On verdant Wutong Mountain, thirteen wooden huts stood empty.

Within the waterfall-veiled grotto.

Ye Wenxuan sat cross-legged, her gaze still and heavy upon the stone wall, and upon the withered age-trees around her.

What she was thinking, no one could say.

To lose all count of the years in the mountains — that was what made one an immortal.

She, though, had to count every single day, and convert that time into the corresponding measure of age-fruit.

A young body gathered together out of the breath of heaven and earth could not conceal the decay of her path infant's five viscera.

The old dog knew she existed.

But it was never in any hurry.

So long as it outlasted her, this place would still be its Nanyang Sect.

Ye Wenxuan had never denied that she did it for her own sake. But neither should the living of this world forget that what she practised was the true work of saving it.

From an ordinary mortal, all the way to the strongest cultivator under heaven.

Without her to hold them in check, what would have been left alive in the demons' jaws?

While this Ye lived, the world lived.

If she fell, the world would be buried with her. It was a simple enough principle — so why could these fools she had raised with her own hands not see through to it?

Gone after Nie Jun without a word between them.

When had they last held any regard for her, their master?

"It's the lot of you who will get everyone killed."

Ye Wenxuan shook her head. They needed only to wait a while longer, only to break through to Return-to-Void quietly and properly.

Whatever happened below the mountain, every trouble would resolve itself.

By then she would no longer be some Wutong Mountain Ancestor, but the Sect Master of the Nanyang Sect.

Everyone under her would be an elder in the making.

A single step into heaven.

She had handed these people an opportunity of that size, and hemmed in by their poor vision they could not even swallow…