Midnight. The moon was hidden, and the stars had sunk into the abyss.
The Cyan Mountain Daoist Temple was shrouded in a darkness so thick it felt almost solid. Only the Profound Yellow luster radiating from the Mountain and River Cauldron acted as a solitary lamp, barely illuminating a tiny square of the courtyard. The light reflected off the branches of a withered tree, casting crisscrossing shadows onto the ground like an impenetrable web.
Qi Yun sat at the very center of this web. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing long and steady. He seemed to have completely merged with the Heaven and Earth around him. If one were to rely solely on the naked eye, it would be almost impossible to distinguish his silhouette from the shadows of the dead tree.
