Pengluo gave him a deep look and said in a grave voice, "In all my experiences across the Spirit Realm, you are among the very few who could touch this level while still in the Soul Formation Realm.
"The bearing of a Great Emperor."
Li Guanqi let out a helpless, wry chuckle. "You're always going on about this emperor or that lord. Anyone who didn't know better would think you were actually something formidable back in the day, you radish."
Pengluo bristled at once. Standing up with its hands on its hips, it declared with righteous indignation, "I really was formidable before!"
Li Guanqi looked up at the sky and murmured softly, "The secret realm is about to open."
The moment his voice fell, a terrifyingly vast spatial fluctuation abruptly surged above Mingchuan City.
Billowing clouds of iridescent light illuminated Mingchuan until it was bright as day!
*Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!*
A barrage of whistling sounds rang out as silhouettes tore across the sky one after another.
Li Guanqi snatched up Pengluo, and with a flash of lightning beneath his feet, he appeared high in the sky in an instant.
By then, the air above Mingchuan was already packed with a dense crowd.
Catching sight of them, Li Guanqi's expression turned unusually grim.
"How are there so many Soul Formation experts here?!"
With just a rough scan of his senses, there were at least nearly three hundred Soul Formation experts present.
Hidden within the black robe, Pengluo sent an astonished voice transmission. "Tsk, so many outsiders have come. Looks like this secret realm is no ordinary affair..."
As it spoke, Pengluo's nose twitched faintly, and its brow furrowed tight.
Li Guanqi asked in a low voice transmission, "What is it?"
"Something feels off, but I can't put my finger on what it is," Pengluo replied, deeply puzzled.
Li Guanqi did not dwell on it, sweeping his gaze across the surroundings.
Suddenly!
The sky, which had been bright as day, abruptly turned overcast and gloomy!
Pengluo's expression hardened as it hissed in a low voice, "The Nether King! Ming Li! Why is he here?!"
"The Nether King?"
"That's right! The Master of Mingchuan! Supposedly a being who stands on equal footing with a Domain Lord!"
Li Guanqi's heart tightened. Immediately afterward, an unimaginably vast, terrifying pressure engulfed the void!
*Rippp!*
In the distant sky, a pitch-black rift over a hundred zhang across was violently torn open.
The dark rift gaped like the maw of a monstrous beast waiting to devour its prey.
A single glance was enough to instill instinctive dread.
The winds and clouds shifted as a grim gloom descended once more upon the world.
Brilliant though the ruins' radiance remained, to all present it seemed completely eclipsed before that dark fissure.
*Clank, clatter!*
The sharp clash of armor suddenly resounded.
Moments later, hundreds of black-armored guards strode slowly out from the rift.
Every movement of the hundreds was disciplined and identical, black spears pointed forward in their hands as a suffocating wave of slaughterous intent surged forth!
Li Guanqi's divine sense stirred, and shock gripped his heart.
"Three hundred Nascent Soul cultivators!"
Indeed, every single black-armored guard was at the very least in the Nascent Soul stage!
Two black-armored guards unrolled a carpet across the open air, and a black-clad figure walked slowly out of the rift.
"Greetings, Nether King!"
"Greetings, Nether King!"
The crowd bowed in unison, crying out with loud reverence.
The man stood tall and straight, his short hair sharply cropped.
His features were prominent and resolute.
Stubble dotted his jaw, and paired with deep, fathomless eyes, he made an unforgettable impression at first sight.
Across his left eye ran a deep, gruesome scar—and the eye itself was a deathly, ghastly white.
The Nether King swept his gaze over the crowd.
Li Guanqi also bowed his head, shivering beneath the man's aura.
With his head lowered, Li Guanqi's eyes went wide, and he muttered inwardly, *He's definitely beyond the Void Refining Realm!*
Behind the Nether King followed two alluring, voluptuous women clad in barely a few scraps of cloth.
Yet even with women dressed like that, Li Guanqi could not sense a shred of their aura!
Suddenly!
Just as the Nether King was about to speak, his eyes turned cold, and he glanced toward a cluster of people far off in the sky.
And then...
*Bang!*
*Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!*
A Soul Formation elder beside Li Guanqi swelled up and exploded without warning.
He blew apart with zero chance of resistance!
In that split second, both physical body and divine soul vanished entirely.
Bits of flesh and gore splattered all over Li Guanqi, yet he dared not twitch a muscle.
The sound of explosions lasted a full two breaths.
Over a dozen Soul Formation experts had died.
Li Guanqi swallowed hard. He knew all too well why those people had perished.
The reason was simple: they had raised their heads!
And raising their heads was, of course, to look at the women behind the Nether King.
The Nether King withdrew his gaze. Immediately, the black mist over Mingchuan converged rapidly, coalescing into a black throne roughly a zhang wide before him.
The man climbed stairs forged of nether qi with steady steps.
The two women moved ahead of him, draping themselves across the throne.
Sitting gently upon the women's thighs and leaning back against them, the man murmured softly, "Rise."
The crowd finally breathed a sigh of relief and rose one after another.
Looking toward the ruins that were nearly open, the Nether King said softly, "I only came to pass along a word: those below Soul Formation need not enter. You'd only be throwing your lives away.
"The rest of you... prepare to head in. If you find anything good, you can trade it at the Wanbao Pavilion in the city."
With that, the man casually raised a hand. A colossal pitch-black hand a hundred zhang broad instantly materialized, violently tearing at the rift of the ruins!
*Rippp!*
In a flash, a hundred-zhang breach was torn into the secret realm's iridescent rift.
Space distorted faintly around the opening, revealing the hazy interior of the ruins.
Just then, however, the spatial fabric of the ruins violently trembled. The unstable space began to show signs of collapsing!
The Nether King narrowed his eyes and let out a cold snort.
"*Hmph!*"
In an instant, an overwhelmingly vast surge of spatial power erupted!
The secret realm's space, on the verge of fracturing, stabilized in an instant.
"Enter."
As the Nether King's words fell, the surrounding cultivators bowed in reverence and shot toward the spatial rift without hesitation.
Concealed beneath the Nether Robe, Li Guanqi took a deep breath and whispered, "Let's go!"
*Whoosh!*
Blurred silhouettes plunged inside one after another.
The Nether King watched the flying crowd with an unreadable expression, his fingers lightly drumming against the throne.
"The Tianji Chart... Heh, who did the Tianji Pavilion send?
"I heard Chen Zhi was killed... What was his name again... Li-something-qi?
"Seems his strength isn't half bad."
No one knew why the Nether King had appeared here, but the reason was simple: he had also come for the Tianji Chart.
Yet Li Guanqi was entirely unaware that he was already entangled in the conflict between two super factions.
Li Guanqi tossed Pengluo into the sword casket space. The instant he traversed the spatial boundary, his body felt as though it had sunk into a quagmire of mud.
*Buzz!*
Chapter 429