The blossoms and leaves had all fallen, and moonlight passed through the treetops, casting dappled shadows on the white stone gravestone.
Yet the three-room courtyard in the distance glowed with hazy lamplight, scattered laughter drifting into the night breeze, warm and content.
The contrast fit that old verse perfectly-the flowers and moon remained as they had been, while a new generation replaced the old.
A thousand miles away, beneath the Ninefold Underworld.
Dressed in a scholar's robe, Ye Ci stood within the endless Black Abyss, holding an enormous bronze-yellow cauldron in his hand. Before him hung a hazy Water Screen, showing the little mountain courtyard where he had once lived for several years, the village school, and the peach grove.
Though that once irreverent wanderer of the Jianghu had died the day he took the Sword Bearer's seat, that faint lamplight in the window still stirred memories he had buried long ago.
As a cultivator of the same era as Qixia True Person and the Corpse Ancestor, Ye Ci's life had, in fact, been deeply entwined with theirs.
Back then, he had studied at Danyang Academy, while Qixia True Person learned his arts on Purple Emblem Mountain outside the city. Neither had made a name for himself, whereas the Corpse Ancestor was already regarded as a prodigy of the Righteous Path, no less famous than Xie Jinhuan was today. Their paths had yet to cross.
Later, unable to sit still, Ye Ci set out into the Jianghu alone with his sword. Along the way, he met the Grand Ancestor Qian. They shared the same aspirations, both pondering how to save the terminally ill Great Qi.
The Grand Ancestor Qian was a wandering swordsman, yet excelled at strategy and decisive judgment, while Ye Ci was a Confucianism disciple who instead possessed