“Brother Zhuo, are you alright?” Lin Qingxue’s eyes were tearful as she looked toward Zhuo Yifeng. One of his wrists had been slashed open, and fresh blood had stained half his clothes a macabre red.

“Don’t worry, it’s not as deep as it looks,” Zhuo Yifeng replied calmly. Because of the severe bleeding, his face was quite pale.

The moment he and Lin Qingxue had emerged from the portal, they were surrounded by a group of hostile cultivators, all of whom had relatively advanced cultivation. Lin Qingxue, Zhuo Yifeng, and a few other cultivators from the lower realms who had been surrounded were no match for these men and had all been taken as slaves. Zhuo Yifeng had suffered his wrist injury trying to protect Lin Qingxue, and the man who had given him the wound was now standing right by his side.

Zhuo Yifeng glanced askance at that man, a long-faced swordsman who was particularly malicious-looking. With a surreptitious glance, Zhuo Yifeng memorized the man’s face for the future.

“You brat, what are you looking at?” His eyes, like those of a dead fish, suddenly turned to Zhuo Yifeng. “You want your wrist to be chopped off entirely?”

Lin Qingxue immediately stepped in front of Zhuo Yifeng and glared at the odious man.

“Oh!” He smiled sickeningly at Lin Qingxue and reached out toward her. “I couldn’t bear to harm such a cute, pretty girl like you.”

Sensing that Lin Qingxue was about to explode, Zhuo Yifeng pulled her behind him and faked a bright smile at the swordsman. “Your cultivation’s amazing! If you really wanted to chop off my hand, I’m sure you would already have done so. I heard that you’ll be taking us to work in the mines, and if I’m missing one of my hands, then I certainly wouldn’t be an effective miner.”

“Then you’d better not try anything funny!” the man shouted, then shot a lascivious glance at Lin Qingxue’s body.

With a smile still plastered on his face, Zhuo Yifeng pushed Lin Qingxue toward the side. “Qingxue, rub some dirt onto your face later.”

At the head of the party, Pi Yang’s eyes shone as he glanced at the approaching cultivators. “Yun Ruoyan, you’re finally here!”

Li Mo and Yun Ruoyan flew toward the mainland along with hundreds of other cultivators from the lower realms, and they were soon able to make out the various delegations waiting for them.

“Who are they?” someone asked.

“Likely the inhabitants of this world,” someone else responded.

“They all feel so strong!”

“What’re they doing here?”

These cultivators clearly weren’t aware of how the Mingyuan continent operated. Yun Ruoyan and Li Mo could also sense how strong the cultivators awaiting them were. Given their understanding of the continent, they couldn’t help being wary of what awaited them.

“Li Mo, should we make contact with these delegations?” Yun Ruoyan asked.

“Let’s avoid them for the moment and find a place to set Zong Yang down first,” Li Mo replied, then motioned to Lin Qingchen and Guan Ruliu to slow down. Together, they drifted toward the back of the crowd of cultivators. Others clearly had the same idea, including the fatso they had previously seen.

Yun Ruoyan was pleasantly surprised by his intelligence when she noticed a buxom woman by his side. Upon sensing her glance, the woman turned and nodded to her, and Yun Ruoyan mirrored the gesture.

The flying cultivators quickly separated into two groups: one that headed straight for land, and another which continued flying west. As the first group of cultivators landed, they were quickly surrounded by the gathered cultivators. Sensing danger, they tried to rise back into the air, but a beam of white light suddenly shone on them, sucking away the cultivators’ spiritual swords.

“Ah, my sword!”

“Haha, it’s good that we were wary!” The fatso by Yun Ruoyan’s side began to laugh.

Upon seeing this sight, the cultivators in the air were thankful for their caution as they continued flying westward, with the fatso taking the lead. Not a hundred feet further, however, he seemed to crash into an immaterial barrier of some sort. With a scream, he fell off his chopsticks.

The chopsticks zoomed downward to lift him back up, and the crowd of flying cultivators all stopped moving.

“What happened, Fatty?” the buxom woman shouted.

The fatty wiped away the blood streaming down his nose. “Xue Ji, there’s a barrier ahead sealing the path forward! Damn it, we’re trapped here!”

“All you flying cultivators, you’d better come down now! Otherwise, if this mirror sucks away your spiritual swords, you’ll all drop into the sea and die!” a youth’s voice rang out, infused with spiritual energy.

Yun Ruoyan found the voice surprisingly familiar. Isn’t this Pi Yang? He’s here too?!

The cultivators glanced at each other. Again, the fatso took the lead, flying down toward the gathered cultivators. “They almost killed me with that barrier! I’ll teach them a lesson or two!”

Xue Ji followed him down. Without any other choice, the rest of the cultivators followed suit, and the beam of light from the mirror quickly enveloped them all.

“Who are you? What exactly do you want?” the fatso shouted as soon as he landed.

A richly dressed, middle-aged man walked out from the central delegation. Raising his voice, he shouted at the gathered cultivators, “All you groundhogs, listen up! I’m the manager in charge of assigning each of you a role. According to custom, you’ll all serve as slaves for the seven major families of the continent. You’ll only be freed when your owner deems it fit to grant you freedom.”

“What?!” the fatty yelled. “Your grandmother’s a groundhog! I’m not about to be anyone’s slave!”

“Right, right! What makes you think you can tell us what to do?!”

Another cultivator cracked his knuckles. “You must be tired of living!”

The other cultivators all began making a fuss. Although they weren’t at the peak of their respective realms, eighth-rank blademasters were far superior to the majority of the populace, and they had all grown somewhat complacent and prideful.

The middle-aged man seemed used to their behavior, so much so that he didn’t even get angry. He waved a hand and seven swordsmen stepped forward, one from each delegation. “Teach that fatty a lesson,” he commanded.

The seven swordsmen walked past the middle-aged man and stood in a row in front of the gathered cultivators.

“You, come here.” One of the swordsmen pointed at the fatty.

“What, you think I’m afraid of you?” The fatso stepped forward, swinging his arms.

“Fatty, be careful. I can’t see through their cultivation,” Xue Ji whispered from behind.

The fatso had noticed the same thing. He couldn’t discern the cultivation of any of the seven swordsmen, which implied one of two things: either all of the seven were more advanced cultivators than he was, or they had all hidden their capabilities.

He was an early ninth-rank blademaster himself, and he didn’t believe that all seven swordsmen, who had seemed to be randomly chosen from each of the seven delegations, would surpass him in strength. If that were truly the case, then he would accept his beating.

“You, I’ll choose you!” The fatty pointed at one of the bulkiest swordsmen. He stepped forward expressionlessly, the word ‘Pi’ printed on his outfit.

“Li Mo, I can’t identify how strong either of them are. Who’s stronger?” Yun Ruoyan whispered.

“The fatty’s an early ninth-rank blademaster, and that swordsman’s a peak ninth-rank. That fatty’s no match for him.”

Yun Ruoyan frowned. For a seemingly ordinary swordsman to have reached the peak of ninth-rank… How frightening would the top cultivators of this continent be?

The fatty took out a cleaver. “What’s your weapon?”

The swordsman sneered disdainfully.

“You bastard, you’re looking down on me, aren’t you? I’ll slice you up!” the fatty shouted, then began charging at the swordsman with his cleaver. He snapped his fingers, and orange flames immediately surrounded the blade.

Despite the fatso’s imposing manner, the swordsman didn’t seem to pay his theatrics any mind. He showed no sign of dodging, and allowed the fatty to swing his cleaver at his forehead.

As the two cultivators collided, the crowd heard the sound of metal striking metal. Just as the fatty’s cleaver was about to strike the man’s forehead, he caught the cleaver with his bare hands, clapping the blade between his palms and blocking the blow with nothing but brute strength. His palms glowed golden, revealing him to be a practitioner specialized in gold.

There were five types of spiritual attunement: gold, wood, water, fire, and earth. Gold and earth were the rarest of the five; Yun Ruoyan had seen a few earth-based spiritual techniques, but never a gold-based one.