Lu Bihai watched the Ember Palm Pavilion Elders reduced from the very image of confidence and triumph to utter helplessness and misery. And yet, he also knew that wasn’t the end.

After all, he knew that everything he was witnessing happen to them was a part of a lesson for him, he wasn’t naive enough to think that the conversation with Wei Yuanjie was all there was to the ’message’ he was to receive about the risks of betraying the Eternal Duality Valley.

So he knew there would be no mercy waiting for them when this was all over.

Right now, killing the three of them was not convenient for the Eternal Duality Valley, since it would derail the whole competition of the Sects.

In case the entire leadership of local forces dispatched per the agreement between the three Sects, died under mysterious circumstances, the Ember Palm Pavilion would want to investigate and send replacements, which would inevitably cause objections from the other two big Sects since the forces sent here were supposed to be autonomous and limited.

This would likely cause a messy dispute, and the whole thing would drag out and become more and more complicated.

The opportunity to cleanly resolve this issue without the meddling of the three main Sects or giving them any excuses to raise objections about the outcome, was now, while the agreement was in effect and the main Sects had no way to interfere.

This was the only thing that kept the three Elders alive even long before tonight, let alone now that they lost the last specs of usefulness.

Lu Bihai watched them knowing all this.

And all the while, he knew that they had a chance at success.

If only they hadn’t overestimated themselves, if only they behaved like good partners, if only they could see past the short-term benefits into the future.

This auction could have been a moment of true triumph for them, and they could have benefited for a long time after.

And now, their very avoidable downfall was hard to watch without at least a bit of pity.

But Lu Bihai didn’t look away.

On the contrary, he was watching with wide eyes, he was learning the lesson in order to etch into his mind, to never forget, to not become like them, to not screw up like them.

It was that gaze that the three Elders saw in his eyes, and it was that gaze that confirmed to them that he was working with the Eternal Duality Valley against them. But he didn’t care. They couldn’t do anything to him, they couldn’t lash out or get revenge on him.

While they lost their leverage over the Eternal Duality Valley who now came out in the open and announced their origin as ascenders from the Battle God’s Cradle, the Eternal Duality Valley still had leverage over them.

After all, the three Elders were bribed.

Although they did not conspire against their Sect since the deal was supposed to be only beneficial for the Ember Palm Pavilion - their benefits coming strictly on top of the benefits for the Sect with no real costs, now that the deal was broken, it was very easy to spin their secret cooperation with the Eternal Duality Valley as complete betrayal of their own Sect.

Just the result tonight was speaking volumes, and made them look very guilty.

They already would be facing scrutiny from their main Sect about raising their cultivation levels so dramatically. If they were lucky they could explain it away.

But if their secret deal with the Eternal Duality Valley was ever brought to light, they were completely screwed.

Meanwhile, Ko Wenlu and Ko Furen watched everything that unfolded without much shock. It’s not that the events that happened did not surprise or even alarm them since they were significant developments which were important to their father, but the sheer weight of the incident from before rendered them unable to show any emotional response to much else, they were already overwhelmed.

They could already see quite a few eyes around the auction hall watching them, and knew that soon the whole city would be speculating whether the City Lord’s Manor had any other hidden gem treasures, perhaps ones which came alongside the painting, discovered in the same place or purchased from the same merchant.

The blunder that Ko Wenlu made today was now hanging like a giant blade over the entire City Lord’s Manor, and neither of them could even begin to imagine how they were going to fix it, or even report it to their father.

So compared to that, the fact that the competition of the three Sects suddenly changed course, and the participation of the newly appeared Eternal Duality Valley didn’t seem as big of a deal as it normally would’ve - and it wasn’t like they could do anything about it either.

The only thing of note was that, all those mercenaries who lost the chance to participate in the big conflict of the three sects that now turned into a neat little tournament, had nothing to do and there were likely quite a lot of them who would be among those greedily eyeing the Ko Family.

It didn’t help that it was already an established fact that long time ago the Ko Family had an extremely powerful artifact that attracted unwanted attention, together with the painting tonight, establishing a trace of a pattern - the family that could be considered old even by cultivation world standards owning precious treasures.

Wu Long smiled under his mask, satisfied with the auction’s results, ’I’d say it’s pretty much a perfe-...’ 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

But before he could finish that thought, a tremor rose from below, and the world around shook as everyone realized that a powerful earthquake was shaking the entire continent.

Spiritual Qi became extremely agitated, all flows and currents of it breaking into complete disorganized chaos.

Wu Long’s face under the mask showed shock as he felt a breath of a familiar Qi, one that should not be anywhere near here.

"Wu Long", Fen Baihu appeared next to him without showing herself to anyone else, her voice full of confusion, worry, and even a bit of fear.

"It’s alright, Baihu", Wu Long placed his hand on her cheek, calming her down, but his gaze was now turned in another direction, and then his eyes widened.

Reflected in them through his Chaos Origin Eyes, was a massive vortex spanning the entirety of the sky above the continent, like the embodiment of chaos, the mere sight of that vortex making cultivators and mortals alike shudder as space and time themselves broke down and were twisted in the moving walls, turbulent and colossal torrents of Qi interweaving and folding over themselves, threatening to rip apart anything and everything that could get caught in them, while the center of the vortex was eerily calm and quiet, as if an endless abyss which could not be peered into, but that started at anyone looking at it.

"Baihu, prepare to evacuate everyone", Wu Long said with a serious expression as he quietly disappeared into a side passage among the chaos of people streaming toward the exits to get a look at what was happening outside, and once out of sight of outsiders disappeared into a cloud of dark mist.

The tremor intensified, as overwhelmingly oppressive pressure began mounting on the entire continent, no, the entire world this continent was on, violent winds sent everything not firmly attached to the ground flying into the air as if an extreme hurricane descended everywhere all at once.

This was a spatial rift, one connecting different Boundless Worlds, but Wu Long never saw one of this power or magnitude.

And the problem was with the place it connected to.

The continuously rising pressure made all mortals on the continent faint, and even cultivators in and below Mortal Transcendence Realm had the same fate, only those in Seven Profound Realms managing to somehow hold onto their consciousness, but even they were gradually getting overwhelmed.

Wu Long appeared high up in the skies, using concealing techniques, battered by powerful and destructive winds of air, Qi and pressure, but persevering, struggling to stay in one spot, as glowing patterns appeared and disappeared in his eyes looking into the center of the vortex.

And then, his eyes showed disbelief, as he froze up, the violent currents of Qi shoving him away in that moment of being caught off-guard, but the next moment he turned into a streak of dark mist that covered a bright lightning, with incredible speed going up and to the side, toward the very center of the vortex, quite a distance away from the Silver Wing City.

The cultivators who managed to hold onto their consciousness and watched the bizarre enormous phenomenon in the skies all soon saw that a figure fell out of the vortex, a sole figure like kite with its strings cut falling straight down as soon as it appeared.

And in a blink of an eye, that figure disappeared into nothing.

The reason was that Wu Long caught it and immediately shielded it from outside view.

His arms very carefully holding a woman covered in blood and wounds, a hoarse, slightly trembling voice coming off his lips, "X-Xinyi..."

His eyes were full of disbelief, unable to process it, and yet, the feeling in his arms holding the delicate body telling him it was real, "Hong Xinyi... why are you here?"