Another sixty or seventy breaths passed when Yan Qingchen suddenly exhaled through his tightly sealed lips and let out a sharp cry.
"Discipline!"
With that swift shout, the small slanting tree that had stood quietly and ordinarily upon the cliff wall suddenly vanished without a trace.
In its place appeared a small patch of hazy gray light, roughly four feet across, shaped like an upright diamond.
It gave the impression that a corresponding exit had appeared on the other side of the cliff wall, with hazy gray light passing through from the opposite side and casting this diamond-shaped glow.
"Th-this is a hidden reef formation!"
A voice carrying a strange intonation came from behind after seeing the diamond-shaped light clearly.
After the diamond appeared, Yan Qingchen withdrew his hands and stopped casting his technique as well, yet he did not immediately step forward.
At that moment, the four people behind him also sensed waves of spiritual energy fluctuations emanating from the hazy gray diamond.
The middle-aged cultivator with the long beard immediately spoke. Though his voice was very low, his tone was filled with astonishment.
The so-called "hidden reef formation" was an ancient formation that had nearly gone extinct. Few cultivators nowadays could still set one up in its entirety.
Under ordinary circumstances, once any formation operated, even an illusion formation that made truth and falsehood impossible to distinguish, it would produce some distinctly unusual fluctuations.
Even if cultivators detected such fluctuations, however, detection was one thing; whether they could break the formation was another matter altogether.
It was like the time Li Yan and the others had carried out their previous mission and become trapped in a bewildering formation. With identical scenes repeating themselves, any cultivator who was not a fool would know without further investigation that they had