The woman surnamed Mu had only flown a little over ten li when a sudden, inexplicable dread washed over her. The spiritual energy in the air instantly churned and rolled into chaos, and in the blink of an eye, countless spiritual vortexes formed all around.
Caught completely off guard, she stumbled in midair and nearly plummeted to the ground along with her flying artifact.
Terrified, the woman hastily gathered every ounce of spiritual power in her body and barely managed to stabilize herself amid the turbulent spiritual fluctuations. She quickly looked around — and what met her eyes left her utterly dumbfounded.
At an altitude of over a hundred zhang, countless motes of spiritual light had appeared, visible to the naked eye. The lights shimmered in every color, flickering between dim and bright, yet each one radiated heaven-and-earth spiritual energy of extraordinary purity. The sight was dazzlingly beautiful.
The woman was horrified. When her gaze swept toward the distance, the color drained from her face entirely.
Wherever her bright eyes looked, the entire sky was filled with motes of spiritual light — boundless and infinite, stretching on without end.
Heavens! What was happening?
Hovering in midair on her artifact, the woman stared blankly at the bizarre spectacle before her.
In truth, this extraordinary phenomenon of condensed spiritual light covered the entire area within a hundred li of Han Li's cave dwelling as its center.
At the very moment the woman sensed the spiritual anomaly, tens of thousands of other cultivators from the Fallcloud Sect likewise felt this massive upheaval.
And those cultivators within the hundred-li radius, like the woman surnamed Mu, witnessed the spectacle with their own eyes.
However, being inside this phenomenon was no pleasant experience.
Those at Foundation Establishment or above could manage — aside from physical discomfort and a sense of unease, they could more or less maintain their composure.
But the vast number of Qi Refinement cultivators felt an enormous spiritual pressure bearing down on them. Without exception, they panted faintly, and those with even shallower cultivation found it difficult to breathe.
Consumed by fear, these cultivators had no energy to spare for wondering what this celestial omen signified. They hurriedly sat cross-legged right where they stood, circulating their breath and doing their utmost to resist this spine-chilling transformation.
As for the cultivators outside the Fallcloud Sect, though they could not witness the sight directly, they all felt the violent oscillations of heaven-and-earth spiritual energy to varying degrees.
Some cultivators of extremely deep cultivation — even those thousands or tens of thousands of li away — cast their astonished gazes toward the location of the Fallcloud Sect.
Though the overwhelming majority of cultivators had never seen this and had no idea what the appearance of such a celestial phenomenon meant, those who did were variously shocked, delighted, appalled, stunned — and the greater part of them burned with envy and jealousy!
On the main peak of the Fallcloud Sect, inside a cave dwelling thousands of zhang high, a silver-haired old man sat cross-legged, his complexion ashen as he drew in and released his breath — he looked like someone convalescing from a grave illness.
The instant the spiritual light appeared several hundred li away, the old man's long white eyebrows twitched. His eyes snapped open with undisguised shock, revealing an expression of utter disbelief.
He withdrew from his cultivation technique without a moment's hesitation and immediately transformed into a streak of white light, shooting out of the cave dwelling.
Moments later, the silver-haired old man stood atop a towering boulder on the summit of the main peak, gazing with solemn gravity in the direction of Han Li's dwelling, his expression shifting between dark and light.
Just then, a streak of yellow light came hurtling through the sky from beyond, aimed straight at the old man's cave dwelling. But the moment the yellow light caught sight of the old man already standing outside, it swooped directly to his side. The radiance withdrew, revealing a middle-aged man with a sallow, greenish complexion.