And ahead, at the end...
There lay a vast, surging stretch of the Yangtze River, with a battered bamboo raft waiting there, as though pointing out the road by which he had come.
He slowly looked back.
Reeds swayed far and wide; snow and wind had long buried the bones of the loyal.
Still, no one came to see him off.
Yet it also felt as though billions of loyal souls across the heavens were bidding him farewell. He had cultivated here, and now he was leaving. The future was full of unknowns, and he had even less idea what bearing, what identity, would truly make him worthy of setting foot again on this land where he had cultivated in his youth.
Whoosh!
Wang Qicang lightly swept his robes aside and slowly bowed down. Thud! He struck his head heavily against the ground in salute-the great rite of the immortal Dao beneath heaven, reserved for venerable forebears and elders, never offered to the mighty of the heavens.
Far away.
At a wind gap between the mountains stood a ruined flight of stone steps.
Elder Ye stood there quietly, wearing an old suit of armor so tattered it had long since lost its shape.
The snowy wind tousled his white hair like the last banner on a battlefield that had yet to fall.
He gazed from afar at the young man who had cultivated in the Ye Family's ancestral grounds for thirty thousand years, silent. At that moment, frost crystals entered his eyes, blurring them slightly. Yet he seemed not to be looking at Wang Qicang-
But at the last generation of Ye Family disciples from ages past.
After achieving success in cultivation, they had crossed the river and left these mountains one by one. Some had looked back; some had