"Who are you!?"
Atop a blue-gray mountain range.
Shiqiong Realm Lord Gao Yu stared gravely at the man and beast who had appeared out of thin air.
Though little emotion showed on his face, inwardly he was already shocked and suspicious.
Shiqiong Realm might have fallen on hard times, but even a rotten ship still had a few pounds of nails. At the very least, its outer formations should not have allowed anyone to slip inside so easily and silently.
Yet this man and beast had appeared before him without the slightest disturbance. He had not even sensed them.
What that meant went without saying.
Clearly, these beings before him very likely stood far above him in cultivation.
And the uninvited arrival of someone of unknown origins and exceptionally high cultivation almost immediately brought to mind the successive, unexplained disappearances of Peaceful Palace and Ten Thousand Peaks Mountain.
At that thought, his heart sank slightly, and his wariness deepened.
At the same time, he divided his attention, discreetly surveying his surroundings.
But the short-limbed dwarf cultivator opposite him laughed.
"What are you worried about, Fellow Daoist Gao?"
"Are you afraid Shiqiong Realm will disappear without explanation too, like Peaceful Palace and Ten Thousand Peaks Mountain?"
Gao Yu's heart clenched. His eyes narrowed as he said heavily:
"You seem to have heard everything, fellow Daoist. Just who might you be? And why have you come to my Shiqiong Realm?"
Though solemn, his tone also held caution, along with anger born of humiliation.
Such was the sorrow of a minor power. Even with someone barging into his home, he dared not demand answers loudly, for fear of angering the intruder.
The dwarf cultivator smiled instead.
"I am a nobody, hardly worth mentioning. If you truly don't know what to call me, you