Jing Jiu had known about this for many years and had spoken with them in person, so he took it fairly calmly. After all, that day was still quite a few years away.
Zhao Layue walked over to him and looked toward the highest peak in the distant Sea of Clouds. In a slightly lowered voice, she asked, "Roughly how much time is left?"
"A hundred years is the limit," Jing Jiu said.
Zhao Layue understood what he meant. Silently calculating Guo Nanshan's age, she realized there were only a few decades left.
Several days later, Elder Yue Qianmen of the Zhongzhou Sect finished discussing matters with Fang Jingtian, the Peak Master of Past Arrival Peak, and departed aboard the Cloud Boat with the disciples accompanying him.
Somewhat to the Green Mountain disciples' surprise, Jing Jiu did not leave, and Bai Zao did not stay.
Then a new rumor spread through the Nine Peaks, and everyone learned that Jing Jiu had mercilessly rejected the Zhongzhou Sect's proposal outright.
The two key expressions in the rumor, "mercilessly" and "rejected outright," had clearly been deliberately added by someone.
That person must have been on Divine End Peak at the time. That made it simple: his surname was either Gu or Yuan.
The Green Mountain disciples were somewhat astonished, but after a little thought, they felt it was perfectly natural. This was precisely their Junior Uncle-Master's way of doing things.
The young women of Qingrong Peak were delighted and held a Hundred Flowers Banquet on the pretext that summer's heat was about to depart.
The stewards fetched two hundred barrels of fine aged wine and more than ten baskets of fresh mountain fruit from Shiyue Peak.
After nightfall, starlight illuminated the cliffs, and the cool breeze that arrived with autumn wandered