Vast mountain ranges appeared in the sky, along with that straight road clearly visible even from high above.
The cultivators watched the Qin Emperor climb the towering stone steps, reach the Small Temple on the summit, and see the man in white who looked like an immortal.
A chorus of sharp intakes of breath rose outside Echo Valley. People could scarcely believe their eyes.
Jing Jiu had actually been hiding all along on Mount Buzhou, where the Divine Envoy lived!
No wonder even the Azure Sky Mirror Spirit had been unable to find him. But did the rules allow him to do this?
What happened next shocked them once again.
The dozens of Qin experts who had accompanied the Qin Emperor up the mountain were all cut apart, and the Qin Emperor was gravely wounded, yet Jing Jiu seemed not even to have drawn his sword.
Many truly powerful cultivators outside Echo Valley possessed extraordinary discernment. Naturally, they could tell that Jing Jiu had already struck, but his speed had been too great, his movements unfathomably subtle. They did not know what sword technique he had used, however, and marveled, thinking that Green Mountain's Sword Dao genius was actually this formidable even within the illusion.
Then the Divine Envoy appeared and took out that sheet of paper.
It held decades of seeking the Dao.
From when the Dao-Seekers first entered the illusion, through storms and upheavals, white clouds turning to gray hounds, blue seas and skies, until the Qin Emperor performed the rites to Heaven and Earth and was gravely wounded by Jing Jiu in the temple.
Twenty-six names were written at the bottom of that sheet of paper: the twenty-six Dao-Seekers who had entered the illusion, ranked according to how long they had remained there and what they had