Another realm lay within, black as ink, like a boundless void. Specks of starlight flickered across its central region, where the two sides hovered in confrontation, killing intent thick in the air, ready to erupt at the slightest touch.
Above them stretched a vast blue-green Sky Curtain, flowing slowly like immeasurably deep water. Such a strange sight was practically a "Biyu" used as a verb.
Beneath their feet ran a yellow "earthen wall" spanning Heaven and Earth, as tall as the Sword Qi Great Wall and extending for who knew how many millions of miles, like a frozen River of Time.
Far beyond the opposing sides, twelve points of light formed a circle of pure gold, standing in formation at the outermost perimeter.
They were the Earthly Branches Twelve, including the sword cultivator Song Xu stationed in Great Li Capital City. After receiving that edict to behead ghosts in broad daylight, they had all used the Three Mountains Talismans gifted by Mr. Chen. Each stood within a mountain-water Daoist field north of Treasure Bottle Continent's great ditch, their positions forming a ring like the mouth of a porcelain bottle.
The female ghost calling herself Gan Qinglü had earlier swept her sleeve, using a secret art to wrap up the souls of Emperor Yin Ji and the others, along with Prince Yin Miao's body. Right beneath the nose of Great Li's new National Teacher, a man of savage methods, she had avoided the "Yangguan Road" and chosen a Yellow Springs path where yin and yang followed separate routes, attempting to flee Treasure Bottle Continent as quickly as possible and cross the sea back to the Central Divine Continent.
Yet their path had still been blocked by a figure in blue robes.
Why was this bastard so impossible to shake off, so