A stretch of void.
The Great Void blurred and transformed into an arc of light, revealing a passage.
Beyond the passage, phantom images of pavilions, jade halls, and palace towers flickered into view before vanishing.
It was clearly a secret realm!
At that moment, two figures hastily fled from the passage, as though afraid that the spatial passage would collapse the next instant and their bodies would be destroyed within a voidstorm.
Both cultivators were at the Nascent Soul stage. One had strangely ancient features and limped on one foot.
He was none other than the Crippled Immortal.
The other was a female cultivator clad in an azure dharma robe with crimson cuffs.
She was Zhan Hongxiu!
Zhan Hongxiu looked at the secret-realm passage closing behind them and smiled brightly. "This little woman did not deceive you, did she, Fellow Daoist? What do you think of that share of Profound Fiend Origin Crystal?"
"Not bad, not bad. This old man never imagined that you possessed a secret art for refining this origin crystal..."
The Crippled Immortal wore a broad smile. "When the secret realm opens again next time, there will surely be much room for cooperation between us..."
He had met Zhan Hongxiu while attacking Talisman Sword Island, and he had recognized that this female cultivator was the infamous wanted criminal of the Eastern Sea Cultivation Realm.
But so what?
The several major powers that had once placed a bounty on Zhan Hongxiu were now either declining or had already been destroyed.
Moreover, Zhan Hongxiu herself had successfully formed a Nascent Soul!
Thus, even when she acted in her true appearance, she encountered no trouble.
In truth, according to the old rules of the Eastern Sea Cultivation Realm, no matter what crime a Core Formation cultivator had committed to become