Faced with Fang Chen's question, the Ghost Immortal Emperor did not answer at once.
He slowly raised his right hand, fingers spread, palm facing the void.
His eyes drifted shut. The energy around him began to circulate in a measured rhythm, like a circuit of Ancient Runes awakening after more than seventy million years of slumber.
The air before the Thatched Cottage trembled. Blades of grass and specks of dust rose under an unseen force, forming a slowly turning miniature vortex above the Ghost Immortal Emperor's palm.
Everyone held their breath.
The vortex spun faster and faster. Silver-White light seeped from the Ghost Immortal Emperor's palm like mercury leaking through a crack, weaving a fine net of light in the air.
The net grew denser and brighter until it condensed into a Silver-White rift before his palm.
The rift looked as though an invisible blade had sliced open the void. Its edges were smooth and clean, and from within came an aura utterly unlike that of the Land of Ending. Ancient and still, it carried the scent of ruins reopened after lying buried deep underground for far too long.
The Ghost Immortal Emperor opened his eyes and reached into the rift.
His arm disappeared inside. Several breaths passed before he slowly withdrew it, something resting in his palm.
It was a broken Black Stone Tablet.
The tablet stood roughly three feet tall and a foot and a half wide, with a thickness of about three fingers. Its jagged edges made it look like a fragment snapped from a larger slab by tremendous force.
Its surface was rough and mottled, marked as though by countless years of wind and sand. Faint traces of lines lay among those marks, resembling both writing and images, but they were too old and damaged to