The Grand Assembly Opens

The bustling night had finally drawn to a close.

Shen Yi had the corpses of the three evil-path cultivators and the Ronin gathered and buried before returning to the wooden cabin with A' Yue.

Though Gu Yiran and Song Wen had merely watched throughout the night,

and offered no help,

simply witnessing a night-long clash between Celestials—

especially the might of an Earth Immortal displayed by Shen Yi—had already benefited them immensely. They hurried back to meditate with closed eyes and ponder what they had seen.

After this round of probing,

the following days were calm and uneventful.

Chen Zhi'ang, Wuxin, and Qingfeng busied themselves receiving heroes from every corner and arranging the Celestial Assembly. The original Three Sects and Four Clans, meanwhile, followed Shen Yi's lead without question and allowed him to command them as he pleased. Shen Yi, in turn, handed them all over to Chen Zhi'ang's disposal.

Everything was ready.

Yet until the agreed day of the assembly arrived, not another Celestial returning from the hidden realms came to trouble Shen Yi.

On this day,

the sky was bright and clear, stretching blue for ten thousand miles.

Martial wanderers from the four seas and eight wildernesses gathered into great torrents, surging mightily toward Mount Tai.

The spectacle was magnificent.

Though it lacked the solemn grandeur and strict ceremony of the Heaven Worship Ceremony, it carried instead the rugged, untamed breath of a hundred rivers flowing into the sea and great waves sifting the sand.

The people of the martial world were all fleet of foot and skilled in qinggong. In less than half a day, the gathered martial wanderers had all converged around the Heaven Worship Platform.

Seated at the very front were naturally the principal figures of this assembly: openly revealed Celestial masters such as Shen