A storage bracelet wasn’t like a storage bag—it was bound to its owner. No one else could open it. And in this secret realm, Lauren couldn’t summon anything from it anyway.

  Lauren’s aura turned gcial. Ice crept along Indiana’s neck, her skin cracking as frost bit into her flesh.

  Indiana writhed, eyes wide with horror.

  Lauren sneered. “Refuse me, and I’ll freeze you slowly—piece by piece—until your body shatters into shards. Let’s see whether you cling to your money or your life.”

  Indiana’s teeth chattered with rage and pain. “You’re… you’re evil.”

  No wonder she’d felt so uneasy when they first met. Just the sight of Lauren filled her with disgust.

  So this was her true face: a ruthless, vicious vilin.

  “If I give you the Ground Bag, you won’t kill me… right?”

  Lauren’s smile was bright, almost dazzling—but her eyes were merciless. “That depends on how sincere you are.”

  “You—”

  “I’ll only promise not to kill you before I secure the tablet.”

  Indiana bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, gring at Lauren. But she had no choice. Reluctantly, she summoned the Ground Bag.

  “You’d better keep your word.”

  The moment it appeared, Lauren cast a Stabilization Talisman, locking Indiana in pce.

  Indiana’s eyes went wide. “You… you’re despicable!”

  Lauren’s smile sharpened. She plucked the Ground Bag from Indiana’s hands and strode straight toward the stone tablet.

  Nash and the others rushed to meet her. “This monument won’t budge an inch. Did you really get the Ground Bag?”

  “Of course.” Lauren held it up.

  Without hesitation, she opened the mouth of the bag and guided the three-meter stone tablet inside.

  The entire monument vanished into the bag in one pull.

  “Great, then—” Nash started, but he was cut off by a violent tremor that rocked the chamber.

  The Ground Bag shuddered in Lauren’s hands, its seams glowing as the tablet inside pulsed with bursts of light.

  “What the hell’s happening?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The floor cracked. The walls groaned. Vernon’s face drained of color. “Shit—it looks like this whole pce is about to colpse!”

  Lauren’s stomach dropped. This wasn’t how the book had gone. She remembered reading about someone carrying the boundary marker out safely, then using it to draw the Hidden Mist Realm into the outside world.

  So why now… why did it feel like the entire space was squeezing in on them, about to spit them out?

  “You didn’t use the Landmark Talisman,” Little Four Legs said ftly in Lauren’s mind.

  The Landmark Talisman wasn’t some common trinket you could pull out on a whim.

  Before she had time to think, a violent suction ripped through the chamber. Sebastian and the others were yanked off their feet, dragged into the current.

  The world around them warped into long streaks of light, like they were being pulled through some endless tunnel. Sparks flickered in the bckness like stars in a void.

  Sebastian clenched his jaw, holding steady. Lauren kept her calm too. Nash, on the other hand, screamed louder than he had on the day they first entered the realm.

  So this was it—this must be what Little Four Legs had warned her about. The Hidden Mist Secret Realm was spitting them out.

  After only a few damn days.

  Lauren’s chest tightened. Sorry, cultivators who got dragged into this mess…

  Wait. Where was Indiana?

  She forced herself upright in the rushing current and spotted her ahead, suspended like the rest of them. The Stabilization Talisman Lauren had spped on her must’ve been torn away; Indiana had wriggled free.

  Lauren’s gaze hardened. Fine. Keep your eyes on her. If fate was kind, they’d fall near each other on the outside—and then she’d finish it. Crush her like an insect.

  ......

  A door tore open in the shadowy sky outside, and a figure dropped out of it.

  Disciples on the ground scrambled forward to catch him. Before they could even question him, another figure came hurtling out of the same void, spat into the open air like chewed gristle.

  “You—how did you get out?” one of the bystanders blurted.

  The man stumbled to his feet, dazed. “I… I don’t know.”

  “Go! Tell the elders!”

  News spread like wildfire.

  “What? They’re coming out?”

  “Yes—one after another.”

  Elders from every sect exchanged grim looks. Impossible. They’d only been inside for a few days. The Hidden Mist Secret Realm didn’t open once every century just to colpse like this. Something had gone very wrong.

  Crowds swarmed toward the entrance, and sure enough, cultivators began raining down from the sky in twos and threes, every one of them shaken and bewildered.

  Jade grabbed a disciple who had nded nearby. “What the hell happened in there?”

  The disciple shook his head, wide-eyed. “I don’t know. One moment we were searching, the next we were all thrown out. It’s… it’s too strange.”

  A chill ran through Jade. She didn’t waste another second—she sent an urgent message to her senior brother. Something’s wrong inside the Hidden Mist Secret Realm.

  Gerald had only just received word from her a few days ago. Now another emergency transmission. He rose sharply to his feet, face dark.

  “Master, what is it?”

  Gerald’s eyes narrowed. “Something’s off. Everyone has been expelled from the Hidden Mist Secret Realm.”

  Vernon frowned. He thought back to the reports. “Could it be tied to the Moonlit Sect? Ms. Jade wrote earlier that they were deliberately stirring trouble before the expedition. And Immortal Herbert himself showed up in town.”

  Kareem gave a grave nod. It lined up a little too well.

  Gerald didn’t hesitate. “Go to Ashenreach. Ask Cornelius to come at once.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  ......

  Jade quickly regrouped with several Thunder Sect disciples. She pressed each one for answers, but all shook their heads. None of them had a clue.

  Moments ter, Dante came crashing down from the sky. Jade hauled him upright. “You don’t know what happened either?”

  Dante’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know a damn thing.”

  Jade’s frown deepened. Across the square, she could see the senior brothers of the Divine Sword Sect grilling their own disciples, only to be met with the same bewildered headshakes.

  Then Timothy from the Moonlit Sect stormed over, fury written all over his face.

  “It must be you Thunder Sect bastards behind this.”

  He knew exactly what had gone wrong. The boundary marker had been taken. If it had been their own people, they would’ve used the Landmark Talisman and the realm wouldn’t have colpsed like this. Which meant… the Thunder Sect had gotten there first.

  Dante bristled. “What the hell do you mean we’re behind it?”

  “Who else could it be?” Timothy sneered. “I was already suspicious of how you parasites kept tailing us like a dog-skin pster that couldn’t be peeled off. So you were after it too.”

  “What thing? Speak clearly.”

  Timothy ughed coldly. “As if you don’t know. Why py dumb?”

  Dante’s temper snapped. “Timothy, if you can’t expin yourself, then shut your damn mouth. I’ve put up with your shit long enough.”

  The two gred at each other, spiritual pressure prickling in the air. Disciples nearby stopped what they were doing and turned to watch.

  All the while, more cultivators were being spit out of the colpsing secret realm, tumbling from the sky like discarded toys.

  Jade gnced at Yusuf, elder of the Moonlit Sect, who was standing nearby, his eyes locked on the quarrel.

  “Timothy,” Jade cut in, her tone sharp. “Say it clearly. What exactly are you accusing them of?”

  “Hmph. Still pretending, Dante? That boundary mar—”