One man, one ox.
The man carried a crooked silver Mountain-Splitting Axe on his back, his bamboo hat pulled low, his ink-black hair hanging loose. His robes remained utterly still in the blood-scented winds of this ancient domain, as though every breath of the world quietly, willingly took a detour three feet from his body.
The ox was black all over, immense as a mountain. The instant his four hooves touched down, the scorched ancient soil beneath them, barren for hundreds of millions of years, trembled softly.
It was as though the land itself, after far, far too long in silence, had finally felt a familiar weight and released a soundless, hoarse sigh.
The two figures stood there in this ancient domain of buried immortals, amid the surviving undying manifestations, upon the timeless ruins formed by floating fragments of land and fractures in the Great Dao.
No words, no movement.
They simply stood.
Yet at that moment, the currents of the entire ancient domain quietly underwent some fundamental change, in a manner almost imperceptible to the naked eye, yet impossible to ignore-
Like a seed quietly falling onto a wasteland that had lain deathly still for hundreds of millions of years.
Chen Xun stood upon the ruins, slowly lifting his ink-dark eyes to gaze at this old land he had once chosen himself, now riddled with wounds.
His expression was calm, deep, and distant, like an ancient mirror that had reflected too many years, taking in everything before him without betraying a thing.
Big Black Ox stood beside him, his enormous head slowly lowering.
Something weighed heavily in the depths of his eyes as he looked at the land they had trodden countless times, now changed beyond recognition. For a long while, he said nothing.
The wind rose.
Slowly, languidly,