Void Rift Valley

Tianheng Domain, edge canyon.

Li Yuan put away his Pass and headed deeper along the canyon floor.

Ghostly Concealment suppressed his Nascent Soul aura until it was utterly clean, while Phantom Mask Disguise altered his appearance and kept his cultivation at the Late Golden Core Stage.

The deeper he went, the narrower the canyon became. The gray-black rock walls on either side stood less than five zhang apart, and only a thread of daylight remained overhead.

Spatial Rifts flickered in and out between the rock walls. Some were only a few inches long, while others vanished deep into the stone. Silvery-white light seeped from the cracks, crisscrossing through the canyon like a tangled net.

Void Domain Profound Mastery operated on its own, bringing the rifts' distribution, direction, rate of expansion, and every other detail into his consciousness sea.

Li Yuan moved through the rifts without haste.

Half a day later, the canyon floor suddenly dipped. Ahead lay a depression several dozen zhang wide. A large rift stretched across its center, roughly thirty zhang long; at its widest, it was just broad enough for someone to squeeze through sideways. The spatial fluctuations around its edges were several times stronger than those outside.

Three people were crouched beside the rift.

All three cultivators wore gray-blue robes embroidered with the Heavenly Balance Sect emblem on their chests. They were all Golden Core cultivators: two at the Mid Golden Core Stage and one at the Late Golden Core Stage. A beast hide was spread before them, covered with more than a dozen ores and crystals of varying sizes that they were sorting through.

The Late Golden Core male cultivator looked to be in his thirties. He held a dark-blue ore in his hand, examining its quality by the light spilling from the rift.

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