An Sixian's originally somewhat clouded gaze instantly cleared considerably upon hearing those words.
Ever since the sect had stripped him of his position as an elder, he had spent twenty years in this valley guarding the little dungeon.
During that time, Zhang Jin had spent most of his days alternating between madness and sleep.
Only after being taken away by the two True Intent patriarchs to test Dao arts did he gain brief moments of clarity under the influence of an Enlightenment cultivator's divine sense.
Yet even when lucid, he did nothing but repeat words of repentance. Every three sentences circled back to the Twilight Ancient Path in the Northwest, and he loudly insisted that he had never intended to harm Xu Chen, begging the sect to investigate the matter thoroughly.
And such behavior had ultimately earned him nothing more than a vicious beating from An Sixian.
But Zhang Jin, now awake this time, was clearly unlike every previous occasion.
Rather than crying injustice for himself as he had in the past, he recognized An Sixian's identity and spoke of something that sounded absurd, yet under the current circumstances was not entirely without cause—a "ghostly matter."
Within the Jade Firmament Sect, aside from the two True Intent patriarchs who often used Zhang Jin to test new methods, An Sixian was the one who knew this man best.
Though he despised Zhang Jin from the bottom of his heart and considered his very existence a disgrace to Spiritual Connection cultivators, he had to admit that in terms of soul strength and endurance, Zhang Jin had long surpassed the bounds of an ordinary Spiritual Connection cultivator.
One had to know that the two sect patriarchs never showed restraint when they acted. An ordinary cultivator might have had their soul collapse and perish