Before they stepped through the world gate, Cade had already manifested his Blood Wings, wrapping them around his torso. He had also condensed a layer of red mist beneath his robes. If need be, he could quickly turn it into Life Armor.

  He wasn’t expecting Cara Long to strike right away, as there were a few dozen Sword Dao core disciples right on their heels. A single attack would turn into a massive fight between the two organizations, which could affect the stability of the gate. While this meant the blonde assassin would likely wait for a more opportune moment, when it came to his life, Cade would never become complacent. He always hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst.

  According to Universal Laws of Space and Time, written by an ancient southern scholar named Abdul Raziq, all parts of the universe—including the Divine Realms—were surrounded by the Void, another type of space with its own unique laws. A cultivator who understood both types of spatial laws could combine them, traversing the Void in order to cross enormous distances of ordinary space in a greatly shortened amount of time.

  Raziq referred to the Void as a buffering layer, which wrapped around our reality. It contained some of the chaotic energies present at the birth of the universe and prevented them from passing into the world. Those energies were incredibly harmful to most lifeforms. Spiritual qi was nothing more than a single strand of those complex energies, its particles so tiny they could pass through the barrier between the Void and normal space. With a sufficient density of such leakage, spirit veins could be formed.

  Cade gazed at the circular passageway before him. World gates like this one were considered the pinnacle of ancient spatial travel, linking two vastly distant locations while reducing travel time to nearly nothing. Using them was as simple as walking through an open doorway.

  Which was exactly what he did.

  Passing through the gate was an interesting experience. For an instant, he felt exposed to a terrible energy that would no doubt have torn an ordinary human body apart given a bit more time. However, the sensation lasted only a sliver of a moment—not long enough to harm a second-tier cultivator.

  What surprised him greatly was that, for an eyeblink, all 2,500 of his spherules began spinning rapidly, greedily drinking in this void qi just as they consumed the energies from the prismatic bead. He was so shocked that he nearly forgot to focus on defense upon exiting.

  Could it be that my spherules can be cultivated within the Void?!

  His mind snapped back to reality, but luckily his sixth sense remained dormant. After stepping out of the gateway inside the Divine Realm, disciples from all three organizations began moving down the sprawling, partially collapsed staircase of white stone, making room for those entering behind them. Everyone was careful. Some disciples had already started running toward the Spirit Pool. Most did not dare to fly. Others observed their surroundings, trying to plot a safe path to their goals.

  The Divine Realm was, in many ways, a heaven for cultivators, even in its current dilapidated state. The density of spiritual qi was incredible. Cade could tell it was roughly triple what the Sword Dao citadel could offer. If this place were open permanently, all three organizations would soar within a few years, with hundreds of disciples reaching the Soul Avatar or Soul Body Integration realms instead of merely a handful.

  Once they stepped off the world gate platform, the female assassin turned toward him with a vicious grimace, her arm shooting forward as she pointed a single finger at his face.

  “Cade Ward!” Cara roared. “You ripped out my younger sister’s pre-core, severely wounding her foundation and completely destroying her cultivation momentum. Because of you, it could take her years to break through into Muscular Enhancement—if she ever reaches it at all! I will resolve this enmity in her name! Do you have the guts to face me in a life-and-death duel?!”

  Dozens of heads turned in her direction. Some people chuckled, while others watched with curiosity to see how the matter would develop.

  “Sorry, I have no idea who you’re talking about. Besides, I already have plans,” Cade replied calmly, pulling out the map crystal to get his bearings.

  Now it made sense why this woman was so furious, but if she intended to anger him into accepting a duel, this childish attempt wasn’t anywhere near enough. Her cultivation might have been pretty high, but she didn’t behave like a battle-hardened cultivator.

  A duel? He snorted internally. Why would I waste time on that? The sheer idiocy of these high nobles never failed to astound him.

  It was likely she had spent her life training and cultivating inside her sect and, being protected from birth, had little real-world experience.

  Fury twisted the assassin’s expression. “You! I didn’t know Sword Dao disciples were such cowards!”

  An angry murmur passed through the ranks of Sword Dao disciples present, but they all knew better. Time was of the essence. If this woman wanted to waste it, she could do so on her own.

  More cultivators were arriving now, mostly from the inner court, while others departed toward the Spirit Pool with every passing moment. Jade’s tense face flashed somewhere in the crowd. King and Reeve were likely near the back due to their low placements on the Ladder and had yet to enter the Realm.

  “Why you’re in such a rush to die is baffling, but right now I have better things to do,” Cade said, waving dismissively. Nothing mattered more than locating the chapel. He had only seven days and roughly thirty-four thousand miles to cover there and back. Considering he’d need to watch out for time bubbles, every moment was beyond precious.

  He turned his attention to Aria. “I’ll be meeting two of my friends here in about five days, and we’re planning to head to the Beast Battlefield. If you find yourself with nothing better to do, why not join us?”

  “Bastard, you dare ignore me?! Weakling! Coward!” Cara raged, but she didn’t dare attack first with so many Sword Dao disciples present.

  “For fuck’s sake, shut up!” someone yelled from the crowd, and laughter erupted around them. Even her fellow assassins shook their heads before departing toward the Spirit Pool.

  Cara’s face turned red like a freshly boiled crawfish, but she held her ground, teeth clenched and breathing heavily. While she was clearly hot-tempered, the young woman wasn’t stupid, and it didn’t take a genius to realize her bait wasn’t going to work.

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  The elven poison user Elanis, who stood behind Cara, appeared cold and detached on the surface, but inside burned with indignation for his senior sister. His life signature was festering with hate.

  Looks like he’s either in love with her or obsessed. Regardless, she doesn’t seem to reciprocate. Cara’s life signature was a tumultuous mixture of conscientiousness, frustration, devotion, and rage. She was convinced she was in the right to want his life.

  However, he wasn’t someone these two could easily threaten.

  According to the Book of Life, after Blood Transformation, Asura blood qi became so potent that it rendered one immune to all common poisons and resistant to most others. Not to mention his 2,500 spherules, which greatly enhanced his lifeforce.

  Meanwhile, Aria continued speaking with Cade, ignoring Cara’s tirades.

  “Thank you, Martial Brother. I have to see how things turn out in the Spirit Pool, and then the Magitower. I might just take you up on the offer,” the fey said, nodding with her usual light smile.

  “You’re more than welcome to join us. Sadly, I have to be on my way. Hopefully we’ll see each other before the Realm closes. Good luck,” Cade replied, grinning as he cupped his fist.

  “Good luck, Martial Brother,” the silver-haired fey responded. “Be careful,” she added softly, her concern barely audible.

  “Thank you. You too—look after yourself,” Cade whispered back, nodding in gratitude.

  He then rose a few feet into the air and shot off toward the chapel, passing over large patches of upturned soil and massive chunks of white stone, likely thrown there by an explosion in one of the ruined palaces. Not far in the distance, he spotted a huge, red-tinted sphere—a visible time bubble—and decided to use the opportunity to test his sixth sense.

  Cara followed his path, not daring to fly too fast. Elanis made a move to pursue her, but the blond-haired assassin barked over her shoulder for him to stay back. Like an obedient hound, the pale-faced elf froze in place, a murderous gleam in his eyes as he stared at Cade’s retreating form. The Asura could feel the assassin’s glare drilling into his back.

  He and Cara were the only ones heading in the north-eastern direction—or at least what was assumed to be north-east within the Divine Realm—likely because, according to the map, there was nothing of interest that way. Cade wasn’t concerned about his tail. If his sixth sense worked on time bubbles, he’d lose her soon enough.

  Roughly two hundred feet from the red-shifted bubble, his danger sense began to ring softly, and he exhaled in quiet relief. Even with his Asura nature suppressing anxiety and self-doubt, he hadn’t been able to shake a thread of nervousness until now. Too much was riding on his sixth sense—without it, he doubted he could reach the chapel and make it back in time.

  With his heart light as a feather, Cade sped up, flying beneath the bubble. He then checked the map, adjusted his direction, and glanced over his shoulder.

  The concern on Cara’s face was obvious. She carefully navigated around the bubble, clearly worried there might be another invisible one nearby. She continued to mimic his flight path, but the distance between them steadily grew.

  Cade pushed forward, gradually increasing his speed. Suddenly, his sixth sense rang again, and he used the momentum-depleting laws within his Blood Wings to rapidly change direction. Once the warning faded, he continued toward the chapel, keeping as close to the ground as possible.

  Meanwhile, Cara stopped, puzzled by his actions, and looked around in hesitation, frustration evident on her near-perfect face.

  “Do me a favor and die, Ward! If you survive by some stroke of luck, I’ll make sure to finish the job!” she spat, her words dripping with vitriol, before turning around and carefully flying back, attempting to retrace her path.

  "Sure, sure. Whatever you say," The Asura chuckled, shrugging off her weak threats like a summer drizzle. Watching her pretty face twisted by fury and frustration was quite satisfying.

  As he continued onward, Cade couldn’t help but look around in wonder. The strangest thing he had noticed so far was the complete absence of shadows, which made all objects appear oddly flat.

  Judging from the sprawling ruins surrounding him, the Life and Death Divine Realm must have been something else in its glory days. He wondered if the faint purplish tint in the sky was caused by the dense spiritual qi saturating the air; the color closely resembled that of mid-grade spirit crystals. Interestingly, the luminosity never changed. It was consistently bright throughout the Realm, but unlike the warmth of sunlight, the illumination here carried a cold undertone that lent the landscape a harsh, almost unforgiving quality.

  I wonder whether the Ancients had some method of cultivating powerful spirit veins within their Divine Realms, or if they built those realms around existing pockets of reality. That would be a world-defying ability. Every location could be turned into a cultivator’s paradise!

  Cade pulled himself out of his thoughts and continued onward. Regrettably, he hadn’t noticed a single intact corpse so far—no corpses at all, in fact—aside from a few scattered clusters of yellowed bones. It was possible he’d missed some, but he didn’t dare fly too high. In this place, danger and elevation went hand in hand.

  Besides, the 15,000 miles surrounding the gate must have been thoroughly plundered.

  Flying over a destroyed palace, he saw that even the floor tiles had been torn away. Anything of value had long since been scavenged by the countless disciples who had entered the Realm over the past forty thousand years.

  As he journeyed onward, it became clear that the vision he’d seen during his breakthrough to the middle stage of Flesh Fortification depicted a distant past. The once-verdant grass had withered and died, leaving nothing but bare ground. There were no bodies to be seen anywhere—hardly even bones. Likely, even the skeletons had turned to dust.

  Cade spent the next two days flying at less than a fifth of his top speed. He didn’t dare move faster, as even with the bloodseeker’s momentum-reducing laws, he feared accidentally entering a hidden bubble. He didn’t encounter many along the way, but those he did were invisible until he shifted his viewing angle, at which point a red-shifted sphere would emerge. Without his sixth sense, he’d have no chance of crossing this distance safely.

  According to the map, he had just passed the 15,000-mile mark, and Cade began paying much closer attention to his surroundings.

  It didn’t take long for him to notice opportunities for looting, mostly inside palaces, though he still didn’t see any intact bodies. The number of skeletons had increased—both humanoid and beast—and after a while he began to understand why Grandmaster Erendriel’s words about thousands of intact bodies were, while not a lie, more of a misrepresentation of the Realm’s current reality.

  There were undoubtedly thousands of preserved, undiscovered bodies scattered throughout the Divine Realm, but given its immense size, finding one intact was going to be difficult. This was due to the frequent fluctuations in time flow. The bubbles often appeared and disappeared between openings, meaning whatever was frozen in time would eventually be unfrozen.

  Once that happened, the laws of decay would take over, and eventually there would be nothing left but empty ruins.

  With this realization settling in, Cade began to doubt whether the Beast Battlefield—a well-known location—would offer anything of interest to him.

  While it was possible that a still-functioning storage artifact might be found near some of the skeletons, given the unfathomable age of the Divine Realm, the chances were low.

  Storage spaces outside of time bubbles deteriorated gradually. The improved qi density within the Realm wasn’t enough to sustain them. Cade’s ring fed on his blood qi, while most other artifacts relied on their owners supplying a constant trickle of spiritual qi. Though the amount was considered negligible, it far exceeded what even the rich qi here could provide.

  A problem for another time. Right now, I need to locate the chapel.

  A few hours later, Cade’s face lit up when he spotted a sprawling courtyard in the distance, with a massive central transportation formation etched into his memory. On the horizon stood a single, perfectly preserved palace that had somehow withstood both the devastating war and the enormous passage of time.

  His voracious heart released an energized beat, mirroring his rising excitement.

  I’m finally here!