The voice from the horizon carried a strange penetrating power, as though it ignored the layers of laws within the Mountain Protection Array and rang out directly in the depths of everyone's divine soul.
The sect masters in the Square, whose reserves Zhou Xuan had just wrung dry and whose spirits had collapsed, all raised their heads to look at the sky.
"Heavenly Strategy Pavilion? Ji Chen?"
Chen Changgeng muttered the name, his expression turning even uglier.
The Heavenly Strategy Pavilion was an organization as renowned as the Court Guardian Pavilion, yet far more mysterious and unfathomable.
If the Court Guardian Pavilion stood domineeringly in the open, styling itself the guardian of the Immortal Court, then the Heavenly Strategy Pavilion was a venomous snake lurking in the shadows. No one knew where its strongholds were, nor how many trump cards it held.
These two organizations had fought for centuries. Any faction in Central Province with even a little history had heard of their struggle.
Now, just after Zhou Xuan had crippled the Court Guardian Pavilion Master, the Heavenly Strategy Pavilion's master had come knocking?
What was he after? Seizing territory? Or... picking a fight with Zhou Xuan?
Under everyone's startled, uncertain gazes, a ring of visibly golden ripples spread across the Mountain Protection Array surrounding the Purple-Gold Immortal Vein.
Immediately afterward, a pitch-black Spirit Boat barely a thousand feet long, without a single identifying mark, silently passed through the array's curtain of light and hovered above the White Jade Plaza.
It had not forced its way in like the Myriad Forms Pavilion. Instead, as though some permission had been granted, the array had opened a passage for it of its own accord.
The Spirit Boat's cabin door opened, and a young man in blue robes emerged, followed by two black-clad