Stepping from the arc, Xu Wong barely managed to keep food inside his stomach. Crawling up to his throat, it left an awful aftertaste, but it was better than vomiting on an ancient structure under the watching eye of his ill-wishers. Traveling to this pocket dimension felt like a real challenge. The constant sensation of being pulled and pushed simultaneously with an addition of qi-drain was not only exhausting but also caused an overwhelming feeling of nausea. However, the sudden change in atmosphere turned this state into torture, switching the energy-deprived state of the surroundings into overfilled with qi. Each breath in this place sucked so much energy inside Xu Wong’s body that his mind felt dizzy and barely able to think straight. Moreover, it led to the oversaturation of his meridians, spreading horrible pain across him.
“It seems our junior brother feels sick,” Yang Song smirked, attracting everyone’s attention toward Xu Wong. That caused a new wave of insults but at least allowed him to manipulate his Qi filters to lower the rate of draining the energy from the surroundings. In a dozen seconds, it finally helped him to clear his mind just to hear the ending. “… lucky for such a weakling to get here!”
“Stop it,” the leader of their small group commanded, halting his underlings. Having an influential uncle in the sect, Zhao Bohai was what was called a young master. Arrogant, strong, with good backing, he was a core disciple for a reason. Reaching the Core Formation realm at his age and even stepping in Mid-stage, he was far more powerful than was expected from an average cultivator, easily fighting a stage above. All his “friends” were around either late or peak stage of the Qi Refining. In reality, they were just lackeys in a desire to get a good position from a future powerhouse, already struggling to proceed forward without additional resources. Only Xu Wong was in the early stages of this realm, but he was much younger than them, barely twenty years old.
“Move,” pointing at him, Zhao Bohai made Xu Wong step forward, turning him into a potential bait. Their enmity started from the moment when a promising newbie made an acquaintance with Xu Wong, disregarding the attention of Zhao Bohai. The latter immediately decided to punish the frog, who was trying to get a hand on a swan. Xu Wong acknowledged her beauty right at the start, but he never aimed at her at all, no matter how it looked to others. He even did everything to avoid her company. Despite such behavior, the situation escalated rather quickly, making Xu Wong’s attempt to finish a sect mission into a run for survival, “Be ready to act - we don’t know what traps we may meet. I must remind you that I’ve used all my Qi-stones and drained the energy from most of my artifacts just to open the gate.”
“Yes, senior brother!” Three simultaneous replies made Xu Wong grimace from disgust. Nevertheless, he obeyed and went forward. The only alternative was to try to fight against more powerful cultivators, who additionally held several advantages.
Chasing him through the forest, they caused him to bump into a high-ranking beast. The following scared run led to a drop into a hidden cave behind a waterfall, where he found a crack in a thick rock. Unfortunately, the four seniors still managed to find his traces, catching up in no time while leaving a beast to eat the dust. On the other hand, the mysterious skeleton of the cultivator and the arc redirected their attention from Xu Wong’s figure toward the potential pocket dimension. A personal place of mighty ancient cultivators, it was often filled with treasures… and dangers. Therefore, fueling all available energy just to open a gap in space, they made him follow them in cases of death traps. Unexpectedly, they were meat with green forest and overwhelming qi level, easily comparable with dedicated chambers for meditation.
“Don’t just stand there, worm!” Yang Song shouted angrily, hitting Xu Wong in his back and pushing him forward. Inwardly promising himself to take revenge, he stepped forward. Soon, his thoughts wandered about the wonders of this place. There were so many special plants with insane levels of Qi that just grew chaotically, separated by a simple wooden fence and not a single guarding formation that each alchemy garden had.
Then they got to the entrance. Shining with the golden paint under the bright sky, it proudly stood right amid a perfectly clean pathway. Just a single glance was enough to understand that it was an ancient construction that was kept in a state by someone’s constant effort. This exact fact infused hope in Xu Wong. Perhaps he could find cultivators here, and they might help him not to die from sect “brother’s” hands. He didn’t feel any special formation assigned to this task. And knowing his own sect, Xu Wong knew that some strong factions took special pride in maintaining the front gates manually, showing their dedication and loyalty to their home.
“Senior brother, have you heard this name?” One of the lackeys asked, reading loudly the sign.
“Hmm… I think I’ve seen it in ancient chronicles in my uncle’s library, but it was a demonic sect, not righteous…,” Zhao Bohai muttered before adding louder, “Let’s continue… It seems there is someone alive here, but according to my knowledge, they all were wiped out at least a few thousand years ago after an accident. We might have a competitor… or there was another reason why they hid. Xu Wong, please.” Pointing at the arc, the leader commanded their captive to make a step through the open gate.
The moment Xu Wong did it, he felt an enormous pressure dropping on his fragile body. All his strength, gained by cultivating, paled in front of this heaviness of the air. He almost returned back to the beginning of the Body Strengthening stage, reminding him that no matter how far cultivators progressed, the might of Heaven was above everything else. He had to cut almost all connections to the Qi in the air just to keep standing. The others weren’t any better, cursing and exhaling from a sudden change. Only Zhao Bohai barely showed any signs of discomfort, keeping a neutral expression. However, Xu Wong saw through this mask, noticing the struggles that the man tried to hide.
“You aren’t any better than me… Only the thick stream of resources has put you in a higher position. That and just time. But I will achieve it by myself, not relying on my relatives!” He spoke with only his lips, starting his walk. Made from tightly put stones, the road was going around the hill, creating a low but steady incline. Together with pressure, it made the way quite a task. By the moment Xu Wong reached the main square, he was almost out of breath. Luckily, an enormous empty space left their mouth gaping in front of the view.
“Senior brother, this is…,” Yang Song only started to mutter but was interrupted by Zhao Bohai, whose eyes were sparkling with greed.
“Opportunity… This is an opportunity to rise above the heavens!”
It was a rare occasion when Xu Wong had to agree with his enemy. The whole sect looked not only massive but also rich. Insanely rich. To the point that their own sect was like a dirty beggar in comparison to an owner of a famous auction house. The difference was that big. The dense environment of Qi was already insane just on the periphery, and they could see clearly a dedicated mediation chamber on the peak. The latter was often occupied by the Elders and Leader himself as the best place to cultivate.
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The high pagodas, covered with inscriptions and complex formations. The fragrance of alchemical plants that was spreading through the air, despite being hidden somewhere else. Even so spacious square was a sign of excess of resources. It was well-known that to cover the territory with guarding and qi-concentrating formations was a hard task, and the bigger it was, the more it demanded to achieve. However, to have a dedicated pocket dimension, while it was easily larger tens of times than any sect in the outside world… the scale was just mind-blowing. That was the reason why all five cultivators had a similar reaction, shocked beyond belief.
“I am be damned with qi-deprivation… Look, every single stone used here is a snow marble!” One of Zhao Bohai’s underlings shouted, taking a closer look at the ground. Considering that each of the roads was made from this very tough and qi-resistant material that had an insane value, mainly used only on walls of treasuries, the fact was staggering. Especially taking into account that despite their loud behavior, there was no one to meet them.
“It will bring me on top…,” Xu Wong heard Zhao Bohai’s whisper while his own mind was racing in an attempt to find a solution. There was no chance that he could walk out of this situation alive. Unfortunately, he didn’t see one. Walking around the empty square, they reached the statues of cultivators. That was the moment when Yang Song attracted everyone’s attention.
“I found a map… and it’s made from a single piece… How is it even possible?”
Gathering around the large flat table that had a three-dimensional map of the sect, they were astonished, failing even to comment on anything. Not only was working with snow marble a tedious task as no instruments could cut through its surface, while the Qi was simply dispersed upon contact but also the amount of details and precision was something heaven-like.
“I refuse to believe that!” Taking out his sword, Zhao Bohai enveloped it with his qi before striking with his special technique. Using a good chunk of his energy reserves from dantian, his ice blade struck with a mighty force, enough to shatter a huge boulder before freezing the leftovers in eternal coldness. However, despite the powerful attack, he only managed to make a barely visible mark while coating the map in a layer of ice, “but it’s true… yes! This will be my road to the top of the sect!”
“Which sect?”
An unfamiliar voice resounded from behind, halting the speech. Turning around, Xu Wong noticed a strange man with grayish skin that made him look like an old statue. The absence of pupils only intensified this feeling. Dressed in a worn-out robe with traces of extensive wash and few marks of paint, the odd man was bald and quite muscular. However, the biggest oddness that couldn’t be missed by anyone in the group was the sensation of artificiality that the man was giving off.
There was no Qi in his body, which, considering their knowledge, was impossible. Only puny mortals with no spiritual roots had no heaven energy inside. Otherwise, there was no way to hide it. Some cultivators spent their lives trying to create such techniques, but at most, they managed to lower their resonance with outer Qi to be as vague as possible. It indeed made them invisible to the senses, but only when no one knew about their presence. There was nothing like a complete nullifying of Qi reaction to the surroundings as this energy was everywhere. The other thing that stood out was the fact that the man didn’t breathe. He wasn’t blinking, just staring at them blindly with his colorless pupils. Xu Wong failed to see any traces of life inside this moving body. He could bet he would mistake the man with a piece of refined rock if he hadn’t heard his voice.
“Are you mute? Whatever… I welcome you to the Righteous and Profound Sect of the Wide Firmament. My name is Rob, and I am a single member and simultaneously an Elder in it… So, what are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting any guests.” Those words barely reached their minds, when Yang Song muttered what everyone had in their head.
“Is it a puppet?”
Xu Wong knew that no matter how he wished to see the lackeys of Zhao Bohai as dumb idiots, they were not, being cultivators with years of experience. Moreover, they had more of it than himself. It was stupid to think that they would miss that state of the man. The cultivator’s senses were sharp, rising even more with each progression in the realm. Therefore, such a directly spoken conclusion was obvious, taking into account that they had similar but more primitive moving dummies for training. However, with an awfully rich environment and more wealth around, it was easy to guess that the sect might have gone much further in the development of puppets.
“I think it maintains the whole place. Take a look at his clothes,” Another underling added, trying to be as quiet as possible, but Xu Wong noticed how the man frowned upon hearing it.
“You know that I am not deaf. Yep, didn’t like that in the slightest… Okay, it took less than ten seconds to remind me why people annoy me, so I will kindly ask you to leave this place at once. You aren’t welcome,” the grayish man spoke, smiling like a warm-hearted baker from the next street. However, the motion was so fake and unbelievable that it only strengthened the opinion about artificial origin. But something inside Xu Wong told him that it might not be true, and the unknown could be much more powerful than anything he had ever seen. Xu Wong wasn’t a pampered cultivator from the sect and had to fight his way to get even an entrance exam. Often quite literally, killing once just to live another day or stealing several times to get enough money to pay for food. Therefore, when Zhao Bohai stepped forward and tried to resolve everything peacefully, Xu Wong decided to make a bet, relying on his instincts.
“My name is Zhao Bohai from…”
“He has an uncle in the sect, whom he will tell everything about this place,” hastily speaking, Xu Wong made a few steps to the side, separating himself from the rest of the group, “They already started to divide the wealth in here! So if you seek privacy, you just can’t let freely leave!”
“Shut up, worm! How dare you to insult us?” The angry shouts tried to stop him, but Xu Wong managed to finish everything with a final argument.
“… And they damaged the map!”
“My map? What?”
Changing his expression, the man made a step forward, immediately causing a chain reaction from already cautious cultivators with greed in their eyes. Xu Wong wasn’t sure who was first to attack, but it looked like a compressed spring suddenly exploded with action… only to stop a few instants later, exhausting all energy after initial impulse. However, it appeared to be enough as no one from his enemies was left alive, turning into mutilated corpses. Xu Wong even failed to see the fast motions of the man, who was currently carefully inspecting the surface of the map.
He just felt a burst of air followed by a loud banging sound, and everything was already over. Zhao Bohai lost his head, while Yang Song had a huge hole inside his chest. The other two fared even worse, reduced to bloody pieces of half-melted meat. The blood was splattered everywhere, painting early white stones in red. Considering the parts of inner organs and even a cracked skull with an eye hanging from the socket – the scene looked terrifying. Xu Wong gulped, redirecting his attention toward the man. The latter was already turning his head to see the culprit, sending the shivers across the spine of the young cultivator.
“I guess they were your enemies... Nice idea to use me as a solution to your problems, but I don’t appreciate such treatment. So, clean this mess and get the fuck out of my home. Otherwise, you will try your flying skills in those clouds. Do we understand each other?” Getting a shaking nod, the man smiled madly, “Follow me… What? Are you scared? Well, you better be, but no – we just need to get you a bucket of water, so you can return this place to a pristine condition. Move, or it will be me who will need to clean this place myself... as the last person alive.”