The short, thin old man narrowed his eyes, watching the lame boy still climbing toward the summit in the distance. He seemed not to care at all that the young man was patting his head and pitying him.
A great fiend of his cultivation realm and age had unfathomable depths of cunning. How could external things disturb him so easily?
He could not kill the young man beside him because the young man's soul was linked to something, and that thing could keep him from being discovered by the Green Mountain Sword Formation.
Of course, all this was what the young man had told him, and it could very well be a lie.
But he could not tell truth from falsehood and dared not gamble, because the stakes were life and death.
The young man turned to look at the boy among the distant mountains and suddenly asked a question.
"Is death really so frightening? Look at him. He could fall off the cliff at any moment and be smashed to pieces, yet he keeps climbing."
"That is because he is too young and has never thought seriously and calmly about life and death."
The old man said, "If he really becomes the master of the Profound Yin Sect, then unifies the demonic path a few centuries later, do you think he will still have the courage he has now?"
The young man said, "Cao Yuan faces trials of life and death in the wind and snow every day, yet he has never thought of shying away."
"He is a Buddha, not a man. A Buddha is always prepared for extinction, while a man covets eternal life. That is why he is unafraid, and I am afraid."
The old man narrowed his eyes and said, "Apart from the three of