All Elites Deployed

At dusk, the sun sank in the west. Crimson evening clouds dyed the horizon red like a wildfire sweeping across the plains. Their lingering light spilled over the sea, turning its reflection scarlet as the waves shimmered.

In the waters near Three Immortals Island, a black whale over a hundred zhang long floated on the surface. Over a thousand high-ranking cultivators stood upon its back. The one with the highest cultivation was a woman with delicate, elegant features. She wore a lotus-root-colored robe with sleeves trailing to the ground, a white jade belt cinching her slender waist.

Song Yan, the leader of Three Immortals Island, Spirit Transformation Early Stage.

"By my reckoning, Fellow Daoist Zhao and Fellow Daoist Li have set out as well. It is time for us to depart."

Song Yan swept her voluminous sleeve. The black whale spouted a colossal wave several hundred zhang high, then its massive body twisted as it swiftly dived forward. Wherever it passed, the seawater churned violently and parted into a passage for it.

The black whale headed toward the setting sun. Before long, it became a tiny black dot and vanished into the vast sea.

Penglai Island. At the island's northwestern corner stood a Heaven-Supporting Giant Peak, black from top to bottom. Its slopes were steep, and everything above the mountainside was shrouded in dense black fog, half-visible and half-hidden, lending the place an air of mystery.

At the summit lay a black stone plaza spanning ten thousand mu, where several thousand cultivators had gathered. In the center stood a square platform over a hundred zhang wide. A middle-aged man with a sallow face and a tall, reed-thin frame stood atop it.

The middle-aged man wore a black Daoist robe. His eyes were sunken, and dense baleful qi radiated from