Void Element

Exactly on the day the Purple Mist Sect Master scheduled the time of departure to the Wasteland, Shu Wu emerged from his closed door cultivation finally emitting a Sage realm aura.

The entire Shu family was obvious in celebration upon his appearance.

It meant another Sage in the family. And his breakthrough was perfectly in time with the event—the sect was just about to convene the crowd of cultivators.

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"Gather everyone up," the Emperor Void exclaimed.

Shu Wei and the two village heads, immediately after the instruction, directed all the particpants and spectators to proceed outside particularly to the east just below the plateau. The Sect Master and the elders, meanwhile, remained on top at the edge of the plateau overlooking the congregating crowd.

That way, Sect Master Han—standing atop of all the present cultivators—would have a clear position to make his announcements.

"Listen up everyone," the Emperor Void said loudly using his Heaven stage Emperor Qi.

He then looked at the horizon as if making everyone beneath him itch in excitement.

"Today," he said. "We will officially head to the Desolate Wasteland's formation seal..

He paused and took a glance at the sect elders and clan patriarchs behind him.

"I will create a spatial portal through the formation with my Void affinity..," he described. "And with the help of all the emperors present, we will sustain it for at least a month."

Everyone already knew of those informations. But what they had not heard of where the following words.

"I know you already know that the gate will be restricted to cultivators in the Expert realm..," the Emperor Void said, "..and that the sect opened this event to other great clans, big families and wandering cultivators.. but.. you must all know that we are not doing this for free."

"Eh!?"

"It will not be much..," the emperor quickly added, "..but whatever anyone retrieves from the Wasteland, the Purple Mist Sect will take ownership of ten percent of your haul.. and if you feel that the rest of your harvest would be too troublesome to be under your care, you may trade them to us for a fair price."

Truth was, the sect's demands were really fair and totally just—afterall, the cultivators wouldn't have the opporunity to enter the Wasteland without the Emperor Void's ability. As a matter of fact, ten percent levy was already generous.

"Now.. I don't think the sect is being too oppressive and unreasonable, right?" the Sect Master domineeringly asked.

Seeing that nobody aired any complaints and that everybody nodded in agreement, the emperor felt good.

"Ho ho," he chuckled. "One more thing.. everyone has to come out before the 30th day. Otherwise, we will consider you dead and we shall return the formation's seal in place without second thoughts."

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When the Purple Mist Sect Master finalized everything, he finally instructed everyone to proceed to the sealed formation.

All the participants thus rushed in pairs or groups. While some seemed to have come alone, they were obviously rogue cultivators. But most proceeded according to their formed teams.

The ages of the participants were diverse. Participants from the Purple Mist Sect and clans were obviously in their youth while many of the vagrant cultivators varied between early 20's and above.

And when all the participants reached the outskirts of the sealed formation, they gathered behind the Sect Master and the rest of the Emperors.

"Let's begin," the Emperor Void relayed.

Every emperor present instantly appeared behind the Sect Master who was already standing right in front of the seal.

The Emperor Void mustered an overwhelming Void aura and activated his 'Warp' skill onto the formations surface.

Little by little a glimpse of blurrish spatial opening was slowly appearing right in front of everyone.

And when the appearing portal reached a considerable size, all the Emperors present started to get to work. All of them raised their arms and released a mild but massive Qi energy directed at the opening.

The purpose of the evident aid from a number of Emperors was to put strength and stability to the portal.

And when the portal reached a certain level of durability, some of the sect disciples suddenly placed some sort of runes to the corners of the spatial opening.

Only then, when all those rune-like pieces were in place, that the Sect Master and the Emperors stopped from what they were doing.

All of them looked exhausted but expressions of excitement were betraying their true conditions.

And without much further dawdle, the Sect Master faced the crowd of cultivators and declared the start of the event.

Every participant was in wild emotions.

They could not wait to get in but the size of entrance could not accomodate the entry all of them if they forced their way in all at the same time.

So to put an order—discriminating or favoring it may seem—the Sect Master instructed to let the cultivators enter in groups, preferrably by teams beginning from the sect disciples and followed by the clan disciples, and so on in that specific order. And to avoid early scuffle inside the Wasteland, a minute of interval between entries was implemented.

Of course, no one could raise any adversarial opinion—it was what it was. The vagrant cultivators simpy accepted it. They just thought that it wouldn't matter anyway.

'Who enters first was immaterial,' many of them thought, 'what matters more is who can come out alive.'