Seventeen, maybe eighteen.
The Eye of Truth was running its assessment in real time — Foundation Establishment Early, yin-alignment, the Yin Devouring Body still present and intact, the physique's potential logarithmically increasing as the cultivation restoration progressed.
She was looking at the flower.
At the light of it running through her.
Her eyes — the specific, filling, present, fully-here quality of eyes that were becoming a living person's eyes rather than a ghost's eyes.
Brown.
He noted: brown eyes. Warm brown.
She was becoming, in real time, quite pretty.
He noted this.
He filed it.
"Your revenge is yours," he said.
The flat, present, turning-to-leave delivery.
"Protect your mother," he said. "The energy will hold. You have what you need."
He turned.
"Stop—"
Her voice — the transitioning voice, still carrying the slight yin-resonance of the ghost register but becoming the warm, present, young-woman register of someone who was mostly alive now.
