The instant the purple pillar of lightning collided with the phantom blood-red crescent moon, time seemed to freeze.
Han Li saw nothing but blinding white. The shriek of seawater torn apart by the magnetic storm filled his ears, and the golden core in his sea of consciousness nearly stopped turning beneath the violent surge of spiritual power.
His last memory was of a faint glimmer flashing across the Blood Star Tracking Pattern on Zi Ling's Star-Illusion Flag just before the Blood Magnetic Tide swallowed its field of purifying light-that glimmer had pointed toward a pitch-black fissure suddenly opening to the left of the Altar, like a wound forcibly torn in space.
By the time he struggled out of the shattered reef rubble, the seawater had turned murky again. The Magnetic Essence Crystal Pillar had broken into several pieces, and the Core Formation late-stage cultivator had vanished without a trace. Only the Blood-Magnetic Knife Fragments and the Star-Illusion Flag fragments scattered through the Altar's ruins proved that the fierce battle had been no illusion.
"Zi Ling..." Han Li called hoarsely, bracing himself against the ground with the Water-Magnetic Sword. The Blood Magnetic Star Pattern on its blade had dimmed from his exhausted spiritual power.
He searched the ruins like a madman, but his fingertips found only cold rocks and sticky remnants of blood-fiend spiritual power-Zi Ling's Star-Illusion Maze Formation Flag was gone. Neither the Plain Silver Hairpin she always wore, the Message Talisman pouch at her waist, nor even her frequently used Star-Illusion Fiend-Breaking Array Disk had been left behind.
The only proof that she had been there was half a line of tiny words etched in star patterns on a reef rock at the Altar's edge, sheared flat by Magnetic Essence Vibration: "Behind the Magnetic Essence Crystal Pillar, there is..."