At sunset, Zhensha Pass.
The lingering glow of the setting sun bathed the majestic pass walls. The black stone bricks shimmered with a metallic sheen, and the True Script Runes carved into their surfaces quietly emerged, unfathomably profound.
Fully armed Battle Cultivators patrolled back and forth atop the broad walls, vigilantly watching the Gobi Desert ahead.
"What's that?"
Suddenly, a Battle Cultivator stopped, his gaze fixed upon the end of the horizon.
At the line where sky met wasteland, it seemed as though raging flames had ignited. Vast swathes of fiery clouds rose up, casting out countless rays of light.
More and more burning clouds appeared, seizing a great expanse of the sky in the blink of an eye.
And rapidly closing in on Zhensha Pass!
Such a strange sight naturally drew the attention of the Battle Cultivators guarding the walls.
Everyone instinctively sensed danger, and the runes across the wall lit up one after another.
This was the sign that the city-protecting array had activated.
Under normal circumstances, to reduce the consumption of the spirit vein and Spirit Stones, the core of the city-protecting array beneath Daying City remained dormant, with only a portion of its subsidiary arrays maintaining low-level operation.
Yet once danger appeared or an attack came, this immensely powerful grand array would activate automatically.
This highly spiritualized defensive mechanism was jointly formed by the array spirit and the Battle Cultivators guarding Zhensha Pass.
In other words, once a large number of Battle Cultivators sensed danger, the city-protecting array would enter a defensive state on its own, without requiring the authority of the Grand Commander or Grand Protector Heavenly Master.
And it would raise its defenses in tandem with the level of threat!
The one truly in control of this array was, in fact, the array spirit!