Earth Pass City, the foremost city on Earth Pass Island, stood on the island's eastern coast.
This enormous city measured fifty to sixty li on each side, with walls some thirty zhang high. The three-zhang-thick walls were built entirely of sturdy seaheart stone.
Mottled first- and second-tier water-pattern crystals were embedded in the stone, gleaming with a deep blue spiritual light beneath the sun. It was truly impervious to water and fire.
Twenty-four gates had been opened around the city according to the eight trigrams. Each stood five zhang high and three zhang wide, its doors sheathed in second-tier red copper and covered with inscriptions such as "Shaking Thunder Talismans" and "City-Fortifying Runes." Seen from afar, they resembled enormous bronze floodgates stretching between sea and sky.
Its presence was imposing, its defenses as secure as metal ramparts and a boiling moat.
The entire Earth Pass Island lay beneath the Two-Yi Six-Yang Array, and a faint dome of light shimmered above the city.
Blue and white spiritual light rippled along the formation's edges. Any cultivator who dared force their way in elsewhere would immediately trigger the "Six-Yang True Fire" and "Two-Yi Heavy Water" within the array and be killed without mercy. Even Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators would be reduced to dust on the spot.
Even a Golden Core True Person would find it difficult to escape.
Thus, cultivators everywhere knew that the only way onto Earth Pass Island was through Earth Pass City, its sole gate of life-unless they possessed a high-ranking jade credential from the Condensed Jade Sect, allowing them to connect directly to the formation's core and bypass it.
At the eastern "Zhen" Gate alone, hundreds of cultivators were streaming into the city at that moment: rogue cultivators, merchant caravans, and formidable martial artists traveling through these waters.
Five-colored