Some time earlier.
As An Jing single-handedly defeated the combined forces of numerous prodigies, suppressing his generation and proving himself invincible among the younger generation, at the other end of Zhaolin Realm, wild tides were also surging.
Above the secret-realm ruins of the Dark Nether Spirit Marsh, two figures sped across the dried-out marshland and arrived beside the corpse at its center.
"Isn't this Fa Zichen of Star-Picking Mountain?"
At the sight of the body, Ming Heguang clutched his wine gourd and took a fierce swig. Even the fiery liquor could not suppress the shock in his heart. "I thought he'd gone off to gang up on my monstrous martial nephew too. How did he die in a place like this?"
He became wary. Anyone would have been wary—one of the strongest young cultivators of the Huaixu Chronicle era had died here without a sound. This meant that anyone in Zhaolin Realm, aside from An Jing, might meet the same fate in the next instant!
"Wait, something's not right!"
Zhou Jin was, truth be told, even more startled than Ming Heguang, because he had sensed a familiar aura and brought someone here, never expecting to find a corpse.
But precisely because of that, he quickly noticed something amiss. After crouching down to carefully inspect Fa Zichen's corpse, he declared with an incomparably grave expression, "Fa Zichen is a Jinyuantian Walker! And he's on our side!"
"Why?" Ming Heguang was somewhat curious. Though he could not hear "Jinyuantian," he understood Zhou Jin's implication.
—Fa Zichen belonged to the same mysterious organization as Zhou Jin, one that stretched across the entire Huaixu Realm, and they likely even belonged to the same faction.
In other words, they were teammates.
Zhou Jin rose to his feet and explained heavily, "There are different factions within