After paying his respects to the presiding steward, Mo Chen withdrew respectfully and found a sparsely occupied corner within the area allotted to Emerging Cloud Peak. He sat cross-legged to regulate his breathing and recover.
He looked toward the other peaks. Crowds thronged their slopes and summits.
The secret realm's boundary had become a gathering place for every rising wind and cloud. Elite Disciples from the Immortal Alliance's various sects assembled here, along with countless powerful rogue cultivators whose auras varied wildly.
Mo Chen opened the Travel Map of the Half-Limit Secret Realm again, and its phantom image appeared in his mind.
The Half-Limit Secret Realm's three layers of array formations, mountain terrain, and waterways immediately unfolded. Then Mo Chen activated his sect's Thread-Linking Art, and saw pinpricks of light gathering at the edges of the formations on the map.
By his rough estimate, there were fewer than six or seven hundred lights.
As for these lights, True Person Yuanjin had explained them on the journey here: over two thousand nine hundred people were making the trip, and all of them could use the unique Thread-Linking Art to see their fellow disciples on the map and contact one another.
Although Mo Chen had never activated the Thread-Linking Art to check on everyone except when contacting Gu Dongfeng, surely there were far too few surviving disciples now?
Two thousand nine hundred, reduced to just over six hundred.
Fewer than thirty percent of the cultivators had survived.
Mo Chen merely sighed softly. He had often heard cultivators in the sect lament how perilous the Half-Limit Secret Realm was, yet they could never explain exactly why. Many cultivators who had not signed up therefore thought they were just showing off.
But after experiencing it himself, Mo Chen felt exhausted just thinking about the