Spiritual mist swirled within the cave abode.
Deep inside, an old woman sat cross-legged on a lotus-shaped jade dais.
She wore plain white hemp robes, her hair crane-white and her skin withered. The wrinkles covering her face seemed to record the vicissitudes of countless years.
Yet her eyes were not cloudy. Instead, they were clear and fathomless, holding the serenity of someone who had seen through the ways of the world.
She was the pillar supporting Hundred Flowers Valley, an early-stage Divine Mansion Realm Great Expert—the Night-Blooming Cereus Fairy.
At that moment, she was at the critical stage of breaking through to the middle stage of the Divine Mansion Realm. Her spiritual power surged like mighty rivers, battering madly against that formidable barrier.
Suddenly, she seemed to sense something, and her eyes, normally as still as an ancient well, turned toward the outside of her cave abode.
A powerful, unfamiliar Divine Mansion Realm aura had appeared outside her secluded abode without the slightest concealment, locking precisely onto her.
This aura... belonged to none of the Divine Mansion Realm cultivators she knew.
The spiritual power within her faltered, interrupting her breakthrough.
The Night-Blooming Cereus Fairy sighed softly. She felt little anger, only profound exhaustion and a trace of foreboding.
For someone to appear at such a time, in such a manner, in the forbidden grounds at the deepest reaches of Hundred Flowers Valley...
Something earth-shattering must have happened in the valley.
She rose to her feet, and the stone door slowly opened.
She walked out of her cave abode at an unhurried pace, calmly regarding the Purple-Robed Middle-Aged Man standing nearby with his hands behind his back.
Zhao Wujiu was also sizing her up. This Divine Mansion Realm Great Expert, whose fame resounded throughout Jade Prefecture, now had a somewhat unsteady