My dao to eternity

He did not slip away from the city the way a man in a hurry might have. He went first to the Formation Guild, the commission he'd been working on the day Mu Qinghe and Luo Yulan first came to his gate now finished, and submitted it through the front counter with the same unhurried manner he brought to every transaction.

Shen Lian processed the paperwork without any particular scrutiny, counting out his payment in spirit stones and sliding them across the counter with a brief, ordinary comment about the quality of the work — competent, she said, as she always said, nothing about the exchange suggesting anything unusual was happening at all. Lin Fan was still Lin Fan. The formation maniac, submitting finished work exactly as expected, collecting payment exactly as expected, offering no hint that anything beyond the ordinary rhythm of his days had shifted in the slightest.

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