An Old Acquaintance from a Century Ago

Song Wen took out seventy-two Superior Spirit Stones and placed them in the seventy-two grooves around the edge of the Teleportation Array.

Then he took out the blood-red array disc and began forming hand seals.

As the seals entered the disc, the array beneath his feet activated.

Its patterns glimmered with azure light, which steadily grew brighter.

Suddenly, a beam of azure light shot straight into the sky.

Amid the dazzling radiance, Song Wen vanished.

At the edge of the Endless Desert.

Inside an underground palace.

Song Wen appeared out of nowhere.

The teleportation had carried him across hundreds of millions of miles. His head spun, and his stomach churned.

Suppressing his discomfort, he swiftly extended his Divine Sense.

But the palace was steeped in ghostly mist, dozens of times denser than the mist near the reef mountain from which he had teleported. His Divine Sense reached only a few yards before it could go no farther.

Song Wen did not panic. He had expected this.

Following the route he remembered, he headed for the exit.

He left the inner hall and entered the outer hall, where the ghostly mist was much thinner and suppressed his Divine Sense far less.

His Divine Sense swept through the outer hall, then across the square outside the palace and the entire underground cavern surrounding it. All were empty, without a trace of any living person or creature.

Song Wen flew out of the cavern, passed through a long tunnel, and reached the surface. An endless expanse of yellow sand filled his vision.

He rose into the air and flew northeast.

Four days later, Song Wen arrived at East Birch Market.

The market lay between the Be‌ast Taming Sect and the Lei Clan. Song Wen had cultivated there for several years, and much