In the waters and lands of Hongze, to have a Dao-merging treasured site sheltering one's sect was in fact a very rare thing.

Otherwise such sects would not be honored with the name of immortal sect, and looked up to by cultivators beyond counting.

The great majority of powers stood out in the open, and could only hide themselves behind formations of one kind or another.

Once they met a truly strong enemy they were fish and meat on the block, to be carved as anyone pleased.

And so they would usually take some upper sect as patron and become its vassal, using the upper sect's name to daunt the demons and the wicked.

What the Red Maple Valley had taken was the only immortal sect anywhere near it: the Cloud River Sect.

The Cloud River Sect could not compare with those top-tier powers that stood above Xihong. But it had existed for many tens of thousands of years, and the ancestor who had founded it still held its seat, of a cultivation and a realm nobody could sound. He was certainly not a thing to be spoken of in the same breath as a colossus newly come into Dao-merging.

At the least, until the Cloud River Ancestor ascended, any demon or wicked thing that meant to trespass here had to think hard about the consequences.

And yet at this moment, outside that quiet place where red maples covered the whole mountain, there now stood an iron spear a full six zhang long and as thick as a man's calf — a weapon plainly made for a demon's use.

It stood driven straight into the ground at the valley's mouth, and six blood-stained dharma-robes hung from it, swinging in the wind like a great banner!

Before that one spear, every formation of the Red Maple Valley had been shattered outright.

"……" An old man in a long gown stood in the valley with his hands at his sides, his face all haggard, his eyes empty as he gazed at that banner.

Nobody could have told that a creature so wholly…