Shattered starlight drifted down from the sky, and the two iron-armored guards vanished without a trace.
The violent aftershocks of the battle slowly subsided. The thick white mist that had been torn apart and scattered gathered once more, sealing off the area.
Only the ancient stone stele, towering ten thousand feet high, stood silently ahead. Weathered and mottled by countless ages of wind and Dao erosion, it remained imposing and undying.
Li Yun drew in the seething Emperor Nature around him and walked toward the stele.
The closer Li Yun came, the more keenly he felt its immense, forbidding pressure.
That pressure exceeded even Li Yun's expectations.
In his eyes, the stele itself exerted greater pressure than many Supreme Sages.
He had no doubt.
Even if the strongest Supreme Sages he had met so far—the three ancestors of the Nine Wonders Clan—came in person, they might not be able to shake the stele.
That alone showed how formidable the power behind this stele, standing since time immemorial, must have been.
Li Yun pressed on against that pressure, his steps growing slower and slower. By the time he reached the foot of the stele and saw an ancient but somewhat dilapidated stone gate, sweat was pouring off him like rain.
His heart hammered in his chest.
After taking such a great risk, he had finally reached the true heart of this mysterious Mountain Forest.
Then he glanced back without thinking.
He froze.
The white mist behind him had vanished at some point. No—that was not quite right. He could no longer see the Mountain Forest at all.
He knew he had truly passed through the white mist and entered the region of space and time that had overlapped with the Mountain Forest through the spreading mist.
In other words, he was