Hum-
The boundless pressure receded like the tide.
Wang Qicang gave a muffled grunt. He neither fainted nor collapsed, his feet planted on the wooden raft as though they had taken root. His eyes were sunken, his belly hollow, as if he were starving.
The old man sneered, a glint flashing through his eyes.
A bridge suddenly rose between heaven and earth.
Heaven and earth abruptly overturned. When everything became clear again, Wang Qicang stood in a deathly silent world that seemed far removed from the Yangtze River.
This was an ancient land eternally sealed beneath heavy snow.
Wind and snow poured from the heavens, neither hurried nor slow, as though flowing down from Primordial Antiquity. They fell upon countless broken immortal platforms and collapsed ancient towers, layer upon layer, burying their former glory beneath endless white.
As far as the eye could see, there were only reeds bowed beneath the snow-each stalk trembled gently, as though a breath of wind would set the war drums of some bygone era resounding.
Those reeds surrounded densely packed gravestones.
Every gravestone bore the surname of the ancient Ye Family, war generals of the Ten Thousand Clans in the Three Thousand Universes.
Some had been carved into illegibility by the wind's knives and snow's swords. Others lay half buried, yet their exposed corners still carried an indelible sharpness, as though-even in death-they would make every visitor understand that those buried here were not the rats of this world, but Ye Family soldiers who had once charged at the very forefront of the Three Thousand Immortal Territories.
The fiercer the wind and snow, the quieter the world became.
It was as though even the Heavenly Dao could not bear to disturb this place.
Wang Qicang's throat tightened, yet he could not utter