Pei Hongye took hold of Tang Yu's left hand, and Tang Yu gently clasped the gray butterfly in his right.
A moment later, the space around them turned into a chaotic spatial current. Countless disordered images flickered past before finally settling into a torrential downpour.
A curtain of rain blanketed the earth. The two of them now stood within an ancient town.
The entire world was shrouded in dark clouds and violent rain. What should have been an elegant, old-fashioned Jiangnan town now contained nothing but the clamorous sound of rainfall. Everything felt far too abnormal.
This world was steeped in deathly stillness.
Tang Yu's gaze fell upon a teahouse nearby.
The waiter inside sat on a bench by the entrance, staring out the door. The proprietor lay sprawled over the counter in deep sleep, one hand still resting on an abacus.
Both of them had turned into green wooden carvings, like plants grown into human shapes, yet Tang Yu could clearly sense that they were still alive.
But this state of being alive was nothing more than the barest sign of life.
And everyone in this town was the same.
Tang Yu swept the area with his divine sense and found that every nearby city and town was the same as well.
These people were alive, yet there was little difference between them and the dead.
Then, when Tang Yu's divine sense swept across a mountain range, he spotted a cultivator dressed as a Confucian scholar atop one of the peaks, holding a book of sages in his hands.
The moment the cultivator sensed Tang Yu's undisguised divine sense sweeping over him—
A flicker of delight appeared on his gaunt face. He stood and called out, "Are you immortals?"
The next moment, Tang Yu and Pei Hongye appeared beside