The jade-green waves surged, then slowly settled.

The tattered ten-thousand-li rivers-and-mountains painting swayed in the air like a forlorn banner, then gradually went gray and sank into the water.

A wet, rank wind swept over the collapsed mountain. The many cultivators of the Mountain-Moving Sect lowered their hands, released their hold on the great formation, and stared in awe at the ink-dark robe in the sky.

The bonds on Huang Wenfa suddenly let go. He stumbled back down to the ground, where Yan Chongzhang rushed up and caught him.

Master and disciple both looked at Shen Yi, their breathing quickening.

Their sect had lost a treasure mountain. But the figure standing alone in front of the sky, though no towering giant, was harder to move than any mountain.

“So that's Shen Yi?”

Crown Prince Ziyang gazed into the distance and thought for a long time, and his look slowly grew conflicted.

The purple-whiskered white dragons had no love of killing. Forceful as he was, Ziyang shared that nature. Normally, someone as ruthless as Shen Yi should have repelled him on instinct.

But the man had stood up for the Mountain-Moving Sect and had right on his side—and with a way of killing that clean and decisive, Crown Prince Ziyang couldn't help being a little surprised.

He hadn't come out in years, and somehow Nanhong had produced a man this ruthless. Whether that was a good thing, he couldn't say.

But now, at least, he finally understood why his old friends had reacted the way they had.

“Now that the Ancestral Stele is out, what do you all think?”

Gathering himself, Crown Prince Ziyang turned to Ye Jiu and the others.

That stele soared into the clouds, covered in scarlet markings, each one standing for some cultivator of the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Sect. Built up over such long ages, this immortal stele had long since become every bit the equal of a Dragon Lair.

Even if what had come down to Xihong was only a phantom, it was nothing a Heaven Realm cultivator could resist alone.

With Shi Lianchang dead, it was…