Yang Lingshu's sobs echoed endlessly through the room, leaving Chen Yang at his side with a heart full of tangled emotions.
If he still possessed the ordinary flesh and mortal body of his previous life, he would surely have shed tears by now, grieving and lamenting the life Yang Lingqing was about to lose.
But this immortal body had been molded from his stone-bodied incarnation.
And stones did not weep.
Yang Lingqing slowly drew the sobbing Yang Lingshu close, raising a hand to gently stroke his hair and forehead as she silently soothed the turmoil in his heart.
Since the Yang Clan had first risen to prominence, Yang Lingqing had personally taught many younger disciples. Yet if they traced things back to the beginning, Yang Lingshu could be considered the first student she had taken in after assuming the position of patriarch.
Yang Lingqing still remembered how, back then, her elder brother Yang Linghu had excitedly brought Yang Lingshu back from Sanglu Valley to Pine Mountain. This chubby little boy, who had awakened early just like herself, had even tried to fool her under her very nose by playing dumb.
Yet after Yang Lingqing's explanations and admonitions, this fourth cultivator of the Ling generation in the Yang Clan, after San Ling, had come to his senses and begun shouldering the responsibility and mission that belonged to him.
In truth, from the very beginning, Yang Lingqing had intended to nurture Yang Lingshu as her successor.
That much could be seen from how she had sent Yang Lingshu to Sanglu Valley to serve as the patriarch of a branch family.
But at the time, the Yang Clan's circumstances under the Tiger Chasing Dynasty were far from promising, and its relationships with the various powers remained unclear. The clan urgently needed intelligence on