The moon-pearls' radiance lit the damp mud-burrow.

Pale face after pale face was full of terror. They crowded the mouth of the cave with blades in hand, keeping a mud bed behind them.

The huge commotion from above, and the backwash of violent aura with it, had left the Yu clan sick with fear; and when they felt the formation vanish they came close to breaking altogether.

Could it be that even with the Nanhong Seven acting for them, they could not be sheltered?

"……"

On the mud bed, unlike the rest of her clan, the white-haired old woman at her last gasp had a colour in her face that was almost uncanny, and a scorching heat came off her whole body.

Just then she seemed to sense something, and with difficulty forced her eyelids open toward the cave mouth.

At the Yu Ancestor's movement the clansfolk growled to steady their nerve, gripped their blades hard, and glared out of the cave with a show of ferocity. "Raaah!"

And through the growling,

a figure in a black shirt came strolling in.

The Yu clansfolk saw the young man's fine features clearly and all of them blinked; then, panting, they let their hands drop, the strength going out of them, and said in agitation, "The exalted immortal has come back!"

If they remembered rightly, the grand formation that had been shielding them all this while was his work.

They stumbled aside to open a path, and stared at Shen Yi in trepidation.

The Yu Ancestor caught the thick reek of sparrow-demon blood on him and was blank for a moment. She had taken this young fellow for someone brought along by his seniors to see something of the world.

It appeared not.

"Our thanks to the exalted immortal of the Clear-Moon Sect… for saving the Yu clan…"

The Yu Ancestor struggled to rise. A power at the third layer of Return-to-Void, she meant to make Shen Yi a full obeisance.

"No need."

Shen Yi glanced sideways at the moon-pearls around them and lifted her with a wave of spiritual qi. "I…