After leaving Qinghe City, Jiang Qingyi and the others flew toward the capital of Zhou.
For a cultivator at the Ascension realm like the Myriad Sword Sect's sect master, reaching the Zhou capital would take three days at most.
But she did not do that.
It was not because Huang Wei and Qiuye were only at the Nascent Soul realm.
It was only because there was a trace of unease in the heart of this sect master of the Myriad Sword Sect...
Three thousand years...
She had already been searching for three thousand years.
Countless times she had received word of him.
But every time, when she thought she was about to find him, the person she met was not him...
Countless hopes, countless disappointments—they had left her heart slowly going numb.
This time, it had been divined by the City Lord of Tianji City.
The City Lord of Tianji City's skill in divination was the finest in the world.
But a "reading" was still only a "reading."
However formidable a person's divination might be, there was always a chance of getting it wrong.
And just as the sect master's thoughts were in a tangle, she saw, ahead and to the left, a cluster of mountains folded one around another,
The sect master's expression paused for a beat, and then she flew toward the mountains.
When she came to the air above the mountains, a sea of flowers came into the sect master's view.
The sect master's eyes flickered, and she slowly glided down.
Huang Wei and Qiuye exchanged a glance, not knowing what had come over the sect master, and had no choice but to follow her down.
The sect master came to that sea of flowers.
She walked forward, one step at a time.
The place was ringed by mountains on every side, enclosing a basin in the middle.
At the center of the sea of flowers lay a lake of deep azure.
At last the sect master stopped before the lake.
In front of the lake stood a stone.
Words were carved on the stone.
But after the baptism of the years, the words on it had blurred past reading, and the stone itself had weathered into a sorry shape.
"Sect Master, what is so special about this stone tablet?"
Qiuye stepped up in front of the sect master and asked curiously.
"Do you know what this place is called?" The sect master lifted her eyes, and the clear lake water was reflected in their limpid depths.
Qiuye turned to look at Huang Wei; Huang Wei shook his head, his eyes seeming to say, "Don't ask me. I don't know what this place is called either."
"This place is called 'Sea of Flowering Clouds,'" the sect master told the sword attendant beside her.
"Sea of Flowering Clouds..." Qiuye murmured softly. "What a lovely name. Did you give it that name, Sect Master?"
The sect master shook her head. "A man named it."
"A man?" Qiuye said, puzzled.
What kind of man could the sect master hold so in her heart?
"A man I absolutely must kill with my own hands!"
The sect master's white, delicate fingers gently stroked the carved strokes on the stone.
Qiuye looked and looked again, and in those blurred carvings she seemed faintly to make out the character "Xiao."
"Master, it's so beautiful here... really so beautiful..."
The girl called out happily, and her voice echoed through the valley.
Amid the sea of flowers, Jiang Qingyi flitted about endlessly like a butterfly.
In the year since they had set out, this was the first time Jiang Qingyi had seen so beautiful a place.
"Master, come quick..." Jiang Qingyi shouted loudly to her master behind her.
"Coming." Xiao Mo walked up step by step and followed behind his disciple.
"Wow, the lake water is so blue."
Jiang Qingyi walked to the water's edge—it was as if this were no lake at all, but a patch some immortal had torn from the azure sky and laid out in the middle of the sea of flowers.
"It certainly is blue." Looking at the fine view, Xiao Mo nodded.
"Master... what do you say to the two of us living in seclusion here?" Jiang Qingyi turned around with her hands clasped behind her back and looked sweetly at her master. "This place is ringed by mountains on every side, and there isn't even a small path leading out. The Blood Butterfly Pavilion will never find us."
"Silly girl." Xiao Mo reached out and lightly rapped Jiang Qingyi on the head.
Jiang Qingyi let out a yelp of "Ow-wu" and clutched her head with both hands. "Master, that hurts... And... I'm not silly..."
"You say there's no small path leading out? Then let me ask you: how did we get in?"
"We flew in, of course~" Jiang Qingyi said happily.
Because Xiao Mo and Jiang Qingyi were being hunted, and the carriage was too slow,
they had decisively abandoned the carriage half a month earlier, the moment the Blood Butterfly Pavilion first found them.
"So you do know we flew in." Xiao Mo smiled. "Then tell me—can't the cultivators of the Blood Butterfly Pavilion fly too?"
"..." Jiang Qingyi puffed out her little mouth. "Honestly, that damned Blood Butterfly Pavilion, clinging to us like a dog-skin plaster. And here I wanted to live in seclusion with Master."
"All right, we'll look a little longer and then we have to go. Those Blood Butterfly Pavilion people are probably about to catch up."
"Wait, Master—let's give this place a name?" Jiang Qingyi said brightly.
"What's there to name?"
"Just give it one, Master, please give it a name, this place is so pretty..."
"Fine, fine." Xiao Mo thought for a moment and casually picked a name. "Then we'll call it Sea of Flowering Clouds."
"Sea of Flowering Clouds... Mm! Sea of Flowering Clouds it is~"
So saying, Jiang Qingyi drew the Xuanshuang sword and carved a few large words into the stone by the lake:
【Sea of Flowering Clouds — Master Xiao Mo and disciple Jiang Qingyi passed through here.】
Her carving done, Jiang Qingyi patted her little hands. "Master, starting today, this place is our secret base, okay~ Only the two of us will know about it."
"I've heard that after people die, they reincarnate.
"And after they reincarnate, they forget everything.
"If one day I reincarnate, or Master reincarnates, and we come to a place like this, we have to remember each other, okay~
"And when that time comes, I'll be Master's disciple again."
"Let's not, actually." Xiao Mo shook his head.
"Eh?" Jiang Qingyi grabbed her master's arm. "Why not, Master? Don't you want to remember Qingyi?"
"It's not that. I just find being your master a bit tiring." Xiao Mo flicked Jiang Qingyi's forehead. "I'd like an easier time of it next life."
"Oh, I see~ Then that's no problem~
Jiang Qingyi hugged Xiao Mo's arm and rested her head against his shoulder.
"If such a day ever comes, then Master shouldn't be the master anymore—Qingyi will be Master's master."
"Sure." Xiao Mo rubbed her head. "Then in the next life, Master, you must take good care of me, and don't let any of my fellow disciples bully me."
"Master won't have any other fellow disciples."
"Why not?"
"Because in this life Master has only me as a disciple."
Jiang Qingyi's eyes curved into crescents.
"So in the next life, Qingyi will have only Master too..."