The man's voice was like a stream in a mountain valley, low and profound, piercing through the ages, through every mottled trace...
Chen Xun's throat still gave off a hoarse sound, as though he had been drowned beneath endless thoughts.
It was as if he had lost the ability to speak. Those familiar words and sentences spun through his mind, yet could not gather into language.
Boom!
Twenty thousand years of memories surged like a tidal wave, rolling into Chen Xun's Sea of Consciousness. The joys and sorrows of the past, the lives and deaths, the partings and farewells—all of them rushed into his heart in that instant.
Billions upon billions of living beings all said time was merciless. Yet for some reason, Chen Xun felt time's tenderness in that fleeting moment.
The two stood only a few feet apart, quietly gazing at one another.
Buzz!
Time seemed to be madly flowing backward, returning to the foot of that Sect Master Peak, returning to that day beneath the resplendent evening glow...
Two little cultivators who had just entered the Cultivation World nodded gravely to each other at the foot of the mountain, encouraging one another.
Just as it had been then, just as it was now!
And now, that little cultivator who had led an ox had become the ancestor of the Three Thousand Great Worlds' Forbidden Immortal Dao—the Five Elements Dao Ancestor.
This man, meanwhile, had become one of the Peak Immortals of the Three Thousand Great Worlds.
The times had changed beyond recognition. At this moment... the two met upon the pinnacle of the immortal path!
"No... no, impossible."
Chen Xun's eye sockets reddened, his lips trembling violently. The two wooden carts had already fallen to the ground as he backed away through the woods step by step.