Xiao Lee, the youngest Ascendant in history, was surrounded by darkness.

It was not regular darkness, a fact made very clear by his inability to see through it. It was a long time ago since something as trivial as an absence of light posed a threat to his sight. Still, he was not helpless even though he could not see.

His senses stretched out with thought, his mind taking in the entirety of his surroundings from the information they provided him with. The first thing he noticed was that he was in a cave. It was a large cave, covering most of the vast distance his senses covered.

The unnatural darkness was spread through the whole cave, and he might have started worrying if not for what he noticed at the edge of his range. The cave gradually narrowed till it he felt an opening. Outside that opening, was light at the end of the tunnel.

After confirming the path to the mouth of the cave, he started moving, as his lack of sight made him uncomfortable. Though the distance to the end spanned a few kilometres, it only took him a few seconds to get to the end of the tunnel. A mere thought was enough to silence the sonic boom that should have been produced with his speed. Indeed, preventing sonic booms was something everybody who wished to reach Great Lord had to learn on Xenus.

He felt relief the moment he stepped into the light, glad to be returned his sight. That relief only lasted for a moment, however.

The first thing he noticed was the qi.

The qi levels in the cave were nothing impressive, barely better than the Nine-tailed Sect he just left. The thought of the sect and its fate worried him. He had to admit that he still felt mild shock at how easily the Nine-tailed Matriarch had died. Though he did not have any actual relationship with her, she was still one of his childhood legends.

Nothing however, compared to the worry he felt for Lisa. It was likely pointless, he suspected. After all, he knew she likely had access to the strength of a Lone Power and could defend herself, much like Bornie had in the past. That did not do much to calm him down unfortunately, and he had to force himself to stop coming up with grim scenarios. d

He was about to explore his surroundings when he felt a presence wash over him, freezing him on the spot.

Lee’s ascension to Lasvania had been a truly humbling experience, of that there was no doubt. His first encounter had been with a woman who rendered him unconscious simply by speaking. He had come across cultivators capable of easily shattering planets and bending the laws of reality like it was nothing. The people he had come to come his friends were the children of immensely powerful cultivators at the top of a galaxy spanning republic. Xiao Lee, in his hubris, believed he had seen power.

How ignorant he had been.

The presence that scanned him was so far above him that he could not even be considered an ant. The High Cultivators he had come across, including the High Executor and the Fifth that battled in his soul felt like children compared to such a vast existence.

Just as he was preparing to be snuffed out of reality by simply being the target of such an entity’s attention, the presence disappeared just as quickly as it had come. Unfortunately, he was not given any time to feel relief as he felt another presence focus on him.

It was clearly not nearly as powerful as the previous one yet crushing him with a thought was easily within its power. He stood frozen as the presence scanned him thoroughly, something that would clearly have been very rude if the power level were not so steep. As it was, he had no idea if there were privacy laws in his current location, but he would not bet on it. The thought made him smile. Not even a year and he was already thinking like a Lasvanian.

A voice spoke into his mind the just after the presence withdrew;

“Welcome to the Depths, Ascendant Xiao Lee. I do hope you survive.”

Both the voice and the presence disappeared after the statement, leaving him alone and not a little wary. Though he had understood its message, there was no doubt in his mind that whatever entity spoke to him was completely alien. Not merely in the sense that it was another species, but something that was so fundamentally different from anything he was used to that it was completely unrecognisable.

That feeling was not limited to just the voice, a fact he discovered the next moment. A more thorough scan of the qi around him showed that it was not quite as normal as it seemed. It was hard to pin down, but something about it felt very odd. It made him wary of taking cultivating it. Though that was likely too late, as his passive cultivation had been cycling it since he stepped outside.

A more detailed look into the qi showed that his dantian had little problem breaking it down. Any potential relief, however, was denied as he continued observing his core. It was nearly imperceptible, and nothing less than a very thorough search with trained senses could have spotted it, but it was there. Very slowly, and in minute quantities, the alien qi was doing something to his core. He could feel the slight changes, though there was no way to know their purpose.

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He was about to start doing some testing when he noticed something moving fast at the edge of his sensory range. It quickly entered the range of his vision, the flat plains that stretched on for many kilometres making it easy to spot. He gathered his qi, preparing to strike, when the sight of the creature gave him pause.

Perhaps in another world, with some changes, the thing that approached him could be known as some variation of wolf. As it was, it looked like someone had taken a child’s drawing of one and created it, then added tentacles to various odd places. It also felt alien in a way that vaguely reminded him of the voice that spoke to him.

The creature with multiple tentacles in place of a mouth and two sticking out of it sides lunged at him, propelled by its powerful leg muscles and the side tentacles. Luckily for Lee, though, it was still in the first stage of the Neophyte realm, slow enough to sidestep easily.

He sent a simple bolt of attuned lightning its way, which should have been enough to seriously would a best on its level. So, he was shocked when a barrier manifested in front of the creature and stopped the lightning from hitting it.

A low Neophyte should normally not be capable of blocking his lightning so easily, yet the one standing in front of him had done just that. The creature jumped at him again, and he dodged, his speed still easily surpassing his opponent's. Perhaps it was one of those creatures with a ridiculously powerful defensive technique. He had met some like that capable of tanking attacks from more powerful cultivators.

Still, though it made him curious, it was not actually concerning. Being capable of blocking a simple lightning bolt did not mean it had a chance, however. A few more overcharged lightning bolts and one roasted tentacle wolf later, he was proven correct.

He examined the body of the creature, trying to understand the alien feeling he got from it. Unfortunately, multiple thorough examinations later brought him no closer to his goal. He took the beast core, which was fairly normal, excluding the alien feeling of course. He was starting to just consider it the standard for whatever this strange place was.

The Depths, if the voice was to be believed.

He briefly wondered if the Lasvanians would come for him before shelving that line of thought. They were powerful, no doubt, but the attack was bound to cause a lot of problems, not to mention there was no guarantee they would even be able to find him. A rescue would be nice, but it would serve him better to assume it was not going to happen.

Lost, alone, and completely unaware of the alien world he was currently in, Xiao Lee picked a random direction and started walking.

*

Charred.

That was the state of every single meridian in Lisa Feltham’s body. She was splayed out on the floor, still unable to get up after her forced teleportation.

It took a few hours for her to recover enough strength to attempt standing. A very quick recovery, all things considered. She was far from fully healed, but her Adept body was thankfully strong enough to endure and allow her to push her limits. Good as that was though, it was not nearly enough to offset the truth of her situation.

She could not use qi.

Already she had to consciously make an effort to stop herself from attempting to cycle with her absorber. She could not remember the last time she did that.

Her absorber was still calculating the extent of the damage and what it would take to heal. She was glad for the meridian healing function it came with, but did not harbour any illusions. It would take months at best without a High Cultivator to heal it. The World Tree could do it in an instant, of course, but she was currently far from any of the Lone Powers.

In the short time she had wielded her grandmother’s power, she attempted to get a very rough idea on where the portal led to and how far away it was. The only thing she could confirm was that the distance from Andrea was impossibly vast.

She looked at her surroundings, trying to get a feel for where she was. The only thing she could see in the distance was snow and mountains, all towering high towards the sky, which was a dull grey and notably had no sun.

That was not particularly surprising. After all, this place was not exactly a planet. Though she was not sure what it was.

“Welcome to the Depths, Lisa Feltham. Do try to survive.”

She instinctively tried to check if whoever was speaking to her left any trace of qi before her brain caught up and she remembered her lack of meridians.

The voice that spoke to her sounded smug, strangely enough, and she suspected it belonged to whatever had pulled her away from her world in the first place. There was a strange feeling it gave her, like it was something alien, even more so than any of the actual aliens she had met.

Yet she could not deny that the words were important, at least. She finally had a name for the strange world she was trapped in. It was not much, but perhaps it could be a start.

More interesting though, was the last word.

Survive.

That meant there was a trial or something similar that could kill her. Which was rather annoying when she had no qi.

She was considering what the trial might be when she heard footsteps running towards her. They were quiet, and she could barely hear them even though the sound could not have been from more than five kilometres away. Of course, she would have spotted it and known its cultivation level from much farther away if she could use her spiritual senses. Alas, that was not to be.

Still, in the short period before it was directly in front of her, she was able to determine its general power level by its speed and a few other factors that most might find unimportant. It was a strange mass of tentacles on four limbs that felt alien in the same way the voice did.

Killing it with her qi would have been trivial, something a simple spatial blade would have solved. As it was, she would have to use her fists. The fists of a prodigy half a step into the Master Realm.

As the Depths would soon come to learn, though Lisa Feltham was currently incapable of using qi, she was very far from being harmless.