"What's wrong?" Riley asked. His voice was calm, but every breath he released was steeped in an overwhelming qi of death and carnage, thick enough to make lesser cultivators collapse.
The air around him trembled, as though reality itself feared his exhalation.
The old man still offered no reply.
His expression remained unreadable—ancient, distant, burdened by something far heavier than words.
Then, without warning, his figure blurred and vanished, dissolving into the void like a candle flame snuffed out.
Riley narrowed his eyes and followed, stepping through space itself.
In the next instant, they reappeared inside Riley's chambers in the Rice Clan.
But something was wrong—terribly wrong.
Everything was frozen.
A servant carrying scrolls was motionless mid-step, the scrolls hovering in the air yet refusing to fall.
A candle flame stood still, its flickering tip frozen like a painted stroke.
