"How," Wu Ling managed to begin before his mouth went dry and his tongue stalled in his throat. "How can you tell?"
"If you'd been in the sect two hundred years ago, you wouldn't need to ask," the Hall Master said, blinking her yellow-green eyes and allowing the power of her own bloodline to spill forth. In less time than it took Wu Ling to blink twice, the enchanting woman before him had become ordinary, her luxurious silken hair now dull and gray, her once supple skin dry and cracked. When she was finished, every facet of her appearance showed the ravages of time that hadn't been kind.
