Half an hour passed in silence.
Zhang Tie opened his eyes. The turbulence in the depths of his pupils had already subsided, like an ancient well incapable of reflecting emotion.
He tucked the finger bone into his sleeve with a casual motion.
Xuan Gu's lips moved as if he wanted to say something. His Adam's apple bobbed once, but in the end, not a sound escaped through his teeth.
The information contained within the finger bone had been imprinted into Zhang Tie's sea of consciousness, word for word, and it was no different from what Xuan Gu had previously revealed.
The master of this Nether Emperor's Immortal Mansion truly was not a creature of this world.
Yet the so-called "outside world" did not refer to some higher or lower plane, but to a place known as the Void Realm. Within that incomprehensible void floated more than one world like the one Zhang Tie inhabited—a complete "Three Thousand Realms," encompassing one layer of the Immortal Realm, nine layers of the Spirit Realm, and countless lower-world planes.
Beyond the Void Realm lay other Three Thousand Realms.
The master of the immortal mansion had come from one of them.
These fragmented revelations quietly aligned with Immortal Venerable Tian Jue's conjectures. Zhang Tie felt his understanding of this world grow slightly deeper, yet he had merely lifted one corner of a heavy curtain. Behind it lay a vaster, more unfathomable darkness.
He raised his eyes and looked at Xuan Gu, his voice steady and without fluctuation. "For now, I believe what you said earlier. But where is the Emperor's Order? How do we find it?"
Xuan Gu's shoulders seemed to relax as he let out a breath. "What does Fellow Daoist Zhang think I have been seeking among these bandit cultivators for?"
He spoke