Yang Lingrui followed Pei Xuejian across one suspended jade stairway after another, climbing steadily until they soon rose above the Li Family's pavilion.
After ascending a little farther, Pei Xuejian took out a wooden token and flicked it onto an empty patch of air.
Yang Lingrui was still puzzled when the scene before his eyes blurred and shifted.
Illusion array!
Yang Lingrui instantly realized what had happened.
Several streaks of light and shadow flashed past, and the scene before him stabilized once more.
The jade stairs beneath Yang Lingrui's feet had now become a flagstone path, with soft earthen ground on either side.
When he looked up, the pitch-black mountain walls, pavilions, and towers had vanished, replaced by a beautifully landscaped garden.
"Fellow Cultivator Lingrui, follow me."
Pei Xuejian led Yang Lingrui across the flagstones and into a covered corridor.
Yang Lingrui kept surveying his surroundings, feeling as though none of it was quite real.
So there truly was another heaven within this mountain sanctuary!
An illusion array had divided it into upper and lower sections. Only those holding tokens could enter the upper area.
He remembered clearly that Song Kaiyang had flown down from this height.
"No wonder they said noble families were participating in the Golden Scale Dharma Assembly, yet none had appeared since the beginning. So they were here."
Yang Lingrui thought, These noble families truly had deep pockets. They built such a place for a mere three-day assembly.
After passing through the corridor, the two arrived before a rustic little farmhouse courtyard.
There were three people and a well in the courtyard.
A handsome young man dressed in white was fishing beside the well.
Beside him sat a middle-aged man in coarse hemp clothes, dozing off.
At the other end of the courtyard, a boy of