Immortals, the Immortal Tree, and the Martial Saint!

Cloudveil Peak.

The square.

With the battle over, all was silent.

Jiang Ning stood in the square as snowflakes whirled in the bitter wind, settling on his shoulders and the tips of his hair.

He lowered his eyes slightly. Beneath his feet, an almost imperceptible tremor ran through the solid rock.

He immediately looked up.

The sky was shaking, making everything in his field of vision sway with it.

Here they come, he thought.

Then ripples of distortion spread through the void, as though someone were stirring a pool of clear water with an invisible hand.

The clouds were pulled into strange vortices. Sunlight passed through the warped air, refracting into bizarre, rainbow-colored halos.

"What is this..." Behind him, Ye Zhengqi's pupils contracted, his expression growing grave.

"The people backing the Immortal Crossing Sect!" Shen Wenyuan said softly.

At that moment, Jiang Ning also looked toward the center of the vortex.

An oppressive presence quietly spread, weighing down the air.

The birds in the mountain forests fell silent.

Suddenly, a rift appeared out of nowhere in the sky overhead.

At first, it was only a crack, black as ink and fine as a strand of hair.

But in an instant, it spread to either side, becoming an opening more than ten feet long.

Countless tiny sparks of lightning danced along its edges.

Beyond the opening was not the void they had imagined, but a hazy expanse of light and shadow.

The outlines of pavilions and towers flickered in and out of sight. Exotic flowers and rare plants swayed in the wind, and the faint murmur of running water drifted out.

It was a world utterly different from their own. Spiritual energy was so dense that it nearly condensed into tangible mist as it spilled through the opening.

"A grotto-heaven gateway,"