"I once wandered aimlessly through the mountain, occasionally encountering other lonely souls exiled to Xuanyuan Mountain.
"Some had only recently arrived and still harbored a shred of hope of escape. Whenever they saw someone approach, they would seize your hands like drowning men clutching at straws, their eyes frantic and desperate, asking over and over how to leave;
"Others had been trapped there for hundreds or thousands of years. Endless despair had long since worn away their reason, leaving them muddleheaded, wandering aimlessly through the mountain like walking corpses, knowing neither day nor night nor the way home."
"Xuanyuan Mountain does not exist within the world we know. It is a hidden realm formed incorporeally within primordial chaos. Unless its master guides you there and sends you in himself, even powers that span heaven and earth would never let you find any trace of it."
Cui Jiuyang's heart stirred. He Feixu's description of Xuanyuan Mountain seemed to explain precisely those incidents of souls mysteriously disappearing.
Perhaps the truth behind those missing souls was that, for some unknown reason, they had been drawn to that elusive Xuanyuan Mountain.
As though he had suddenly remembered a crucial clue, Cui Jiuyang brightened and hastily took a cloth bundle from inside his robe.
He carefully opened it. Inside were two neatly folded sheets of old paper, the very two scraps he had previously found at the home of Zhao Changsheng, the half-trained sorcerer in Dustpan Village.
He held the sheets out to He Feixu and asked, "Take a good look. Does this... have anything to do with your friend Xuanyuan?"
Chapter 147: Lu Pan
He Feixu took the two sheets, focused his attention, and examined them repeatedly for quite some time before looking up and shaking his head uncertainly. "There is... no trace of