“We’re not being followed.” I said.

We trailed out of the city, leaving a pile of bodies in our wake. I had switched out the hat Thunderfist Yu cut for a backup from inside of my backpack. Rain poured against us as we ranged south. A glowing compass in my hand pointed the way through the rainstorm.

The muddy road was just as quickly lost to me in the rain. We constantly passed over streams of water; the ground was too choked from the rain to absorb any more. The spirit-beasts Wen had chosen crossed the rugged terrain with ease and familiarity.

Only an hour south, we spotted the first of the ruins. The wind was quiet tonight, despite the rain never stopping.

A towering road rose from the ground, sloping ramps providing traffic up it. Those glowing Stormtrees crept their way up its side. Embedded material in the road made it glow yellow, revealing the plants that clung to the side of the gigantic brick ediface.

[Heavenly Cloud Sect Ruin]

[This roadway once held formations to facilitate the movement of goods and troops around Verdant Paradise]

I frowned as I rode up the ramp, keeping my eyes open for monsters. Centuries of age had led much of this ruin to decay. Parts of the ramp had collapsed entirely. Great columns supported the stonework between raised archways, but much of the stone had been chipped away over time.

“Wen, have you heard of the Heavenly Cloud Sect?” I asked.

Their name didn’t sound fitting for this place at all.

“Yes.” Wen said grimly. “How did you learn about them? You shouldn’t mention their name carelessly.”

“The System revealed this place as built by them.”

We had to shout to be heard over the rain.

“They preceeded the Grim Tempest. Once, they controlled most of this continent. A settlement used to stretch across the entire valley in the Stormwall.”

“Through all this rain?” I asked.

“From what I gather, it didn’t used to rain here.” Wen replied.

We trekked over piles of rubble from the collapsed stone canopy that once covered the road. After a while, we crossed under still standing canopy. Columns rose from the side of the roadway. The noise of the rain was quieted here. Water still pooled and flowed across the surface of the road.

I squinted out the window, trying to imagine what this place was like before.

“What happened to the Heavenly Cloud?”

“A great disaster wiped out much of the records. Probably only the Matriarch’s and Elder’s know by now.”

“The Matriarchs…” I said. “Have you met them? What are they like?”

Wen laughed.

“No, they’re far too important to have met with me. I’ve only seen them from afar. They’re both high into the Seventh Realm by rumor. Monstrous powerhouses capable of leveling cities with a wave of their hand.”

"You saw them fight?” I asked.

“No. But I felt their spirit pressure. When they talked from atop the stage, it was like an entire world sat behind their words.”

I chewed on what Wen said as we continued our ride. The power that took the place of cultivation on the Savage Expanse was more discrete, more explicit. Cultivation was a near mystical thing, taught and talked about in words of revere and flowing art. But levels were discrete, tied to numbers. They were closer to how the mortals of my colleges viewed the world.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

But the magic systems seemed to reflect eachother in some ways. And the most notable was that inner world. The Titan’s corpses had created an entire nonsensical inner world; a broken mazeway through the rotting memories of the creature’s life.

I poked at the connection I felt between my sea of qi and Littlebird’s egg in my pack. There was a little tunnel of power there. When the dungeon collapsed, the system said it had connected to Littlebird’s dungeon. The system had called it a World Seed. I wondered if it could have become an entire world.

I fell into my thoughts, reflecting on the small rumors I had heard of the Fourth Realm.

Often, there would be sections of the rode where the canopy had broken. Scars from ancient fights decorated the roadway here and there. Even the occasional corpse, reduced to nothing more than bones, decorated the great road. In some spots, fragments of the great glowing yellow stones remained, illuminating the area. None were intact. They must have been ripped away by looters diving the ruins of the Heavenly Cloud.

The sound of rain grew louder a few hours longer down the road. All the water along the road flowed forward. The canopy above us stretched on where the road ended below. Ahead, I saw the glowing trees dotting a forest covering a mountain. Across the missing section of the road, it continued on into the heart of the mountain, dug out of its center.

I scanned the sides of the ruin. The damaged seemed recent. Sections of dirt and plant life had been blown away.

“Sabotage.” I said. Then I grit my teeth. “That thug said that Feng Jin told the Rainshadow clan to test the Scions. Do you think…”

“No. This isn’t damage from a sword.” Wen slid off Tiny, leaning down to look at the damage. “This looks like a fist technique. Concussive blows that shocked and cracked the stone.”

My eyes widened.

“The Rainshadow clan destroyed the bridge.”

“Likely to make the Scion’s turn back so they could rob them further. Stupid and short sighted. This bridge helped them move quickly to the ruins as well. Its likely they’ll do a hack jobbed repair sooner or later. But we must keep moving south.”

“Should we jump the gap?” I said, estimating. The crossing was… doable. We also could scale the outside, though in the rain, it would be difficult. I would likely have to damage the stone.

“We wouldn’t be able to bring the mounts with us. No, we move around the mountain. That will be faster than trying to advance on foot.”

We turned around and headed for the nearest ramp down.

“Such a desolate location to host the tournament.” I grumbled.

“The journey itself is part of the test. Survival skills, overcoming adversity, navigation and improvising…”

It took almost an hour for us to reach the latest ramp that connected the road to the ground. The terrain was hilly and uneven, streams of water constantly pouring across the soaked earth. Rivers cut through the terrain, sharp gouges and valleys in the stone that led the water away. We trekked over harsh thorny plants. The spirit-boars munched on them as we passed through. It took almost twice as long to return to the broken section of the bridge.

A section of pillars had been broken to pieces, felled like trees. Whoever was here had been here a while; there were signs of encampment beneath the bridge. Wind whipped rain over a pile of trash and a makeshift platform elevated above the wet earth.

I looked left and right. It was hard to make out the mountains shape in the Stormwall. The horizon blurred into gray under the deluge of water choking the air.

“We head west?” I asked.

“After you.” Wen replied.

We started our journey circling the mountain.

The sounds of thunder grew louder as I tried to keep the mountain at our side. Years of rain had caused mudslide after mudslide, revealing sharp cliffs and disrupting the terrain. Hundreds of trees were buried in the ground, sticking out. With the constant rain, there was never a fire to wash them away.

Lightning flashed in the sky, far closer than was comfortable. It temporarily made visible trees of vast, near uncomprehensible size on the horizon. The Stormtree’s grew to monstrous porportions, acting like lightning rods that drew the lightning to themselves. As we grew nearer the trees, I began to see shadows of monstrous shapes fighting in the sky.

The circumferance of the mountain had led us far astray into the jungle of the Stormwall. And here, a few hours journey from the safe road to the Scion tournament, I saw a war between two spirit-beasts.

“A spirit beast horde!” I shouted.

The two in the sky must have reached the realm to lead a horde. Here in the Stormwall, so far from civilization, the monsters clashed with each other.

A dragon of sparking gold roared with a noise I had mistook for thunder. Lightning arced off its side, hitting a second dragon of boiling purple. The clouds shifted above them as they rammed into eachother, beasts wielding qi more powerful than any man.

I felt a dull [Danger Sense] from the dragons clashing in the sky, just smaller than what Wen exuded, like just being this close to them was endangering my life.

The purple dragon slammed into the glowing gold one The rain stopped for a ponderous moment when it clashed, disrupted by the amount of qi it released.

“Run!” Wen said, whipping his reins. I followed, sending the bull charging.

With the rain temporarily stopped, I saw the hundreds of shapes clashing in the sky around them. Two spirit-beast hordes warred in the jungle all around us. The boar toar up the ground below me. We needed to pass them before one of the dragon’s fell and they began to devour the lesser beasts all around them. Like the two we were riding.