Fifteen months later.
A flying ship cleaved through the azure, freshly washed sky, passing through drifting white clouds and leaving behind a faint trail.
The blazing sun scorched the tawny earth.
The land was desolate yet magnificent, with yellow soil stretching endlessly, ravines crisscrossing one another, and mountains rising and falling in undulating waves.
Sparse grasses and trees lay scattered amid the yellow earth, surviving with tenacity and resilience.
Song Wen stood at the bow, gazing down at the desolate land below with a slight frown.
He was already very close to the Source-Qi Death Domain, less than a million li away.
Yet the spiritual qi nearby was growing increasingly thin. This was clearly not an ideal place for a breakthrough.
He had traveled at a leisurely pace, stopping from time to time. Whenever he passed a major cultivator city, he would go in and investigate, gathering information about the surrounding area to understand the conditions ahead.
If dangerous territory or powerful factions lay ahead, he would detour in advance.
That was why his journey had taken so much time.
His current destination was a small city called Lotus Square City, the city closest to the Source-Qi Death Domain.
Before long, the outline of a city appeared amid the yellow earth.
As he drew closer, the city gradually came into clear view.
The city spanned several dozen li. It had no walls, and the buildings within were somewhat haphazard, most of them rather low.
There were quite a few cultivators coming and going through the city, but most had low cultivation. Even Nascent Soul Realm cultivators were relatively rare.
Song Wen put away the flying ship, draped himself in a black cloak to conceal his aura, and descended outside the largest shop in the city.
The storefront was spacious, stretching