This was a vast sea stretching as far as the eye could see. Its waters were murky and dark yellow, its surface utterly still, without so much as a ripple. All around was silence, devoid of life. The entire expanse looked like a dead sea.
At a certain moment, the water in one spot on the silent sea suddenly began churning violently. Then, with a splash, a mass of thick, ink-black mist burst out of the water.
It spread rapidly in every direction, covering an area more than a thousand zhang across in the blink of an eye.
Just then, a piercing vulture cry rang out, and two streaks of light, one silver and one gold, flashed into view above the black mist. After flickering a few more times, they appeared at its edge.
Then they became two long rainbows of silver and gold, racing toward the horizon.
Only after flying more than a hundred li did the two rainbows dim and slow down, revealing an ordinary-looking young man in black with a longsword on his back, and an enormous silver vulture several zhang in size. Three women and one man stood on the vulture's back. They were none other than Xiao Yu and his companions, who had escaped the Netherworld!
Once the black mist was completely out of sight, the red-faced old man on the Thundercloud Vulture's back burst into an excited laugh.
"Hahaha! We finally left that damned place! I'm free at last!"
Having been trapped for decades, perhaps even a century, his feelings upon finally escaping were easy to imagine.
Then the old man took a deep breath, an intoxicated look on his face, and said contentedly:
"The air outside is so fresh, so intoxicating. The spiritual energy... er, why is the spiritual energy here so thin?