What appeared before everyone’s eyes was a woman who looked almost no older than thirty.
She wore a kimono of white with a touch of red, her glossy black hair coiled into a lovely bun atop her head, with an openwork golden hairpin slanting through it. Neither her looks nor her bearing disappointed—her skin was fair as snow, and her eyes were like a pool of clear water. Though she was no longer young—her real age was probably even greater than her appearance suggested—there was still a refined, noble elegance in her glance that left people captivated, feeling unworthy, and afraid to profane her.
Her appearance truly matched her voice—both were otherworldly, like a fairy stepped out of a painting. She rather proved the saying that a woman with a beautiful voice rarely disappoints in looks.
Jiang Fei looked at the woman walking over, then at the expressions of Qinglong and Yagyu Munenori, and without needing to guess, he was certain of her identity.
She was almost certainly Aoki Youxue—the woman who, back in the day, had three of the most outstanding geniuses of their time—Qinglong, Yagyu Munenori, and Fantian—madly in love with her, all of whom were still single after all these years. With looks like that, she had every right to be a devastating beauty.
And logically speaking, Aoki Youxue should be of the same generation as Qinglong and Yagyu Munenori—around forty or fifty by now. Yet she looked no different from a young woman in her twenties, with snow-white skin, impossibly youthful…
Could this woman have the same constitution as Xiaolongnü? After sixteen years, there was simply no difference from sixteen years ago.
“Thank goodness this woman isn’t dead—she came out and stopped the furious Qinglong. Otherwise, Tsukahara Bokuden might not have been able to protect himself,” Jiang Fei thought silently.
As for her looks, though Jiang Fei was struck by her beauty, he didn’t take it too much to heart or become infatuated.
Never mind how old Aoki Youxue was—just in terms of appearance alone, Lin Moli, Bai Ruoxi, and Qiao Yiyi were all not much inferior to her. At most, she had the advantage of her traditional attire and perhaps, being a woman of the martial world, she carried an extra air of transcendence compared to ordinary women.
A woman of the martial world?
At that thought, Jiang Fei suddenly felt something was off.
Unlike the martial arts experts flitting about the scene, Aoki Youxue’s entrance consisted of her walking over step by step from the pavilion. And most importantly, it seemed she wasn’t unwilling to use lightness skill—it seemed she… couldn’t use lightness skill anymore.
According to what the Lion King had said, Aoki Youxue had been an extraordinarily gifted martial arts prodigy in her day—a woman who rivaled any man, and whose cultivation back then was in no way inferior to Qinglong, Yagyu Munenori, or Fantian.
After all these years, even if her training had slowed and her progress wasn’t rapid, she should at least have reached the Danjin level, even if she hadn’t stepped into the Xiantian level like Qinglong and Fantian, right?
A Danjin-level expert was already vastly different from ordinary martial artists. With abundant internal energy, even without specifically learning lightness skill, one could still leap across roofs and walls, and their breath would flow endlessly—completely different from ordinary people.
But the Aoki Youxue before them now, still breathtakingly beautiful, truly had not a trace of a martial expert’s aura left. It was as if she had become an ordinary person entirely.
Jiang Fei frowned and carefully sensed her, confirming his perception wasn’t wrong.
Either this woman’s strength had grown so unimaginably high that it exceeded the scope of Jiang Fei’s understanding—surpassing even his cheap master Xuanjizi’s Xiantian Inner Gang realm and entering the as-yet-unknown “Shattering the Void” realm, which was why Jiang Fei couldn’t sense it—or this woman’s cultivation was truly gone, her internal energy vanished…
By logical reasoning, the latter possibility was naturally more likely.
The Xiantian Inner Gang realm—among all the people Jiang Fei had encountered, only his unfathomable cheap master had reached that level. To go beyond that… easier said than done.
“Youxue!” After struggling for a long while, once Qinglong confirmed that the beauty before him was truly the one he’d dreamed of day and night, he finally opened his mouth.
Tough as he was, in this moment he was truly crying—old tears streaming, vision blurry.
No one could understand the feeling of reuniting with a beloved after years apart. And the most crucial thing was that all these years, Qinglong had believed Aoki Youxue was dead. He had lived in seclusion like a walking corpse for so many years.
The torment and suffering in his heart could almost rival that of the Divine Eagle Hero Yang Guo from The Return of the Condor Heroes. When Yang Guo waited for Xiaolongnü, though it was also sixteen years, at least Huang Rong had come up with a clever trick to deceive him, giving him sixteen years of hope.
But Qinglong—for all these years, he’d had not a shred of hope, living in gray despair the entire time!
Now, seeing that Aoki Youxue truly wasn’t dead and had appeared before him, how could Qinglong possibly contain his emotions?
Whoosh!
In the next instant, Qinglong had already appeared before Aoki Youxue, tightly pulling her into his embrace, his chin resting on her forehead, murmuring incoherently: “You’re alive, you’re alive—Youxue, you’re really alive! Do you know how much I’ve missed you all these years?”
Tears glistened in Aoki Youxue’s eyes as well. She buried her head against Qinglong’s neck and said softly, “I know, I know…”
Yagyu Munenori, watching from the side, became instantly overcome with emotion at the sight of Aoki Youxue—his eyes reddened. He too had loved this woman for many years, and for her sake had never married or had children all this time!
But watching Qinglong and Aoki Youxue embrace, after his body trembled a few times and he seemed about to step forward, he ultimately held back and did not approach.
It wasn’t because his strength was now inferior to Qinglong’s and he couldn’t match him, so he had no choice but to yield Aoki Youxue. If he were the kind of person who feared death, he wouldn’t have calmly accepted Jiang Fei’s half-year challenge, nor would he have come here today.
The reason he didn’t rush forward to hold Aoki Youxue was that, before her “death” all those years ago, Aoki Youxue had already made a choice. She had personally admitted that the one she loved most was Qinglong—that she had only ever regarded Yagyu Munenori and Fantian as like-minded good friends, with no romantic feelings between them…
If Yagyu Munenori had come here alone today and seen Aoki Youxue, then without question he would have stepped forward and held her tight. But with Qinglong present, no matter how many thoughts churned in Yagyu Munenori’s heart, in the end he could only shake his head with a sigh.
“Hm?”
After being emotional for a full two or three minutes, Qinglong finally calmed down a bit and collected himself. Then, he noticed something was wrong…
Reaching out to grasp Aoki Youxue’s wrist, Qinglong quickly said in a low voice: “Why has your internal energy completely disappeared? Who destroyed your cultivation!”
