Several more days passed. Bali and Hong Zhongkun set out from the Asura Realm, passed through the Azure Cloud Sect's headquarters, and traveled several million miles before finally reaching the market district closest to the Blackstone Great Rift.
The first thing they did upon arriving was follow Fang Qianyuan's instructions and seek out the Warrior Hall personnel hiding there.
These Warrior Hall disciplinary officers and spies had come here previously to hunt down Wu Lianyi and the other rebels.
The Northern Desert was utterly different from the Southern Wilds. If the Southern Wilds, home to the Mystic Sun Sect and Azure Cloud Sect, was the domain of the Righteous Path, then the Northern Desert was an Unorthodox Path territory jointly ruled by the Myriad Phenomena Sect and the Great Wilderness Sect.
Here, the law was that the weak became meat for the strong. Warfare and plunder were far more frequent than in the Southern Wilds, and Spirit Tamers acted with much greater volatility and decisiveness.
Far from home and hunting a supreme expert like Wu Lianyi, the Warriors had no easy task. Yet the Azure Cloud Sect's reach extended throughout the world, and it had its own channels for drawing on grassroots forces to survive.
Among those forces, the powerful local aristocratic clans-the local snakes that ruled their own patches of ground-were the key of keys.
According to the Warrior Hall's secret communications, the first people Bali and Hong Zhongkun intended to contact were the Lin Family near Impermanence Valley.
But when they followed the directions to a business the Lin Family operated here, called the "Treasure Gathering Pavilion," they unexpectedly found the building deserted.
Bali was briefly taken aback. "What's going on? Weren't we told someone would meet us when we arrived?"
"Something seems wrong," Hong Zhongkun said. "Someone