A day later.
Li Yun stopped abruptly, sending loose stones skittering beneath his feet. The sound rang especially clear in the silent mountain wind.
He pulled up short, his robes whipping around him as he froze like an arrow suddenly halted in midflight.
Not far away.
On a stretch of Wilderness barely a hundred li across, an Ancient Sword roughly a hundred zhang tall stood embedded in the ground at an angle.
The blade was dark gold from end to end, its surface mottled with the marks of time, as though it bore countless tales of ages past.
A faded black tassel wound around the hilt and stirred faintly in the wind, whispering of some ancient presence.
Where the blade pierced the earth, a bottomless fissure split the ground. A dim blue glow edged the crack, as though some mighty energy still flowed around the sword.
For a hundred li in every direction, nothing grew. Not a blade of grass could be found.
The wind howled across the wasteland, only to stop dead within a hundred zhang of the Ancient Sword, as though suppressed by an invisible force.
Li Yun gazed at the Ancient Sword, his pupils contracting slightly.
He could feel that, motionless though it was, the sword gave off a pressure that made his heart shudder.
It felt like a sleeping primordial beast that might wake at any moment and devour everything before it.
The blade trembled faintly and gave a low hum.
The sound was not shrill, yet it seemed to pierce space and ring directly in the depths of his soul.
Everything was almost identical to the scenes the Gate of Myriad Wonders had shown him twice.
Li Yun was now certain he had found the right place.
But...
Was this truly the heart of the