Guan Qing handed the sealed letter to the cultivator guarding the camp gate. Once the errand was done, he turned and raised a hand, signaling the three behind him to return the way they had come.
The group slowly retreated across fragments of floating stars drifting through the void. Gale Wind wrapped Ruin Dust from the ruins around their robes, producing a string of faint crackles.
Qin He lagged half a step behind, deliberately slowing his pace as he cast an unobtrusive glance back at the towering Central Army Camp.
The camp walls, forged from Black Iron, were embedded with faded meteoric-iron patterns. Countless pale silver threads of restrictions wound around the vault of the sky, vanishing into the murky void mist.
He had already made up his mind.
He had to enter this camp.
After all his twists and turns since entering the Returning Ruins Realm, this was the moment he had come closest to the pull of his origin.
No one else could see any anomaly, but deep within Qin He's soul, an exceedingly faint thread had always hung suspended. That thread had neither root nor source. It belonged neither to spiritual power nor the soul. It could not be touched or seen, as though it had fallen from a crack between heaven and earth.
The closer he drew to the heart of the Central Army Camp, the more substantial that pull became, gently tugging at his bones and blood, urging him inward.
This was a perception that belonged to him alone.
Qin He discovered that the Central Army Camp's guards were exceedingly vigilant, and their inspections were exceptionally strict.
Anyone entering the Central Army Camp had to undergo questioning, present entry and exit tokens and various proofs, and even submit to illumination by a mirror-type magical artifact.