
"Back then, you were like this too..." Liu Yun said weakly.
"Yun'er."
"Thank you for all your efforts over these years."
Xu Xuan murmured, finally calling out that name which had been sealed away for a hundred years and was nearly buried by time.
A bright gleam suddenly flashed through Liu Yun's eyes, and the corners of her mouth twitched slightly.
She seemed to want to smile, but ultimately lacked the strength.
With difficulty, she turned her gaze toward the girl beside her and said haltingly:
"Qingchan, good child..."
"Come here, call... call him Grandfather..."
The girl named Qingchan froze completely.
She looked at the unfamiliar old man with his unfathomable aura, then at her dying grandmother.
For a moment, she was bewildered and at a loss, unable to understand.
Liu Yun spent her last shred of strength, looking earnestly at Xu Xuan as she said in broken phrases:
"She... Liu Qingchan..."
"The Liu Household's only remaining bloodline."
"I... I entrust her... entrust her... to you..."
Then she turned her head toward Qingchan and said, "Listen to your grandfather..."
"He will surely... keep you safe..."
With that, Liu Yun's gaze gradually lost focus, and the hand clasping Xu Xuan's slowly fell.
Her last thread of breath ceased with it.
Her face, however, was peaceful and serene, without the slightest lingering concern or pain, as though she had fulfilled the greatest wish of her life.
"Grandmother!"
Qingchan cried out in grief and threw herself before the couch, collapsing over Liu Yun's gradually cooling body and weeping bitterly, her cries mingling with tears.
Xu Xuan stood silently for a long time, with no great upheaval in his heart.
There was only a faint melancholy that even reincarnation could not wholly wear away, and a trace of release as a worldly bond came to its end.
He gently laid Liu Yun's hand in place and straightened her slightly disheveled hair and clothes.
The affection of a lifetime as husband and wife had, at this point, come to a complete close.
His gaze fell on the weeping girl, Qingchan.
Sweeping her with his divine sense, he could not help frowning.
She actually cultivated to the Yellow Court Realm using the "Grain Garment Art"?!
A brief calculation showed that this girl was now only thirty years old.
Because her lifespan had increased and her body brimmed with vitality, she had retained a young girl's appearance.
Xu Xuan was slightly stunned.
The "Grain Garment Art" was not suited to this world, yet Liu Qingchan had cultivated step by step to this point.
Her spiritual power was abundant and her foundation solid. She had certainly not achieved this through external aids.
This aptitude...
She could be called the most gifted person he had seen in either his previous lives or his present one.
"Yun'er..."
An invisible thread had just been severed, only to wind around Xu Xuan's hand again now.
That thread was called karma.
"Do not grieve too deeply."
Xu Xuan spoke, his voice carrying a calm power that put one's heart at ease.
"Your grandmother reached the natural end of her life and passed away without illness. Hers is a rare death worthy of celebration."
"Since she entrusted you to me, that is the fated bond between us."
"From now on, stay by my side."
Qingchan lifted her head and looked at this "grandfather" before her, whose aura was unfamiliar yet inexplicably reassuring.
Her heart held a thousand questions, as well as the grief of losing her closest kin.
Yet she did not dare disobey her grandmother's dying wish.
This man's gaze was clear and held no malice, so Qingchan nodded obediently through her sobs.
Xu Xuan did not wish to alert anyone outside, so he simply presided over and handled Liu Yun's funeral arrangements.
He buried her together with "Xu Daocheng," without making it public.
Afterward, he summoned the current head of the Xu Household, Xu Ziyu, to a private chamber.
Xu Ziyu was already in his eighties or nineties. His cultivation had also improved over the years, and he had opened four meridian wheels, which was already his limit.
Now, he finally met the "old friend" his great-grandmother had spoken of.
Unable to contain his excitement, he moved to perform a full ceremonial bow.
Xu Xuan lightly brushed his sleeve, holding him up. Without exchanging many pleasantries, he instructed him directly:
"I am an inner sect steward of the Azure Wood Sect, ordered to head south and open new territory for the sect."
"Matters here are settled, and my worldly ties have come to an end."
"Immediately select the clan's core disciples with spiritual roots, skilled artisans versed in farming, construction, and smelting, and gather the wealth, texts, and spiritual seeds accumulated by the clan."
"Begin preparing to depart today. Follow me to the Yue Kingdom in the Southern Wilds and establish a new foundation."
"Here at Xu Household Market, leave only one branch of the clan to watch over the ancestral hall and farmland."
Though Xu Ziyu found this sudden, how could he dare disobey the "ancestor's" decree?
He immediately assented solemnly, not daring to ask more.
At once, he acted with the swiftness of thunder and the force of wind, setting about arranging every matter and preparing to move the entire clan south.