125: The border was a mere formality.

Golden light filled the sky, like an inverted giant bowl, tightly covering the entire valley exit.

The air was so viscous it felt like solidified amber; every breath required immense effort.

Gu Changsheng lowered his eyelids, his gaze landing only on the ground three inches in front of his toes.

Without looking up, [daily intelligence] had already digitized everything around him and projected it onto his retina.

[Warning: High-energy Spiritual Pressure coverage.]

[Source: Solemn Gold Palace, Immortal Master Dugu.]

[Current Status: Extremely enraged. Spiritual power fluctuations are highly unstable, indiscriminate attacks possible at any moment.]

In mid-air, Immortal Master Dugu stood with his hands behind his back.

The sword casket on his back buzzed, and countless gossamer-thin strands of Gengjin Sword Qi drifted in the Void Realm, weaving into an airtight web of death.

Every strand of Sword Qi was enough to easily pierce the protective spiritual light of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

"Who gave you permission to leave?"

Immortal Master Dugu's voice wasn't loud, but it was like a thunderclap exploding directly in everyone's Sea of Consciousness.

The hundreds of Cultivators who had just escaped from the Secret Realm instantly froze in place, like puppets that had been immobilized.

A few Loose Cultivators, anxious to leave on their swords, were shredded into a mist of blood by several strands of Sword Qi the moment they took flight, before they could even scream.

The smell of blood quickly spread through the narrow valley.

"Ye Gucheng is ruined."

Immortal Master Dugu's gaze swept over the crowd below like a hawk, his tone bone-chillingly cold.

"Where is that little beast with the spear? And who is the thief who took the bodhi fruit amidst the chaos?"

No one dared to speak.

There was only the sound of whistling wind and the chattering of teeth.

"Not talking, are we?"

Immortal Master Dugu sneered and made a grasping motion in the air with his right hand.

Boom!

The golden Sword Qi cage suddenly contracted, compressing everyone's range of movement to less than a hundred yards.

"Then we'll check you one by one."

"Storage Pouches, Spirit Beast Pouches, even Divine Soul memories."

"If the person isn't handed over today, no one should think about leaving alive!"

Overbearing.

Tyrannical.

This was the confidence of a top-tier power.

Before a powerhouse, so-called reason was nothing more than dust that a strong person could crush at will.

Gu Changsheng stood at the back of the crowd, like a little transparent person.

Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, that ink-colored jade pendant slowly rotated, emitting ripples invisible to the naked eye.

In the eyes of others, he was just a stone by the road, a withered weed, or a meaningless stream of data.

"Qingsong Daoist Academy, submit to inspection!"

Immortal Master Dugu gave the order.

Several Elders from the Solemn Gold Palace rushed into the crowd like wolves and tigers, roughly tearing away the Storage Pouches of the Qingsong Daoist Academy Disciples, their Divine Sense searching through them unscrupulously.

Even the undergarments of the female Cultivators were shaken out, causing a low murmur among the surrounding Loose Cultivators.

"This is too much!"

Elder Mu Rong trembled with rage, his cane thumping heavily on the ground.

"Immortal Master Dugu! My Qingsong Daoist Academy is at least an Eastern Wasteland..."

Slap!

A strand of Sword Qi whipped across.

A bone-deep bloody gash appeared on Mu Rong's face, and he was sent flying, half of his teeth knocked out.

"Noisy."

Immortal Master Dugu didn't even spare him a glance.

"If those old fogies of yours were here, they might have the right to say a few words to me."

"What kind of thing are you?"

Mu Rong covered his face and stared venomously at the sky, but he didn't dare say another word.

With even the Qingsong Daoist Academy, a fellow top-tier power, being trampled underfoot, the other small and medium-sized powers were as silent as cicadas in winter.

Soon, it was the Taiqing Sect's turn for inspection.

Gu Changsheng stood in the Taiqing Sect's line, his body swaying slightly with the crowd.

But deep within his Sea of Consciousness, that ink-colored taiyin submerging spirit jade was rotating at an unprecedented speed.

Strange ripples spread out silently with Gu Changsheng at the center.

In everyone's subconscious, there shouldn't be a person standing there, or rather, the person standing there was meaningless.

A deacon from the Solemn Gold Palace walked through the crowd, holding a longsword upside down with a gloomy expression.

Every time he passed a Cultivator, he would stop, sweep his Divine Sense over their entire body, and even forcibly seize their Storage Pouch to search.

"Stand still! Don't move!"

The deacon barked, grabbing a Disciple next to Sun Jingxing.

Sun Jingxing grit his teeth, his fists clenched tight, but he could only watch helplessly as his fellow Disciples were humiliated.

After the deacon finished checking one person, his gaze moved down the line.

It should have been Gu Changsheng's turn.

Gu Changsheng just stood there, not even deliberately changing his breathing frequency.

However, a bizarre scene occurred.

When the Solemn Gold Palace deacon's gaze swept over Gu Changsheng's position, it didn't linger for even a second.

His eyes moved slightly, his gaze seemingly pulled by an invisible force, skipping directly over Gu Changsheng and landing on Wen Yuechan behind him.

"You! Hand over your Storage Pouch!"

The deacon pointed at Wen Yuechan, his tone cold.

Wen Yuechan was stunned.

She instinctively glanced at Gu Changsheng in front of her.

Gu Changsheng was standing less than two feet in front of her.

But in that deacon's eyes, Gu Changsheng seemed to have become a cloud of transparent air, or a common stone found anywhere.

The feeling was extremely absurd.

Wen Yuechan watched as the deacon brushed past Gu Changsheng.

Their clothes even rubbed against each other for a moment.

Yet the deacon noticed nothing, and didn't even have the desire to look down.

Gu Changsheng kept his head down, his heart completely calm.

This was the terrifying aspect of the Taiyin Supreme Treasure.

It didn't toy with vision, but with Karma and cognition.

Even a Golden Core True Lord, without deliberately performing a deep analysis of a specific coordinate, would be misled by this level of interference in the rules.

In mid-air.

Immortal Master Dugu's Divine Sense was like a fine sieve, filtering through the valley over and over again.

His Divine Sense swept over Sun Wanshan, over Sun Jingxing, and over those few heavily injured Loose Cultivators.

When his Divine Sense swept over Gu Changsheng.

In the feedback to Immortal Master Dugu's Sea of Consciousness, Gu Changsheng's position was just a very natural turbulence of Spiritual Qi.

It was like a breeze blowing through the grass, without any noteworthy characteristics.

Immortal Master Dugu's brow furrowed tighter and tighter.

Nothing.

Still nothing.

That brat with the spear, that thief carrying the precious treasure, had seemingly vanished into thin air.

"Impossible..."

Immortal Master Dugu suddenly snapped his eyes open, golden sword light exploding in his pupils.

With a movement, he instantly appeared above the crowd, his massive pressure forcing everyone to kneel on the ground.

Only Gu Changsheng, at the moment everyone knelt, strangely moved half a step to the side and back.

He didn't kneel, but instead leaned into the shadow of a rock.

Yet none of the Cultivators kneeling around him, nor the Solemn Gold Palace Disciples conducting the search, felt anything was wrong.

In their perception, that spot had been empty all along.

Gu Changsheng tucked his sleeves and looked up with a calm gaze.

This feeling of being forgotten by the world while in the spotlight gave him an illusion of total control.

But he quickly suppressed this stray thought.

A practitioner of the Path of Stealth didn't need such vanity.

Leaving safely was the only goal.

"Immortal Master, the inspection of the Taiqing Sect members is complete; no anomalies were found."

An Elder stepped forward and reported with a bow.

Immortal Master Dugu's face was so gloomy it looked like it could drip water.

He stared intently at the Taiqing Sect's flying boat, then at the trembling Disciples.

"Tell them to get lost."

Immortal Master Dugu squeezed these words out through his teeth.

He couldn't truly kill all the seeds of these first-rate Sects.

If he went too far and triggered a joint counterattack from the other powers in the Eastern Wasteland, the Solemn Gold Palace wouldn't be able to bear that price either.

"Thank you, Immortal Master!"

Sun Wanshan felt as if he had received a great pardon; ignoring his injuries, he immediately directed the Disciples to board the galley.

Gu Changsheng blended into the crowd, his pace neither fast nor slow.

He walked past those Solemn Gold Palace Disciples and through the golden Sword Qi blockade.

In the process, he even casually picked up a fallen Spirit Stone fragment from the ground.

The Solemn Gold Palace Disciples guarding the exit watched the Taiqing Sect's group leave.

In their count, the number of people coming out of the Taiqing Sect was correct.

But if someone were to carefully count every face, they would find that their memories couldn't piece together Gu Changsheng's appearance at all.

The galley rose into the air, letting out a dull roar.

It wasn't until they had flown a hundred miles away and completely escaped the range of the golden Sword Qi realm.

Only then did the atmosphere on the galley relax slightly.

Sun Jingxing plopped down on the deck, panting heavily, his whole body already soaked in cold sweat.

"I lived..."

He muttered to himself, his eyes full of the relief of surviving a disaster.

Wen Yuechan stood by the ship's railing, looking toward the stern with a complex expression.

Gu Changsheng was leaning there, holding a piece of scrap cloth and unhurriedly wiping mud spots off his Storage Pouch.

He still looked so mediocre, so unremarkable.

But Wen Yuechan knew that the scene at the valley exit just now was definitely no coincidence.

"Junior Brother Gu..."

Wen Yuechan walked over, her voice very low, carrying a hint of uncontrollable trembling.

Gu Changsheng looked up, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Senior Sister, what's wrong? Were you scared just now?"

His tone was so natural, his eyes so clear.

It was as if the monster who had toyed with cognition right under the Immortal Master's nose wasn't him at all.

Wen Yuechan opened her mouth, but the words she originally wanted to ask were swallowed back down when she saw Gu Changsheng's calm gaze.

She understood what Gu Changsheng meant.

Don't ask, don't mention, don't remember.

This was the only rule for small figures like them to survive in the Cultivation World.

"It's nothing, I just feel... this Secret Realm trip was a bit tiring."

Wen Yuechan forced a smile, turned around, and walked toward her cabin.

Gu Changsheng watched her back disappear, and a faint, imperceptible curve finally appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He turned his head and looked at the rolling sea of clouds in the distance.

[System Notification: Crisis averted.]

[Current Location: Edge of the Eastern Wasteland's Taiqing Sect territory.]

[Special fluctuation detected: Thirty miles to the southeast, a trace of 'Clear Moon' aura remains in space.]

Gu Changsheng's eyes flickered.

It's Lin Xiren.

That guy really did make it out too.

And by the looks of it, he left even more gracefully than I did.

"Interesting."

Gu Changsheng chuckled in his heart.