Unless she was in extended seclusion, Bai Zao ate one meal with her parents every year, and only one, beneath the tree on Cloud Terrace.
There were only a few simple dishes on the stone table. The grilled fish remained untouched, and only one cup of wine had been drunk before True Person Tan and White True Person left.
Bai Zao stood silently for a moment, then walked beneath the tree and gazed at the Sea of Clouds beyond the cliff, thinking that things might have been livelier if Senior Brother Tong Yan were here.
Seclusion was the norm for Daoist cultivators, but she was still somewhat worried, because Tong Yan had entered seclusion too suddenly.
There was something else worrying her as well.
The Immortal Register had fallen into Jing Jiu's hands, yet Yunmeng Mountain had shown no reaction. Her mother's composure in particular made her uneasy.
She wanted to write to Green Mountain to ask, but ultimately gave up the idea. With a soft sigh, she lightly waved her white silk ribbon, and countless snow-white strands of heavenly silkworm silk fell like snow, sealing off Cloud Terrace.
Tong Yan was digging underground. Using Daoist arts, he silently compressed the excavated earth and stone fragments, greatly reducing their volume before stacking them neatly on either side, where they looked like so many stone balls.
There were no lights in the tunnel, only darkness everywhere, so there was naturally no way to distinguish day from night. But as a Daoist cultivator, he naturally knew that more than a year had passed.
There were still many years to go before he could dig into the depths of the earth veins anyway. He remained calm and silent; there was no one here to talk to him in any case.
That