On a mountain peak wreathed in mist, the pine forest swayed gently in the wind, wave after wave of pine wind sounding like music from heaven.
A stone staircase wound upward, with endless stretches of lush green bamboo on either side. As one climbed higher, the mist gradually thickened.
At the mountaintop, a vast cluster of unadorned buildings appeared and vanished amid the mist. Ancient trees and trailing vines coiled around them, while wisps of green smoke rose from the Taoist temples, weaving together with the mountain mist like a fairyland.
This was Great Luo Sect, one of the Three Daoist Sects, and also publicly recognized as the foremost branch of the Daoist lineage—the ancestral court of Daoism! There were no thousand-year empires in this world, but there were thousand-year aristocratic families and thousand-year sects.
For example, Pudu Temple, the holy land of Buddhism, was a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple. As the ancestral court of Daoism, Great Luo Sect had also existed for more than eight hundred years!
Ai Liangshan walked out of a Taoist temple and hurried toward the edge of the cliff.
The mountain wind brushed his face, whipping his Daoist robe with a sharp rustle.
More than a dozen iron pillars stood along the cliffside, each locked with iron chains as thick as a wrist.
The other ends of the chains extended beyond the cliff, hidden in the mist.
Great Luo Mountain's sect grounds encompassed more than a dozen peaks in all, and each peak was connected by chains like these.
If one wanted to travel from one peak to another, the fastest way was to go directly along the chains.
When Ai Liangshan reached the cliff's edge, disciples wearing Great Luo Sect Daoist robes were continually leaping down from the chains, landing steadily on the ground.
They