The youth who had only just ventured into the world suddenly became the sect's sole surviving seedling.
The boy seemed to have grown up all at once.
It was not the taciturn, affected arrogance of before; he had truly matured a great deal.
Sometimes, he talked to himself.
"My aptitude is poor, and my cultivation progresses slowly. Going would only hold them back and give Master and the martial uncles more worries."
"It's perfectly natural for me to stay behind and guard the sect."
"Master and the sect leader entrusted me with this one task. No matter what, I have to do it well."
Yet he did not stay at the sect for very long.
At some point, the worry between Bai Tao's brows began to deepen.
More and more news arrived of nearby Sword Cultivator sects and Daoist temples being destroyed...
Many small sects of Sword Cultivators were slaughtered to the last person overnight.
At quite a few, even the traces of their existence had been erased.
Finally, one day, Bai Tao packed away every important possession in the sect, left a marker, and departed with the crow.
His worries had indeed not been unfounded.
Though he had already vaguely anticipated it, a band of cultivators of unknown origin still caught up with him.
After a battle to the death, Bai Tao slew those cultivators one by one.
Yet he, too, was gravely wounded.
Still pressing on without pause, he brought the crow back to his hometown of Qing Valley and went into seclusion deep in the nearby mountains.
It was the very secluded valley where he and the crow had met.
More than ten years had passed since they left, and even the Crow Immortal was showing its age.
Yet this place seemed not to have changed at