He closed his eyes, and many faces flashed through his mind. Each had a distinct personality, handsome or beautiful faces that had once belonged to figures who commanded the winds and clouds... once the finest of their generation, once peerless prodigies...
But now, they were all dead.
He still remembered that time...
A twist of fate had brought him face-to-face with that person. All the chosen disciples of the Seventeen Sects had been killed. Only he had abandoned his dignity, abandoned his pride, kowtowing and pleading over and over, swearing solemn oaths that he would serve as a mole after returning. He had recklessly agreed to countless conditions, even devising restrictions for himself, helping the other person think of ways to control him...
At last, at long last, he had survived...
What did it matter if they were prodigies? Chosen disciples? Unparalleled geniuses?
Back then, when that person had told him to get lost, he had kowtowed and pleaded again, saying he wanted to collect his companions' bodies. He did not know whether that shred of camaraderie had finally moved that person to spare him and leave.
But that person probably did not know that, after he left, he had not collected the prodigies' bodies.
He had arranged the heads of those hundred-odd people before him. Almost every one of them had been stronger than he was, and they had always bullied him and looked down on him.
Some had been exceptionally handsome, exceptionally talented, from exceptionally good families, exceptionally beautiful, exceptionally refined... Those beautiful female prodigies had never even spared him a glance before. They had seemed to think him unworthy of even a single word from them.
But now, only their heads remained, laid out before him. He could do whatever he liked with them, play with them