Just as Lin Chen was sizing up the crowd...
A commotion broke out at the entrance to Cloud Dream Marsh, and several figures emerged from the valley.
At their head was a middle-aged man with a small tuft of beard. A sharp glint flashed in his eyes whenever he opened them.
Lin Chen's eyes narrowed.
As a martial artist of the Four Seas Merchant Guild, he naturally knew about the man at the very top, even if he had never met him.
The middle-aged man before him was Qian Wantong, the Four Seas Merchant Guild's chief in Cloud Province!
His last known battle had been over a century ago. With a single palm strike, he had sent the True Origin Sect's ancestor, a Fifth Layer Earth Martial cultivator, to the afterlife. The sect, with its thousands of disciples, had fallen soon after...
"Silence!"
The middle-aged man did not speak loudly, yet his voice cut clearly through every murmur and carried throughout the valley.
The surroundings fell silent at once.
"I am Qian Wantong, and I will oversee the opening of Cloud Dream Marsh."
The middle-aged man swept his gaze across the crowd and spoke slowly.
"I trust you all know the rules. I will stress only one point."
"You are all promising martial artists of the Four Seas Merchant Guild. Fighting over opportunities is only natural. But anyone found to have deliberately slaughtered others will be severely punished!"
With that, Qian Wantong turned his hand and produced a bronze Array Disk. He tossed it into the air, where it swelled to thirty feet across and hovered.
He raised his hand, spread his fingers, and aimed them at the slowly turning Array Disk.
A vast, irresistible surge of True Essence, refined to its utmost limit, poured into the disk like a