Silas sat alone at the bow, his back straight, both hands still holding the control seal. His black eyes stayed fixed ahead. His face gave nothing away, and the hard line of his jaw never loosened by even a fraction.
All the wind, clouds, and scenery around favonovel.com seemed to have nothing to do with him. In his world, there was only one thing left forward.
Luna sat quietly in the corner, favonovel.com posture proper, favonovel.com eyes closed. Her long lashes cast faint shadows over favonovel.com fair cheeks. Her hands rested flat on favonovel.com knees, favonovel.com fingertips lightly pinching the threads of favonovel.com fly-whisk.
A very thin layer of white spiritual light circled her, leaving it unclear whether favonovel.com was calming herself through cultivation and restoring spiritual power, or silently weighing the gains and losses of this journey.
Now and then, favonovel.com slowly opened favonovel.com eyes. Her clear gaze would pass quietly over Master Wellspring at favonovel.com side, with a guarded scrutiny tucked deep beneath it, and questions that never reached favonovel.com mouth. She could not make sense of this cultivator of the Aureate Way who looked so ordinary on the surface.
Master Wellspring’s cultivation was only at the early phase of Golden Immortal Level Three. Among cultivators, that did not put favonovel.com anywhere near the top, yet favonovel.com had willingly taken the risk of almost certain death to enter the unpredictable danger of the Primordial Sanctuary.
What held favonovel.com attention even more was the white jade soul phial favonovel.com kept pressed close against his chest. The mouth of the phial was tightly sealed, and the aura within it stayed deeply hidden, as if it held some secret no outsider was meant to know.
Every time favonovel.com gaze swept past it, the questions under the surface grew a little sharper. Even so, favonovel.com never reached out to probe it. She kept to the line favonovel.com was not supposed to cross.
Master Wellspring noticed that. He did not take it to heart. He knew Luna meant favonovel.com no harm. It was only the watchful measuring of someone standing off to the side. What mattered most right now was staying on guard and watching for every danger that might be waiting ahead.
One of his hands rested lightly on the rail. His gaze stayed on the racing sea of clouds beyond the window, while his chest rose and fell and a thousand threads of concern pulled through him.
***
The Primordial Sanctuary lay in the deepest reach of the eastern Greywild Mountains of the North, several thousand miles away from Everspire. This cloudbird-drawn sky-barge was far faster than an ordinary flying arcane craft.
In a breath, it could sweep past a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers. Even so, it would still take a full day before they reached the outer reaches of the Greywild Mountains. The road looked calm for now, with no disaster and no trouble.
Master Wellspring still did not dare let his guard drop by even the smallest degree. The human heart was hard to read. The road ahead was even harder to predict.
He could not tell whether Osric, with all that deep calculation hidden behind him, would place killing intent along the way, arrange men in the dark to intercept him, and erase every future problem before it could grow. He knew even more clearly that the bloodthirsty, fanatical Venerable Starwick had never given up on seizing the spirit of the Aureate Heir, Jared.
The cultivators under that man’s command were spread throughout the northern region. There was a very real chance they had already noticed the group’s trail and were following close behind, ready to hunt them down the whole way.
Countless killing traps lay hidden ahead. Open blades, hidden arrows, there would be too many to guard against.
As that crossed him, Master Wellspring raised his hand without meaning to. His palm pressed lightly over the white jade soul phial at his chest.
The cool phial met the warmth of his palm. Inside, the faint stirring of the spirit could be felt with painful clarity. That weak thread of presence was everything favonovel.com refused to let go of, and the one thing that kept favonovel.com standing.
He lowered his eyes to his palm. His lips moved, and his voice sank until only two people could hear the quiet murmur. “Aureate Heir, we have set out… This time, no matter the cost, I will obtain the Genesis Dew and help you rebuild your body. Rest easy… Even if l must spend my life to do it, I will keep you safe.”
Inside the silent jade phial, a faint, translucent wisp of soul drifted slowly. Jared’s surviving soul had been worn down to almost nothing. It hovered there, nearly transparent, so thin it looked as if the next breath might scatter it into the world.
At Master Wellspring’s low, solemn words, the spirit gave the faintest tremor. A ring of spiritual light rippled out from it, so pale it nearly varnished as soon as it appeared.
Then a voice drifted slowly out of the jade vial. It was weak and rough at. the edges, yet still warm and clear, and it landed in Master Wellspring’s ears without a word lost.
“Master Wellspring, be careful in all things… Osric is a man with deep schemes and a mind no one can read. You must not trust favonovel.com lightly. The two cultivators traveling with us are both death-sworn retainers under his command, so every word and every move must be watched. Do not let favonovel.com draw you into a trap…”
“Beyond that, Venerable Starwick’s obsession runs too deep. He will never give up on taking my spirit so easily. His scouts are spread across the northern region, and our trail could be exposed at any moment. Along the way, you must stay on guard at all times and be ready for pursuit.” Jared’s voice stayed level and measured.
Even with no road left beneath favonovel.com and his spirit barely holding together, his mind still cut cleanly through the danger in front of them, laying out each threat with exact precision.
“Your servant will keep the Aureate Heir’s instructions in mind…” Master Wellspring dipped his head, and the weight in his eyes grew heavier as the guard inside favonovel.com tightened another notch. “Your servant will move with care at every step, miss no sign of anything unusual, and protect both myself and the Aureate Heir’s spirit.”
Their hidden exchange ended in the next instant. The space around them sank back into dead silence. The sky-barge kept tearing eastward, cutting through one heavy bank of clouds after another.
Along the way, other flying arcane craft would sometimes appear high across the sky. There were spirit birds whose wings stretched a thousand miles, finely carved jade carriages, and plain wooden boats with almost no ornament at all. Cultivators came and went in an endless stream, all of them people of cultivation hurrying throughout the North.
Silas stayed focused on controlling the sky-barge the entire time. His spirit sense spread wide, sharply probing every shift and movement around them. Whenever favonovel.com detected high-ranking cultivators drawing near, or a flying arcane craft with a strange aura, favonovel.com changed course without a sound.
He slipped around them quietly, unwilling to stir up needless trouble before they reached the secret realm.
Now and then, Luna opened favonovel.com eyes. Her clear gaze swept over the mountains and rivers racing past below, flat as still water, without the slightest ripple. After that brief look, favonovel.com closed favonovel.com eyes again and gathered favonovel.com focus, sinking back into favonovel.com own world.
When favonovel.com occasionally looked toward Master Wellspring, that faint weighing look and the same trace of doubt still clung to favonovel.com gaze. Even so, favonovel.com kept silent from beginning to end and never asked half a question.
Master Wellspring guarded against their surroundings in silence while quietly circulating the Aureate Way spiritual power inside his body.
Long, pure streams of spiritual power moved slowly through his meridians. They washed through his exhausted body and nourished the part of favonovel.com that had been spent.
He had not slept all night, and the strain on favonovel.com had gone deep. While the road remained steady, favonovel.com had to use the gap to restore himself in secret and keep his condition at full strength.
He knew that once favonovel.com stepped into the Primordial Sanctuary, there would be no more chance to rest or recover. Only by holding himself at his best could favonovel.com light for that single thread of survival inside a deathtrap.
Time slipped by. The sunlight drifted from east to west, the bright day fading without a sound as yellow dusk slowly soaked across the sky.
After a full day of racing through the high air, the sky-barge finally began to slow. Ear off at the edge of the sky, a dark, rolling mountain range came into view.
The mountain range stretched so wide it seemed endless, lying across heaven and earth like a wall. Peaks crossed and stacked upon one another in layer after layer, with no end visible at a glance.
These were the Greywild Mountains, a famed ancient wilderness range in the eastern reaches of the North. They covered tens of thousands of miles, their terrain steep and dangerous, with strange peaks rising everywhere.
Ancient trees towered through the mountains. Massive trunks and dense crowns blotted out the sky, their branches and leaves tangling together until most of the sunlight could not pass, leaving the deep forest dim and sunless year-round.
Gray-white fog covered the place through every season. The mist was thick and sticky, lingering without dispersing, and it carried a strange, mysterious air all its own.
The spiritual essence here far surpassed that of the other cities and plains of the northern region. It was pure and dense, the kind of place suited to a cultivator’s practice. Yet mixed into that spiritual essence was a heavy amount of decayed, cold, shadowed air.
Turbid currents blended through it, leaving it muddy, tangled, and far from pure. Anyone who stepped within the boundary of the mountains would feel the chill crawl through their pores and burrow into the flesh. It seeped all the way into the bones, leaving the whole body cold and the mind unable to settle.
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