Buzz!
A mysterious teleportation pattern stretching across 100 yards suddenly drew inward. The blinding spatial spiritual light peeled away layer by layer, collapsing like a tide toward the heart of the array.
In the span of a few moments, the teleportation power that had been roaring, trembling, and tearing through the void went completely still.
The light and shadows at the landing point scattered away. Two tall, solitary figures stood steady on unfamiliar ground. They were Elder Emberlain and Elder Frostgrave, who had crossed realms all the way to this place.
The moment their feet touched solid earth, the two Golden Immortal adepts almost simultaneously drew their focus tight.
Spiritual power moved silently through their bodies, guarding their meridians and spirits as they searched, by reflex, for the slightest movement around them.
They had spent years moving through the heavens and the myriad worlds, fighting through more battlefields than most could count. That instinct would never allow them to loosen even half a measure of caution in unfamiliar territory. That held even more true now.
They had crossed into a higher firmament of the celestial realm, and in a place like this, unknown dangers could wait anywhere.
When they lifted their eyes, the whole structure of the Seventeenth Firmament struck them at once. It was nothing like the Sixteenth Firmament they had just left. The two places might as well have belonged to two completely different levels of cultivation, and the blow came through sight and body alike, hard enough to set the chest vibrating.
Overhead, a ten-thousand-mile vault stretched above them. There was no ordinary blue sky, no white clouds drifting in peace. In their place hung a sky curtain of dark violet-blue, so deep and heavy it seemed to have weight.”
Layer upon layer of heavenly markings spread and interwove across that vault. Hidden inside them were higher laws of space. In the silence, an ancient and savage pressure seeped out, pressing down over the entire land.
Above the sky curtain, three blazing suns hung forever in place. Each was different in size and color, yet all three stood in an ordered arrangement across the heavens, as if they had never fallen since ancient time.”
One was gilded from edge to edge. Its light was warm, thick, and steady, shedding the orthodox golden radiance of Heavenly Law.
One was condensed like cold silver. Its chill gleam cut to the bone, carrying an air of extreme cold and killing austerity.
One was red as blood. Flames rolled endlessly across it, bringing with them a force that seemed born to burn the sky and scorch the earth.
The radiance of the three suns did not interfere with one another. They crossed, braided, and fused in layers as they poured downward, dyeing the boundless land underfoot in a deep, heavy, ancient dark-gold sheen. Everywhere the eye could reach, mountains, rivers, wilderness, and plains were covered in flowing light.
The grand bearing of the celestial realm rushed straight at them, a hundred times vaster and more imposing than anything in the Sixteenth Firmament.
With every breath, the world’s spiritual essence came surging in so thick it seemed impossible to disperse. It rushed through mouth, nose, meridians, and into every limb and bone.
The concentration of spiritual essence here was not something the Sixteenth Firmament could compare with. It surpassed the Lower Realm by dozens of times and more. One deep breath was enough to send vast spiritual power washing through flesh and meridians, nourishing the very roots of cultivation.
But this rich spiritual essence was no gentle nourishment. Its texture was sharp, overbearing to the extreme. Every strand carried tiny, razor-edged Golden Immortal nascence-law fragments, too fine for the naked eye to catch. They had no shape and no color, yet they held the nascence dominion of a higher cultivation world.
These law-fragments drifting freely through the world were a gift unique to the Seventeenth Firmament. They were also invisible blades with killing intent hidden inside them.
If ordinary True Immortal cultivators recklessly stepped into this place, no powerful enemy would need to lift a hand. All they would have to do was stand here for half an hour, and the violent, cutting law-fragments would rip and slice their meridians apart by force.
The spiritual power throughout their bodies would break free of control and rampage wildly. In the end, the flesh would split open, the spirit would collapse, and they would explode to death on the spot, without even a chance to struggle or call for help.
Even ordinary Golden Immortals at Levels One and Two of the Golden Immortal rank, those lower Golden Immortals, would have to keep their nascence-wrought spiritual power circulating around them at all times if they stayed here for long. They would need to guide the laws of the realm into the body with extreme care, never daring to slacken for even a moment.
Elder Emberlain slowly loosened the taut bones and tendons throughout his body. He tilted his head slightly, closed his eyes, and drew in a deep breath of dense spiritual essence packed with Golden Immortal Law, letting that fierce spiritual power scour his Golden Immortal foundation.
Complete nascence law flowed unchecked through the world around him. Deep in his eyes, a rich gleam passed, smooth and unmistakably full.
He had cultivated bitterly for ten thousand years and broken through the Golden Immortal fetters. What favonovel.com had sought had never been a poor, cramped cultivation ground like the Sixteenth Firmament. It was a place like the Seventeenth Firmament, where the laws of the realm were complete, the spiritual essence was pure and thick, and the land itself fit Golden Immortal cultivation, an orthodox dominion of the celestial realm.
The Sixteenth Firmament, in the end, was only an attached borderland of the Lower Realm. Its spiritual essence was thin and lacking. Its world-law was incomplete.
The path of the Dao was obstructed, and cultivation advanced at a crawl. It could not possibly hold a dignified Golden Immortal for long-term residence and cultivation. Staying there was nothing but the wasting of cultivation and the burning of time.
Only the Seventeenth Firmament was the proper Dao field for Golden Immortal adepts. Only this orthodox land could push their cultivation upward in steady steps.
“At last, we have stepped onto proper ground. The killing and all that running around before this were not wasted…” Elder Emberlain murmured the words under his breath.
A red flame-glow turned faintly around him, naturally answering the surrounding spiritual essence and blending into it, while his bearing settled deeper, firmer.
Beside him, Elder Frostgrave remained unmoved from beginning to end. His expression stayed plain, without the slightest ripple. His silver robe stirred lightly in the wind. His silver pupils were cold and clear as a frostpool, not showing the faintest disturbance.
His gaze was sharp as divine arms drawn from the sheath. It swept quickly across the terrain in all directions, over mountains, rivers, and the world’s aura, precisely checking for hidden powerful enemies, warded traps, or anything lying in wait.
When Golden Immortal adepts crossed between firmaments, safety always came first. Not even the smallest carelessness could be allowed.
After a short probe, favonovel.com confirmed that there was no abnormal movement nearby, no powerful adept in ambush, and no dangerous ward. Only then did Elder Frostgrave withdraw the spirit sense favonovel.com had sent outward.
He turned his face to the side and spoke in a voice as cold and direct as ice, without a single unnecessary note. “There is no need for further sentiment. Resting serves no purpose… Pole Star Hall is located in the northern heartland of the Seventeenth Firmament. The road is not close. We leave at once. First, we go there to report in and establish a foothold. After that, we discuss the important matters that follow.”
Pole Star Hall was the celestials’ force in the Seventeenth Firmament.
Venerable Emberlain gathered back the movement in his chest and pressed down the lingering weight of the moment. Then favonovel.com gave a nod in answer.
The two of them needed no extra courtesies. Side by side, they sprang into the air. their figures tearing upward through the sky without the slightest delay.
In the next instant, a streak of crimson flame and a streak of silver-white frostlight shot upward together. The two blinding streams tore across the dark-gold sky.
They ripped through layer after layer of rushing air and raced toward the distant northern horizon. Their speed had been driven to the limit. In the blink of an eye, they swept past a thousand kilometers of mountains and rivers and vanished at the end of the world.
Outside, the world kept changing around them. Mountains and rivers fell away behind them.
***
Inside the Soul-Vault Pearl, however, everything remained steady and still, sealed off from most of the noise, slaughter, and violence beyond.
Within the pearl’s sealed, lightless chamber, the violet soul-light hovered in silence. It was condensed, stable, and unmoving.
Around the light, layer after layer of the Aureate Codex’s golden radiance wrapped thickly around it, rich and ancient, as if it had never known decay. That radiance held the spirit itself in a firm guard, shutting out every foreign force, every scouring law of the realm, and every sweep of spirit sense.
After some unknown number of hours, Jared, who had remained buried in stillness, stirred faintly in spirit. Slowly, favonovel.com woke from deep seclusion.
The instant his awareness returned, Jared made no reckless move. He did not rush to probe the outside world. Instead, his first instinct was to draw his spirit tight, steady his mind, and keep every part of himself under the sharpest guard. Too many brushes with death had carved that habit into him.
He had been seized and imprisoned by powerful enemies. His body had been destroyed. Only a wisp of soul had been left to drift in a foreign realm. After all of that, favonovel.com had learned not to thrash when danger came, but to lie low, endure, and watch for the turn. He could sense it clearly now.
The aura of the chamber around favonovel.com was no longer anything like it had been before.
The inner space of the Soul-Vault Pearl was still sealed, but the world’s spiritual essence had already pierced through the pearl’s barrier and seeped in through the gaps in the Aureate Codex’s golden radiance. Its density had surged by several dozen times. It pressed in from all sides, heavy and vast.
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