Two thousand li southwest of Black Iron City.
This was the border where the Feather Transformation Marquisate, the Dingbo Marquisate, and the Changning Marquisate met.
Azure Cloud Market had once been built in this area.
But banditry and unrest had erupted along the three nations' borders.
The cultivators here had long since moved away, leaving a desolate wilderness rarely visited by anyone.
Just a quarter of an hour earlier.
An old man in yellow robes sat cross-legged atop a picturesque peak amid the mountains.
He concealed his aura with a formation and secretly spread his divine sense, using the power of restrictions to sense every stirring of wind and grass around him.
The old man's name was Zhang Yan. Nominally a senior member of the Heroes Alliance, he was actually the lord of a fortress main city in Seven Star Commandery and had entered the early Saint Master Realm nearly a hundred years ago.
His mission this time was to coordinate with the army besieging Black Iron City and several other fellow cultivators.
They were to establish a cordon along the three nations' borders, on the route Gu Chenfeng had to take to reach Black Iron City.
Besides using his Saint Master Realm cultivation together with formations and restrictions to monitor an extremely wide area.
He also had fifteen Saint Warrior realm cultivators under his command, whom he had divided into four squads to patrol the surroundings and search for traces of Gu Chenfeng.
After using his command token to check the four squads' positions and confirming that all was calm along the border, Zhang Yan shook his head in boredom.
"That Luo Ji was truly useless. He actually got himself killed by a Saint Warrior realm cultivator, even holding up the fighting at the front.
"And now a dignified