Drenched in the rain, fleeing.
Gongyang Ju, soaked to the bone, sprinted madly across the muddy ground.
Never in his life had he imagined his boots would be stained with so much mud, nor had he ever thought he would look as miserable as he did today.
Before him lay a city; even in the heavy rain, the myriad lights of mortal homes still glowed brightly within it.
"I'm here, I'm here. Once I'm among the homes of the commoners, even the Li Clan won't easily make a move against me.
No matter how mad they are, they won't use massive Spiritual power within a city."
Gongyang Ju's face was full of bitterness.
He wanted to fly, but he didn't dare; he didn't dare to use even a sliver of Spiritual power!
The scenes from just moments ago played in his mind.
Over the past three months, they had gathered over a thousand people in Clearpeak Prefecture.
Among them were sixteen Void Refining realm experts and forty-two Divinity Transformation realm experts, with the rest being at the Nascent Soul and Golden Core realms.
These were the powerhouses attracted by the massive prestige of Uncle Rain and Banshu Ao following their arrival.
It truly fulfilled Perfected Qiuyue's words: in the face of overwhelming power, people's hearts would change, including his own.
The Azure Imperial Dynasty was so vast; among everyone who had come, who didn't have glorious deeds and a powerful past in their own respective territories?
In their eyes, the Azure Cloud Li Clan had absolutely no chance of survival.
Moreover, the experts in the Western Frontier still needed three days to return.
And so, leading over eighty cultivators, he had charged toward the Li Clan's northern iceberg.
"Three months of planning, how could it fall to such a state? How could this happen?"
The torrential rain poured down on Gongyang Ju's head.
The city drew closer and closer.
Raindrops falling from his bangs blurred his vision, leaving his eyes bloodshot; his ashen face was laced with terror.
They had planned for a full three months.
Every single one of them had been cursed; if anyone dared to leak the secret, they would be possessed by inner demons and die without a burial place.
As soon as they left their respective Grotto-Heavens, they couldn't leak the secret even if they wanted to.
For the Li Clan, this was a sudden, unanticipated attack.
But upon arriving at the northern iceberg, everything changed.
The northern iceberg housed two of the Li Clan's branch lineages: Demon Suppression and Silver Moon.
According to the intelligence they had gathered over the years, the iceberg was at best a cultivation ground for the Li Clan's juniors under fifty years old, along with Li Xinri, Li Xinjue, and Li Zhijing.
On the entire iceberg, there were only a mere two Divinity Transformation realm cultivators.
As for their group on this trip, he was a Void Refining expert.
Hailing from the Emberwing Guard, he wielded orthodox Daoist techniques; his Dharmic Avatar could transform into a dragon capable of destroying all things.
Setting aside peerless monsters like Banshu Ao, he considered himself no inferior to most in the Void Refining realm.
He had once slayed demons in the Eastern Sea alongside the Emberwing Guard, annihilated demonic sects, and even fought against a Sea Tribe Exalted Demon alongside Body Integration realm cultivators of the Emberwing Guard without dying...
In this life, especially over the past few centuries, he had encountered too many such great deeds worthy of being spread by the world.
The eighty experts under his command were all formidable figures.
Among the three Divinity Transformation cultivators who came, one had even been trapped in the Central Plains by a demon who had broken its seal.
The demon intended to refine the people of an entire Region for its own use to break through to the Void Refining realm, yet it was defeated by this very person.
The other two Divinity Transformation cultivators were slightly inferior, but they still possessed illustrious reputations and impressive battle records.
The Nascent Soul and Golden Core realm cultivators below them either dominated their own regions, were renowned as geniuses across prefectures, or were favored by regional saints.
All were heroes of the world with limitless futures.
These eighty people, let alone destroying an iceberg, even in the Western Frontier, relying on their various divine abilities, they could easily overwhelm the Wu Tribe.
Yet, it was just an iceberg.
Gongyang Ju did not want to recall it, but everything that happened on that iceberg still transformed into pure terror, implanted into the deepest depths of his soul.
It was a child, floating mid-air above the iceberg in the rainy night, smiling sinisterly at them.
Then, all across the iceberg, the members of the Silver Moon Lineage emerged in the night rain.
Li Zhijing summoned the demonic beasts from her 'Heavenly Demon Rune Seed,' Li Xinri transformed into a blazing sun like the sunrise in the east, and Li Xinjue vanished into the shadows.
He saw with his own eyes that child transform into an indescribable entity.
Taotie!
One of the four white-robed figures beneath the True God of the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems, Taotie!
That was a nightmare that even several Void Refining experts from the major factions of the Department of Immortal Suppression could not rival.
Back then in the Mountain of Esoteric Stratagems, if Zhen Wu had not betrayed them, the entire Department of Immortal Suppression force would have perished; this was an indisputable fact.
"Why did I come to the Azure Cloud Prefecture? Why did I come?"
Gongyang Ju lost his usual optimism.
He couldn't dispel the terror he felt upon encountering Taotie.
This was also the first time in his life... he fled. He fled without hesitation, leaving the slaughter behind him.
Eighty people—a full eighty experts who could be revered for thousands of years anywhere in the world and held resounding reputations—had absolutely no chance of survival in front of Taotie.
"The rain in Azure Cloud Prefecture is truly cold."
Gongyang Ju reached out his hand, catching the rain of the Azure Cloud Prefecture, his heart filled only with infinite sorrow.
Suddenly, he turned his head in horror.
"Splash... splash..."
A similar sound, light, and unsteady footsteps.
Fortunately, the approaching person was a fellow Daoist in the same predicament as him, the Thousand-Faced Swordsman.
Although he had changed his appearance, Gongyang Ju could distinguish the other party's aura.
The Li Clan hadn't pursued them, which proved that although the Li Clan was prepared in advance, they were stretched too thin. They had a great chance of escaping.
Unfortunately, this swordsman, whom the world claimed "no one survives seeing his sword light," had even lost his spatial ring.
The mark on his forehead representing his lifebound flying sword had also vanished without a trace.
And behind the Thousand-Faced Swordsman... just like him, nearly a hundred people had set out, but none had returned.
"We fell for a trap. The Li Clan knew everything about us through some unknown means."
The Thousand-Faced Swordsman stood shoulder to shoulder with Gongyang Ju.
The rain in Azure Cloud Prefecture was bone-chillingly cold, making the Thousand-Faced Swordsman's body tremble.
Gongyang Ju had never thought in his entire life that he would become a drowned rat alongside someone of the same realm. They numbly hid themselves in the city.
Gongyang Ju asked blankly, "Who did you encounter?"
"I don't know." The Thousand-Faced Swordsman looked utterly despondent.
"In the Immortal Martial Grotto-Heaven, there was a faceless person. The auras within his body were bizarre—corpse qi, demonic qi, medicinal pill qi, and puppet qi. His body had absolutely no flaws, and he didn't even have a soul."
"I passed by a Grotto-Heaven. The Li Clan probably won't be chasing us.
A battle was also taking place there, a massive battle. Seven undying people trapped our fellow Daoists in a barrier, with seven totems."
The two chatted idly, exchanging scattered words as they slowly stepped into the city.
Void Refining experts could not be perceived by ordinary mortals; they bypassed the city guards.
For the first time, Gongyang Ju and the Thousand-Faced Swordsman discovered that fear had to be dispelled through casual conversation, speaking of all their nightmares as if they were as light as the wind and clouds.
"Uncle Rain and Holy Master Haoqiong haven't shown up either," Gongyang Ju said casually, causing both of them to fall silent for a moment.
The Thousand-Faced Swordsman walked forward. To his left and right were mortal homes still burning with bright lamps.
He looked up at the heavy rain in the sky and exhaled a long breath.
"Just like us, they don't know what they encountered in this rainy night."
"We thought the Li Clan's experts were all in the Western Frontier, but in reality..."
"The true experts have always been in Azure Cloud Prefecture."