Just as Su Yueli was immersed in a loneliness spanning ten thousand years, a faint gasp suddenly came from the deepest shadows of the ninth floor.
An old man in gray robes had opened his eyes at some point.
This old man was a true living fossil of the Great Xia imperial family. His cultivation had already reached the fourteenth realm peak, leaving him just half a step from the elusive fifteenth realm.
He had sat here in solitary stillness for three thousand years, his sole duty to guard these thirteen top-secret jade slips.
At that moment, towering waves surged through his heart.
He had been deep in secluded cultivation until the jade slip fell onto the white jade stand with a crisp clink, jolting him awake.
Following the sound, he saw a white-haired woman standing before the jade stand.
Instinctively, the old man unleashed his immense divine sense at the fourteenth realm peak, sending it crushing toward Su Yueli.
As far as he knew, no one in the entire Great Xia Immortal Dynasty could evade the sweep of his divine sense.
Yet when his divine sense swept across the area where Su Yueli stood, it returned nothing but emptiness.
There were no fluctuations of spiritual energy, not even a distortion in the laws of space.
To his divine sense, nothing occupied that spot.
Yet his own eyes clearly saw a woman standing there, her white hair stirring gently in the night breeze.
This absolute contradiction between his divine sense and his eyes instantly tore apart the understanding of cultivation he had built over three thousand years.
Fear...
A fear born of the instinct to survive seized the old man's heart.
Cultivators did not fear powerful enemies, but they were deeply terrified of unknown beings.
Her realm could not be