Little Crane flew with great care. She shrank the Spirit Crane Space to its limit and merged herself completely into the spatial fluctuations, slipping through gaps in the patrols as silently as a feather in the dark.
One hour passed.
Then two.
Then three.
The passage seemed endless.
Suddenly, Little Crane stopped.
"What is it?"
Fang Chen asked.
"There's something ahead."
Little Crane's silver eyes fixed on the Fog Wall to the left of the passage.
A figure slowly emerged from the fog.
It was a Human Cultivator in battered Battle Armor, sitting cross-legged on a floating rock.
His eyes were closed, his aura so faint it seemed it might vanish at any moment.
But most startling of all were the nine chains wrapped around him. Their other ends disappeared into the Void, connected to who knew where.
Strange Runes flowed ceaselessly across the chains, writhing over their surfaces like living things. Each time they moved, the Cultivator's aura weakened a little more.
"Those are the Immortal-Binding Chains."
Gu Daozi suddenly spoke, a tremor in his voice. "They're instruments of torture the World Will uses to imprison powerful Cultivators. Once they bind someone, they drain their Cultivation until nothing remains. Then the victim is remade into a Heavenly Slave."
He stared hard at the Cultivator, then cried out, "It's Immortal Emperor Yin-Yang! He's still alive!"
"Immortal Emperor Yin-Yang?" Fang Chen frowned.
"One of the leaders of the Second Heaven-Extermination War. A Ninth-Turn Immortal Emperor who excelled in Yin Yang Law. They say he held off three Ninth-Turn Immortal Emperors of the Devil Race by himself, buying time for the allied forces to retreat."
Grief flashed in Gu Daozi's eyes. "I never imagined he was trapped here, suffering a fate worse than death."
White Fox sighed. "He isn't the only prisoner