First, one had to understand exactly where Fang Xiao was.
This was the area of the Realm Battlefield belonging to the Spirit Realm. Since it could serve as the venue for a grand trading event, it was naturally located near the rear.
And that was precisely what Fang Xiao found difficult to understand.
Logically speaking, the surrounding grotto-heavens should all belong to the Spirit Realm. There should have been no possibility of Devil Race members, or martial cultivators, appearing here.
Yet this grotto-heaven, already occupied by the Devil Race, had truly appeared before him.
"Two grotto-heavens lie beside each other, and during the trading event at that. How could one have been silently conquered by the Devil Race without anyone noticing?
"Or could it be..."
In an instant, Fang Xiao thought of a possibility.
The Devil Race's conquest and occupation of this grotto-heaven had not been a coincidence, but a premeditated act.
Otherwise, why had none of the passing cultivators discovered it?
The only explanation was that not a single cultivator who passed through this route had left alive. Every one of them had been slaughtered.
Fang Xiao even suspected that this was an operation specifically targeting Spirit Realm cultivators.
Otherwise, how could it be such a coincidence that they had conquered the neighboring grotto-heaven precisely during the trading event?
Just as Fang Xiao turned back toward the spatial passage to investigate the group of Void Refining cultivators pursuing him from behind, he discovered something amiss.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and his heart jolted.
"This spatial passage has actually been altered into a one-way route."
In other words, the spatial passage that had originally allowed travel in both directions could now only be exited, not entered.
The rapidly approaching auras within the distant devil clouds further confirmed Fang Xiao's earlier