I had put on three layers of martial robes, trying to keep out the biting cold wind. The air was even thinner. Each step up the impossibly tall mountains was a struggle. I had used a fourth robe as a head covering, only leaving a small gap for my eyes to see through.
A couple of times I almost panicked from how hard it was to breathe, but I had to remain calm. If I panicked and passed out, things would only get worse. I had to remain calm and keep going forward no matter what.
There was another large boulder in my path. I circled around it and kept going up the rocky, snow covered mountain. Hopefully when I reached the other side, I would see something. The journey just to reach this mountain from the crashed hovercraft had taken a long time. With no good way to keep track of time, I could only make a guess it took around 60 days, and that was with me traveling fairly quickly on foot.
Even with the limited energy I had available, I was still a superhuman comparable to before I had crossed my first bottleneck. I was no stranger to hard work. Constant hard work. While I was far luckier than most, my path was filled with hardships compared to someone like Yang Heng, who had his future laid out before him on golden platter. That was the true power of being an elite, being able to throw money at problems and having connections.
Well, even the most powerful could be laid low by disaster. I missed Yang Heng. For being an elite, immortal cultivator, he was one of the nicest cultivators out there, being willing to talk with me and share information. The number of questions he was willing to answer was immense.
I looked over my shoulder. I could make out the much smaller mountain I had come from in the distance and the water behind it. I could barely make out any waves from this distance. I turned back around and continued to climb. The fact that energy was being trained from myself, Yang Heng, and the environment gave me hope.
Whoever created this place was able to manipulate energy. My guess was that it was being siphoned off to some central location. I just needed to find it. Once I had access to enough energy, I could advance my cultivation easily. With how big this bubble of reality might be, a big concern was the size.
With spatial manipulation, this place could be large enough before I reached the center. I was hopeful about the center of this super-continent being the answer, but it wasn’t guaranteed. A small aspect of this place, was that the downwards force being applied was less than what cultivators normally used. It wasn’t a large difference, but every bit helped as I continued to climb.
That also let me know that this place probably wasn’t built by humans. Cultivators had very similar standards to Earth. At least I could somewhat breathe. There were no more rocks going upwards in front of me. I paused to look around, I was very near the top and the mountain had leveled off.
I reached the peak. For a moment the wind paused and reoriented, and I felt despair grip me. There were more mountains in front of me. I had climbed up this one to get the best view and to travel in a straight line. If only I could fly. I took my time to try and plot out a route between the mountains in front of me and kept glancing in the distance.
Another 60 days of travel and I would climb another mountain. To see if the terrain was going to change. No plants besides moss and the occasional weed that I could tell. At least there was life, and the plants were greenish. Small comforts in this inhospitable location.
As I set off down the mountain, the snow and ice crunching under my boots. At least the climb down was easier than the climb up. At various points I kicked off the ground and went coasting down through the air, just above the snow covered terrain. What took around two days to climb took half a day to descend.
Once at the bottom, I pulled out the modules to have some recombined paste and water, before finding a overcrop to rest.
When I woke, I could only tell how much time had passed by how much energy I had regained. It wasn’t much. Each time I needed to open my spatial bag and use the modules, I was drained of any energy reserves I might have had and then some.
I set off once again, but not completely ascending any massive mountains this time. I made my way around them. The faint white light in the sky my only guide in this twilight hell. Occasionally it would rain, and the water was just as foul as the ground water I found.
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The first time I had tried to drink it, I quickly spat it out, once my lingering danger sense triggered. The stuff wasn’t just water. There was something else that was a part of it. I wasn’t sure if it was chemical or if there was some higher being infusing minute amounts of energy into the water itself. Regardless, I had to reprocess my waste to eat and drink.
After I had traveled around another 60 days, I climbed up another mountain. I could see the previous super-mountain I had climbed far behind me. But I was more concerned about what lay in front of me. Looking out, there was much more cloud cover, making it hard to see. Eventually there was a small break in the clouds and I saw the mountains give way to and blue. A lot of blue, but it didn’t look as turbulent as the outer oceans I had crashed into when entering this bubble.
I set off with renewed vigor. If there was actual plant life, not just moss and the occasional weed, there was a good chance of civilization. From there I could work out where all the energy was going. Once I had access to a supply of energy, everything would change.
Yang Heng had mentioned that there was a chance other places might have humans. While it was unlikely, reality was infinite. Also humans were not set upon a specific path in terms of using energy and were adaptable enough to use various other paths, unlike other creatures.
He had explained that the Ek, whom he had stayed with, could never be cultivators, or at least cultivators using the methods developed by the Forever City and the Heavenly Alliance. Mindset, biology, and other more esoteric factors all played a role in such things. Also, many groups of humans had left the protection of the Forever City over the ages to chart their own path.
I had wondered why this wasn’t stopped, but he explained that while there were no friends among super-organizations, it was possible to have relationships. If a major threat came along and these groups needed help they could pay for cultivators to come and help them out, effectively creating vassal organizations and a larger buffer against more hostile super-organizations.
As for being a threat, it was also considered a way to keep the Heavenly Alliance engaged and alert. For immortal cultivators it was all too easy to sink into apathy and belief they were superior. Seeing other humans progress in strength using other systems was a way to keep the cultivators motivated and actively maintaining their superiority.
I had asked about evolution and had gotten a weird look. When I had explained the concept, he had laughed and told me there could be differences, but that changing too much would ruin various cultivation techniques and lead to different outcomes. All of which were inferior to the methods developed by the Heavenly Alliance, the method I had stumbled upon.
While the chance of humans out here was low, it was a non-zero chance. I held out hope that I would find someone, anyone, or anything. It was just as likely that this place was abandoned. Just drifting through the Mechanical Layer, pushing aside all that threatened it.
The worst part was, that I had no idea how big this place was. While I was traveling quickly, it could be hundreds, thousands, or even millions of times larger than the continent I grew up on. With spatial manipulation and the amount of physical space this place took up, it was impossible to say.
Yang Heng might have been able to answer these questions if he were still awake. But now he was left behind, waiting until the right moment to wake up once more. What that right time would be, I couldn’t say.
Eventually I reached the last mountain and ascended it to get a better view of what lay ahead of me. There was a massive ocean, that had waves the size of a person, not a skyscraper. There were short trees, bushes, and other plants along the shore. Looking into the distance, I thought I might be able to see something, but it was hard to say.
Even with my superior eyesight, there was a natural blurring due to the atmosphere. Even if this place was flat and didn’t curve, eventually the atmosphere itself would block my sight. That meant it would be a long way to travel across the water. The large mountains, shoreline, and then water continued to my left and right as far as I could see.
Multiple barriers to reach the edge of the world, how interesting. A large ocean, super mountains, with wind and ice, and then an even more turbulent ocean. With nothing of note growing out here, it would be hard to impossible for anyone else to survive. There were no sources of energy that I could sense.
I was about to head down, when I saw a massive dark shape moving in the large body of water in front of me. “Of course, have super monsters as well to deter people from traveling out here and messing with the bubble.”
Whatever beings were beyond these barriers, couldn’t be that strong, either in technology, or energy. A large ocean monster wasn’t that much of a threat in my mind. While it would be dangerous, it wasn’t something I couldn’t handle. It was just large it didn’t have any special abilities without energy. There might be something biological, but that was a minor concern.
The wind was blowing away from the mountains over the Calm Ocean, as I was going to call it. The first ocean, was going to be the Turbulent Ocean. With the wind aiding me, it would be fairly easy to create a raft from the trees below.