An Unusual Presence

At the time, he thought the teleportation array would be located inside the city, just like in Thousand Cloud City.

After arriving in Cloud Gathering City and taking a stroll around, they discovered that it was just an ordinary city, without a teleportation array as naturally formed as Thousand Cloud City.

It seems that the passageways between the first and second levels of this Chongxiao Domain are not located in the same place.

As Lin Xiao was pondering and preparing to leave Cloud Gathering City, he suddenly sensed a familiar yet strange aura.

"Fellow Daoist Jiang, I suddenly remembered a Law Artifact I saw at the Spirit Treasure Pavilion that I think is of some use. Could you please wait for me at the city gate for a moment? I'll be right back." Lin Xiao's words were still ringing in Jiang Qu was already gone.

"Could this Fellow Daoist Lin be planning to skip out on the bill?" Jiang Qu couldn't help but think. But then he thought again, Fellow Daoist Lin had just paid his entrance fee, so he didn't seem like the type to skip out on a guide fee of twenty Spirit Stone. So he still walked towards the city gate as instructed.

Lin Xiao, who had followed the strange aura, was now at the end of a secluded narrow alley in the south of the city.

Jiang Qu had mentioned this area to him before, saying that it was mostly rental housing, and the tenants were mostly Rogue Cultivator. The population was very diverse, and all sorts of people came and went, with scams and frauds happening frequently.

In short, the atmosphere here isn't well-regarded in Cloud Gathering City, so people generally don't come here.

Lin Xiao stood at the end of the narrow alley, carefully sensing the surroundings, and discovered that the aura indeed ended directly from there.

The aura of the Execution Stone has appeared in Cloud Gathering City... What are these Execution Cultivator planning to do?

He frowned and carefully searched the surroundings again, but found nothing unusual.

But he was very uneasy, because every time Execution Cultivator appeared, it was accompanied by disaster.

Lin Xiao searched the surrounding area again, unwilling to give up, but still found nothing.

Remembering that those Execution Cultivator seemed to like setting up all sorts of messy formations, he immediately flew out of the city on his sword.

Unexpectedly, in just a short while, the aura of the Execution Stone gradually filled the once normal Cloud Gathering City!

However, the cultivators in the city seemed quite unfamiliar with the aura of the Execution Stone. Some of them didn't even notice it, and those who did were only slightly puzzled by the sudden unfamiliar aura and didn't think much of it.

Most of them failed to immediately detect the effect of this aura on their own Spiritual Power. Even if they felt a slight stagnation in their Spiritual Power, they only thought it was a temporary lack of strength. After all, many Rogue Cultivator cultivators have low-grade cultivation techniques and often have various problems. Such a slight stagnation in Spiritual Power is quite common.

Upon arriving outside the city, Lin Xiao immediately began to search around the city walls.

Before long, he discovered array points in several places, but the way these array points were set up and their locations were completely different from the array logic of their spiritual cultivation. Based on these array points, he couldn't figure out what kind of array it was at all.

Just then, he noticed that the Execution Qi within these array points began to circulate rapidly, and the array was activated!

The next second, a muffled rumble resounded through the heavens and earth, making one's ears ring, and the ground suddenly began to shake violently!

Lin Xiao immediately flew into the air on his sword.

The surrounding Spiritual Qi became extremely turbulent in no time. He seemed to sense something and looked up, only to find that the clouds above were falling rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye!

Wherever the eye could see and wherever the Divine Sense could reach, all the clouds in the sky were descending with a crushing force!

What's going on?

Could it have been done by those Execution Cultivator? He dismissed the thought as soon as it crossed his mind.

If those Execution Cultivator had such methods and power, they wouldn't have only managed to cause that little commotion in the Mortal Realm; they would have wiped out the Mortal Realm outright.

Just as Lin Xiao was wondering, he heard a small group of people in the city below shouting in panic, "The Cloud Burst is coming! The Cloud Burst is coming! The Cloud Burst has come early! Run!"

Many people were puzzled and uneasy upon hearing this. The shaking of the ground caused them to fly away on their swords, but most of them remained in the city and did not intend to flee.

Cloud Burst?

Isn't it said that the timing of each Cloud Burst is fixed, and there are still more than two months until the next Cloud Burst?

Lin Xiao rushed to the city gate and grabbed an elderly cultivator who looked panicked and was also shouting that Cloud Burst had arrived, "Are you sure this is Cloud Burst?"

The old cultivator, grabbed by the man, barely regained his senses. He glanced at the man's large beard, swallowed hard, and then pointed a trembling finger at the sky, saying, "I saw this five hundred years ago. That time, the relocation ship I was on was delayed, and I almost couldn't escape. Just as I was about to leave the boundary, this was the scene I saw...!"

They hadn't used Sound Isolation Technique, and the people around them who were preparing to enter the city also heard what the old monk said. They didn't quite believe him, but he did look quite old.

This is a very old Golden Core cultivator, so his words are quite credible.

So those who hadn't yet entered the city, whether they believed it or not, saw that the scene was indeed very abnormal, and they all left as a precaution.

Lin Xiao was about to ask something more when the old cultivator, while staring at the rapidly descending clouds above and struggling to break free of the arm being held, sweated profusely and pleaded, "Fellow Daoist, please have mercy and let me go! My old body can't withstand the Cloud Burst."

Lin Xiao couldn't force him, so he had no choice but to let go and prepare to pay the city entrance fee again to enter the city and inquire.

To his surprise, when he tried to enter the city, he found he couldn't! The city's protective array had activated its defensive mode at some point, completely sealing off the entire Cloud Gathering City!

A large crowd of people had gathered inside the city gates, wanting to leave, but they were all blocked by the city's protective formation.

Many people initially didn't feel anything, but the sudden lockdown threw them into a panic, and fear quickly spread among the crowd.

As the descending clouds drew ever closer to the ground, the once white clouds gradually turned dark and murky, with glimpses of lightning and thunder emanating from them! Many people within the city began to gather their strength to attack the city's protective formation.

However, despite the barrage of Law Technique by everyone, the city's protective formation remained completely unmoved.

This is normal. The cultivation levels of the people in the city are basically concentrated at the Foundation Establishment and Golden Core stages. As a city in the Chongxiao Domain, the strength of the city's protective array is even higher than that of the city's protective arrays in the North and South Spirit Domains. It is not something that a group of Foundation Establishment and Golden Core cultivators can break through. Even if there are some Nascent Soul cultivators mixed in, they are completely no match for it.

As the clouds drew ever closer, the people had no other choice but to continue using every means they could think of against the city's protective formation.

However, no one noticed that the increasingly dense black mist within the city was gradually enveloping them.