Li Xuanfeng stepped out of the ancestral hall. The rain outside had lessened, but droplets still fell rhythmically onto the stone steps. His black-gold boots splashed through a shallow puddle of water collected at the threshold.0

He glanced into the water, where his reflection gazed back—a face marked by age. His temples had turned white, his eyebrows thinned, and the lines of his face had blurred. His lips had grown thinner, and his deep-set eyes betrayed neither triumph nor joy but rather the weariness of one who had endured the pain of parting with life and death.0

Li Xuanfeng was startled to realize how aged he had become. In that instant, he became aware of the toll taken by eighty years of struggle and hardship. Like most cultivators of the world, though his life expectancy placed him in his prime, the battles he had endured had left him prematurely weathered, unrecognizable from his...0