"......"
Upon hearing the elder's transmission from outside, Qiushui Fuyan's delicate body trembled. The thing she least wanted to happen had come to pass sooner than she could have imagined.
"They've come this quickly." At the same time, Huangfu Haoyue shot to his feet. After donning his clothes, he strode rapidly toward the exit — yet at the doorway, he suddenly halted and turned back, fixing Qiushui Fuyan with a solemn gaze.
"Fuyan, you must not let Chu Feng learn of the Blood Qilin's assault on us. If Chu Feng emerges from the Path to Immortality, use the teleportation formation to take him away."
As those words left his lips, a look of earnest pleading surfaced in Huangfu Haoyue's eyes. "Chu Feng absolutely cannot come to harm. His battlefield belongs to the Martial Sacred Continent — the Eastern Sea's affairs are no longer something he should involve himself in. Fuyan, I know doing this will cause you great pain, but... I am begging you!"
With those words, all manner of reluctant parting flickered through Huangfu Haoyue's eyes — yet he made sure Qiushui Fuyan did not catch sight of it. His figure blurred, and he vanished from the spot.
Meanwhile, the entire Misty Immortal Peak had already descended into chaos, caught off guard by the Blood Qilin army's sudden arrival.
Even so, every last ounce of fighting strength gathered within Misty Immortal Peak was rushing outward, prepared to defend it to the last breath.
Yet under these circumstances, Qiushui Fuyan — the very master of Misty Immortal Peak — did not charge out to join the fray. Instead, she headed toward the Path to Immortality.
She did not wish to defy Huangfu Haoyue's words, nor did she want anything terrible to befall Chu Feng. And so she made her decision: while the others fought the Blood Qilin in a life-or-death struggle, she would stand guard outside the Path to Immortality. The moment Chu Feng emerged, she would use the internal teleportation formation to spirit him away.
As for Chu Feng, he was already deep within the Path to Immortality.
The Path to Immortality was quite peculiar. Upon stepping through its gate, one found oneself on a wide road that appeared to be crafted from crystal, yet radiated a dazzling golden light.
Moreover, this was no mere broad thoroughfare. Scenery flanked both sides of the road.
That scenery, however, was somewhat eerie. It was beautiful — beautiful as a poem, beautiful as a painting, enough to entrance the heart.
And the deeper one ventured, the more gorgeous it became. Yet the reason it could be called eerie was that along the entire journey, in addition to the vistas on either side, there lay endless white bones nestled within those scenes. Those bones were not exclusively human — many belonged to demon beasts.
The bones were so numerous that in certain places they had piled into mountains.
Most importantly, the scenery on both sides was entirely illusory — one could not step into it at all. The only real thing here was the Path to Immortality itself.
As for the eerie vistas flanking it, Chu Feng suspected they carried a deeper meaning — that the road to immortality was paved with countless bones. Immortality was not easily attained; a single misstep meant death.
It was worth noting, however, that this Path to Immortality did indeed contain a unique and special power. Just as Qiushui Fuyan had described, that power was not only beneficial to cultivation but also possessed a particularly nourishing effect on one's Mental Power. For Chu Feng in his current state, though, its impact was rather negligible.
By now, Chu Feng had long since reached the depths of the Path to Immortality — the very place where Qiushui Fuyan and the others had not dared to venture.
How could one be certain they had not dared enter? Because along both sides of the Ascension Staircase here, towering trees loomed, their vines cascading downward and leaving only a narrow path to walk upon.
Most critically, those vines were not merely indestructible — they were laced with a lethal poison, and they moved erratically. The moment one touched the barbed thorns upon them, death was certain.
But Chu Feng was immune to all poisons. Such venomous obstacles naturally posed no challenge for him.
Chu Feng pressed forward at a swift pace. Setting aside his poison immunity, a single layer of protective barrier around his body was more than enough to keep those vines from so much as scratching him.
"Yafei, Yan Ruyu, Murong Wan — the three of you had better be alive."
Yet the deeper he ventured into the path, the more uneasy Chu Feng grew. For as he journeyed onward, carefully extending his Mental Power to sense his surroundings, he not only failed to discover the remains of Yafei and the other two — he could not detect their auras either.