Dusk fell, the sun sinking westward beneath a sky awash with glowing clouds.
Two figures rode Spirit Creatures at a gallop along the rugged mountain path, one behind the other.
One rode a blue-eyed gray wolf, dressed in fine robes and cutting a striking figure; the other rode a white wolf, his face resolute and his bearing lean and formidable. They were Sun Zhuo and Fang Qianyuan, who had left Xuanyue City and were racing toward the Lesser Grotto-Heaven to the north, hoping to claim a share of the spoils before the competition there grew fierce.
After more than two hours on the road, they had covered a hundred li. Had the mountains not been high and the forests dense, making passage difficult, they would have arrived long ago.
At last, however, they reached the World Gate they had heard about.
An earth dragon had once turned over here, stirring the Heaven and Earth Essence into battering the world's boundary. Beneath a collapsed cliff, an enormous World Gate some ten zhang across hung alone in the air.
A World Gate was a spatial rift. The void had been torn open, with strange black clouds forming its edges around a portal like a curtain of water.
Looking through the World Gate, they saw a broad, level plain beneath a blazing sun, a landscape entirely different from the one outside.
The two saw that someone had already cleared a narrow path beneath the World Gate, clearly dug by those who had arrived first for their own convenience.
"Let's go." Sun Zhuo surveyed their surroundings, detected no danger, and immediately spoke to Fang Qianyuan.
Fang Qianyuan nodded. Linked to him in mind and heart, Little White leaped straight off the edge of the cliff, more than ten zhang high.
Little White raced nimbly