At the same time, on Eastern Star Plains Road, Fan Yuntang, Yu Li, and four other rogue cultivators were walking through a vast, imposing ancient city.
This place stood on a floating island over a hundred li across. Like a hovering hemisphere, the island hung motionless in the air, seemingly held in place by an invisible magnetic force. The surrounding space was warped and distorted. Origin energy surged in from every direction, then leaked out again through some point within the city. The immense flow of energy formed a strange cycle here, as though the surrounding dimensional barriers were all one-way passages that allowed entry but no exit, with the surging vortex of origin energy serving as the only way out.
Fan Yuntang and the others looked up at the sky. Darkness surrounded them, and the starlight they had been able to see earlier had vanished completely, as though a pitch-black curtain had been drawn overhead.
They were all veterans who had spent years roaming the Star Realm, so they naturally knew that the distant void had folded over itself, blocking the stars' light. Otherwise, such absolute darkness could never have appeared.
"Sure enough, the signal's blocked. We can't restore communications for now!"
One of the rogue cultivators made another attempt from a nearby elevated platform, then flew down and reported to the others.
"Then stop trying for now. We don't know what this place is, so we'd better stay doubly alert," another said.
"Fortunately, even if we can't communicate with the outside world, our failure to respond is itself a kind of message. They'll know we're trapped here and send an urgent report for reinforcements. But that aside, just what is this place? It looks distinctly ancient. Could it be the ruins of a city from the Near-Ancient Era?"