Opening the Gateway

"Finally, it's over!"

Inside the cabin atop the tower ship, Zhou Yulong let out a long breath, his expression carrying a sense of release.

The people struggling to survive in the strongholds only saw how powerful and noble these cultivators from the Secret Realm were. How could they understand their hardships?

If not forced by necessity, if not bound by ancestral teachings, who would be willing to leave the safety of the Secret Realm and come out here to serve as a Reception Envoy?

In these times, there was nowhere safe outside the Secret Realm.

Though they had a Spirit Ship to rely on, they had encountered provocations from the Corpse Race time and again along the way. After countless battles, they had nearly been wiped out several times.

There had been precedents in history of Secret Realm spirit boats being destroyed by the Corpse Race, their entire parties annihilated.

For cultivators like them, born in the Secret Realm and pampered from childhood, leaving the Secret Realm meant gambling with their lives!

To cultivators outside the Secret Realm, being a Reception Envoy was a glamorous post. Wherever they went, the people of the strongholds would welcome them so eagerly they wore their shoes backward, treating them with boundless hospitality. Yet cultivators truly born in the Secret Realm were unwilling to touch the position lightly.

However, if one wished to climb to a high position within the Secret Realm, serving once as a Reception Envoy was mandatory. This was because the first master of the Secret Realm had established a rule: only by personally experiencing the hardships of the Human Race's survival in the outside world could one understand how to cherish everything possessed within the Secret Realm.

The Zhou Family he came from held great power and prestige within the