Doing such a thing on the Cloud Palace's territory was plainly meant to take Shi Qingyun down a peg.
In the distance, a woman clad in silver-white battle armor had not joined in. Her name was Shi Yimeng, and she was the Heaven Severing Sect's representative for this expedition.
Watching what the various sects were doing, she had not intervened despite Ni Su's instruction to support Shi Qingyun, wanting to see what he was capable of.
Without the immortal sword's help, how far could he go?
She, too, believed that Shi Qingyun's fearlessness came from the immortal sword's assistance. Otherwise, why would the various sects have shown weakness before him?
Just as Shi Yimeng was still pondering how Shi Qingyun would break this impasse, the pitch-black sky suddenly turned blood-red.
An enormous blood-red eye slowly emerged from the rift.
As the eye opened, a blood-red pupil instantly appeared, and the imposing power spilling from it swept outward.
It instantly swept over everyone present, shattering the stagnant atmosphere. The many Escape One cultivators felt as though they had fallen into boundless purgatory.
An involuntary urge to submit to that eye rose in their hearts.
"Is that the Heavenly Dao Eye?"
"How could something like that exist?"
"What terrifying pressure!"
Boom-crack!
While the many Escape One cultivators were still resisting, tremendous sounds of shattering space slowly reverberated outward.
Beneath that blood-red eye, battleships smashed through the void and slowly sailed out.
On the foremost warship, Shi Qingyun's snowy-white robes snapped in the wind, with several skeletal old men standing behind him.
Yet the terrifying power they radiated felt to Shi Yimeng no weaker than her own Cult Master's.
Behind Shi Qingyun, ranks of heavy black warships stood arrayed, an air of deadly solemnity spreading from them.
These had all been built with