Jiang Ming did not head straight to the era of Shrouding the Heavens to see his children. Instead, he stood within the River of Time and walked step by step toward the moment when Smoke Glow Fairy had encountered the Lightning Bird.
Rumble—
Suddenly, ringing metallic cries came from all directions. They were the calls of birds, shrill and piercing enough to split gold and crack stone. The surrounding rocks trembled, vegetation rustled, and fallen leaves scattered through the air.
Savage beasts also raced across the earth, surging in from every direction like an erupting tsunami. Their vast waves of bodies knocked down swathes of ancient trees, accompanied by soaring dust and flames.
Then dazzling divine beams shot up from all sides, endless and densely packed, numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands. Boundless divine radiance drowned the world in golden light, accompanied by deafening crackles. Like golden rain, it submerged the entire forest.
For a time, blood-red light surged into the sky. In the ancient forest of Smoke Glow Ridge, trees turned to ash in an instant, flames soared heavenward, crimson as blood. Or perhaps it was blood mist evaporated by the heat, made all the more mournfully beautiful beneath the sunlight.
A man and a woman were fleeing desperately. They were merely minor cultivators of the Sea of Bitterness Realm. Cultivation was incomparably difficult for bottom-tier cultivators; even the humble Sea of Bitterness Realm had taken Smoke Glow Fairy and Jiang Ming seven or eight years of bitter cultivation without allowing them to cross it.
Smoke Glow Fairy had cultivated in Smoke Glow Grotto-Heaven since childhood. Here, she was actually considered a genius. Given another year—or even half a year—she clearly would have had a chance to break through into the next realm, the Life Spring Realm.