Xiao Lingyun tried to move, forcing his frail body to rise from the cold ground, but he knew it was pointless. His old and weakened limbs refused to obey, weighed down not only by his own exhaustion but also by the suffocating aura radiating from Ling Shuangqian. It felt as though an entire mountain pressed down on his chest, crushing his breath with an unseen force.
When... when did she become this strong? His heart pounded wildly. Her presence, once familiar, now felt foreign. The pressure rolling off her was dangerously close to the Heavenly Ascension stage. Yet when he had last seen her, four hundred years ago, she had still been a rookie in the Nascent Soul stage.
