The Yan family. Xuanyue City. The Cloud-Empyrean Pavilion. The Mystic Sea Retreat.

These were the four topmost dependent powers under the Nanyang Sect's hand, and any one of them, moving, could raise no small wave in Nanhong.

Gathered together in one place now, they made a rather forlorn showing.

The cultivators of the Cloud-Empyrean Pavilion and the Mystic Sea Retreat in particular still had no idea, even at this moment, how they had offended a prince and a dragon grandson of the South Dragon Palace.

Having lost the shelter of the Nanhong Seven, they had been behaving themselves to the last degree.

It was calamity out of a clear sky.

To say there was no resentment in them would be impossible. Only that the timely support of the Yan family and Xuanyue City had settled their feelings for the moment; and besides, in a situation like this, a quarrel among themselves would only see them all dead without a bone left to bury.

But whether they held together or not, in a disaster of this size the one hope seemed still to rest on that Nanyang immortal sect behind them, which did not look particularly dependable.

The Pavilion Lord of Cloud-Empyrean was the most agitated of any of them.

It was his own ground being besieged, after all.

The Nanyang immortal sect had still not shown itself; and the Fifth Prince bore himself high and haughty, utterly heedless of the Nanhong Seven's face, not troubled in the least about offending those Dao-merging colossi.

He could about guess what the Cloud-Empyrean Pavilion's end would be.

Plainly the Nanyang Sect had done something out of bounds and been caught out at it by the Dragon Palace, and he and his were the pond fish caught in it.

Were he the Nanyang Sect Master, at a moment as critical as this, with the great business of the Seven-Sect Assembly close at hand, he would most likely choose to throw these dependencies away.

Steady the foundation first. He would lose a great deal of help, but so long as he could get himself a…