The Nanhong Seven's immortal carriage hung between heaven and earth like a blazing sun, the seven sects' treasured sites spread out below it.

Cultivators rode the clouds out in droves, turning their eyes to the figures half-glimpsed in the rosy light.

The Sect Masters had gone together to the Dragon Palace's banquet.

They had been gone only half a night and were back with the first light of dawn. It wasn't quite the trap of a feast everyone had imagined. But the faint shifting of Nanhong's sky last night, and the sudden upheaval in the breath of heaven and earth, had both proclaimed that something mighty had fallen.

The seven Sect Masters' auras were deep and full—not a hair on them harmed. The being that had fallen… was most likely some exalted figure of the Dragon Palace.

And yet, right now, all the waters of Nanhong were frighteningly quiet.

They didn't even dare come out and make noise!

As that thought crossed their minds, the cultivators swallowed hard and suddenly felt an indescribable excitement well up from deep inside. They were bowing beneath the immortal carriage, yet somehow their backs felt much straighter.

The Seven had come out of the mountains, to hold Nanhong once more!

“We humbly welcome the Sect Masters home—”

The voices, in unison and long drawn out, carried across the mountains and straight up into the clouds, as if to part the fog that filled the sky and make that flickering sun of Nanyang shine brighter still.

“These youngsters seem pretty happy.”

The Cloud-Soaring Sect Master shook his head. He had come around to what Shen Yi said earlier.

As a cultivator, how could he not know that the road ahead was full of the unexpected? Even the West Dragon Palace had lost a Heaven Realm dragon son. How unsettled things were was plain to see.

Maybe he really had been too timid.

If you wanted to shelter the seven sects' lives by hiding off in a corner, it still came down to whether others would give you the chance.

Sect Master Shen's moves looked a…