Heavenly Abyss City's western gate.
Ever since Heavenly Abyss signed the Qingzhou Joint Defense Pact, this towering, mighty city had opened its arms fully to the surrounding prefectures.
Every day, dust billowed along the official road outside the gate. As far as the eye could see, there was a dense sea of heads.
There were gaunt mortals pushing wheelbarrows, destitute rogue cultivators carrying damaged artifacts and covered in blood, and cultivation lineages whose sects had been shattered, leaving only a remnant or two of their inheritance alive.
As the demon unrest in the surrounding prefectures grew ever more brutal, Heavenly Abyss City had become the only safe harbor within tens of thousands of miles where people could live and work in peace.
"Get in line! Mortals to the left, cultivators to the right! No crowding! Anyone who dares stir up trouble will be executed!"
On either side of the gate, squads of Heavenly Abyss Mystic Guards in black armor held heavy halberds, their expressions stern, their voices rolling through the low air like thunder.
Several enormous bronze demon-revealing mirrors hovered above their heads, their surfaces emitting faint azure light that brushed over everyone entering the city.
Among the crowd, a middle-aged man with a sallow face and coarse, short work clothes kept his head slightly lowered.
He looked barely past thirty, with a stooped figure and callused hands. His Storage Bag contained only a few crude iron blanks. By any measure, he looked like a third-rate artifact-refining apprentice who had fled the war.
The name he had registered was "Zhang Kui."
Yet deep within "Zhang Kui's" lowered, murky eyes, a deeply concealed glint of sinister coldness flickered from time to time.
His true identity was an elder of the White Bone Church, a mighty heretical power in Qingzhou. His Daoist