As the Celestial Phenomena Gates in the first layer of the grotto-heaven closed, strange lights flowed across the six gates. In just a moment, the images representing the Celestial Phenomena Gates vanished from their surfaces, leaving not the slightest trace behind, like words written on paper being erased...
This development left the knights from the major sects stationed above utterly panic-stricken. They stared wide-eyed at the Celestial Phenomena Gates before them, none of them knowing what had happened.
But something even more terrifying followed close on its heels.
"Ah, look!" A knight from Heaven-Wielding Pavilion stationed above suddenly pointed at the entrance to the first layer of the grotto-heaven and cried out.
The surrounding knights looked up to see the opening leading into the first layer of the grotto-heaven suddenly shrinking bit by bit, like an animal's contracting intestines. The entire massive metal dome seemed to have come alive. The once-hard metal now wriggled like an enormous slab of jelly, silently changing shape. When the huge dome finally stopped writhing, the opening that had led into this layer of the grotto-heaven had vanished completely, as if it had never existed at all.
"Ah, how could this happen?" Some knights simply could not believe what they were seeing, thinking it an illusion. The moment the passage in the dome disappeared, more than one knight flew up and blasted the metal dome with Battle Qi, but to no effect whatsoever.
At that moment, every knight stationed in the first layer of the grotto-heaven turned deathly pale...
The way in was gone. The way out was gone. More than ten thousand Great Xia knights had all been sealed within the lower layer of the grotto-heaven.
Why had this happened...
In the lower layer of the grotto-heaven, the knights continuously pouring in through