Before the enormous platform, a Nine Peaks Mountain cultivator stood holding Thunder Chains. Lightning kept striking down, yet he had merely raised the chains and had not lashed them out.
"Zhuang Ze, do you know your crime?"
The questioning voice did not sound particularly loud, yet it spread throughout all of Nine Peaks Mountain. In Aze's ears, it drowned out even the thunder, jolting him until he was nearly deaf.
Aze, his clothes tattered, hung between two pillars. He looked down at the Nine Peaks Mountain cultivator below, then struggled to gather his strength and looked across every corner of Cliff Mountain and the surrounding skies. Nine Peaks Mountain cultivators stood near and far, all watching him, but he could not find Sister Jin Xiu.
"Zhuang Ze, I'll ask you one more time. Do you know your crime?"
Aze was in such pain that he had neither the strength nor the desire to answer the cultivator below. He merely closed his eyes again.
Aze had never expected that upon returning to Nine Peaks Mountain, there would be only one punishment awaiting him: death. Only this one, with no second choice. He could not even see Sister Jin Xiu.
Yet it was not entirely accurate to say there was only death. According to the sect rules of Nine Peaks Mountain, for betraying the sect and leaving it, Aze had to endure three strikes of the Thunder Chains, after which his name would be erased from Nine Peaks Mountain.
Immortal sects had immortal sects' rules. Those involving matters of principle often remained unchanged for hundreds or thousands of years. It might seem somewhat stubborn, but that was because they touched upon what a sect's immortal path found most intolerable.
In Nine Peaks Mountain's eyes, they had already done all they could for