One night.
Outside the Golden Autumn Mountain Range, the cultivators of the Jade Great Radiance Church were relentlessly bombarding the barrier with all manner of methods.
But without the Thousand Mountain Cone's support, breaking through again proved difficult. Beyond adding a few more cracks to the barrier, their efforts accomplished nothing.
Qinghe True Person only struck occasionally, throwing a punch at places where the cracks were more numerous, but ultimately still failed to break through.
After reaching the Fusion Stage, the gap between minor realms became greater than ever before.
Thus, this mid-Fusion Stage barrier was equally profound and mysterious to him, impossible to break through quickly.
As cultivators from the other sects began gathering, their strategic advantage was steadily dwindling.
Qinghe True Person stopped treasuring his own feathers and began attacking more frequently.
Meanwhile, inside the barrier, the Golden Wing Sect's cultivators had all settled down.
They followed the principle of survival that wherever they made their home, there they would lie flat.
These cultivators, who had long failed to break through within the sect and had given up trying, had already begun fishing beside the lake, gathering around stoves on the mountaintops to brew tea, and retelling stories among the pavilions.
They lived the everyday lives of mortals, showing none of the bearing of cultivators facing a great enemy or remaining alert to danger in times of peace.
Recently, however, another kind of rumor had begun spreading among the pavilions.
A little girl of seven or eight stood in a pavilion, two little braids sticking up from her round head.
She was the little girl Lin Ke had rescued in the Giant Strength Fire Domain Sect. Zhuge Qi Tian had brought her along when he set out, because she, too, was one of the Golden Core Stage cultivators.