East of [Extreme Mountain Immortal City] lay an enormous lake, hundreds of miles across.
Its waters were clear, its emerald waves stretched as far as the eye could see, and islands lay scattered across it like stars on a celestial board. Nearly a thousand of them, differing in size and shape, gave the place its name: [Thousand Isles Lake].
This was the ancestral territory of the Shi lineage, the lineage of [True Person Azure Wood], one of the [Extreme South Palace]'s Five Great Hall Masters. They occupied the vast majority of the lake's spiritually blessed islands without question, reigning as its undisputed local sovereigns.
Situated behind the front lines in the Song Region, this place had not directly faced the blades of the Yue Kingdom's Demonic Path and remained under the Song cultivators' control. Thus, it retained an air of peaceful, untroubled days.
On this day.
From the ancestral shrine on one of Thousand Isles Lake's core islands, situated toward the rear and known as the Shi lineage's "Ancestral Island," there suddenly came a voice filled with terror and disbelief.
"No, no-"
But there was no one else on the island, so no one heard it.
Inside the ancestral shrine, amid the solemn atmosphere, flickering candles, and lingering agarwood incense, an elderly man with graying hair had collapsed onto the floor. His head remained raised high, his cloudy eyes fixed on a huge White Jade Wall to his left.
Judging by his face, he was not the elder who had previously guarded the shrine. That man had long since passed away in meditation; this was his successor.
Within his sight, high on the White Jade Wall, in the second row from the top, two white points of light that had once shone steadily had now gone completely dark, turning a