Chapter 416: Crisis Approaches

The group looked down from the sky at the red land below, its vivid color as glaring as if stained with blood. Various pits of different sizes and depths on the ground were clearly traces of past wars. Occasionally, broken weapons of all kinds lay scattered in various positions, all sharing one common feature: they were in tatters.
The incomplete skeletons were the most eerie part. Normal bones are white, but these were not—there were golden, blood-red, black, and even green ones. It was hard to imagine bones could come in different colors.
“What place is this exactly?” Pearl, who had been relatively optimistic, grew uneasy after seeing the situation. It seemed like a death zone. Apart from them, everything around was dead silent. Compared to a treasure hunt site, this place resembled a graveyard more.
“I’m not sure. It might be an ancient battlefield!” Ye Feng shook his head and glanced at Long Tian, seemingly trying to read something from his face.
Long Tian also seemed surprised.
Ye Feng asked helplessly, “Brother Long, what do you know about this place? Can’t you even tell us?”
Long Tian hesitated for a while. “Alright, I can tell you what I know, but don’t ask how I got this information.”
“Fine, if you don’t want to say, I won’t force you. But this place gives off a strange vibe. If you’re not prepared, you might perish. Please share whatever you can tell us,” Ye Feng compromised. He knew Long Tian must have reached some kind of agreement with someone else, so forcing him wouldn’t work.
“This place is part of the ruins from the ancient gods’ wars. To be precise, it’s a fragment that separated after the collapse of the ruins’ space. It’s the smallest fragment and the only one left in the heavens due to spatial turbulence. Strictly speaking, this isn’t even a secret realm,” Long Tian revealed what he knew.
“Actually, there are hardly any treasures here because most weapons and armor are broken. As for space rings and similar items, they were mostly torn apart by the spatial turbulence. Most of the intact items are scattered in that turbulence and can’t reach here at all.”
“Then why come here?” Pearl was completely confused.

“There are space fragments here. As long as we obtain them, we can easily understand the rules of space,” Long Tian didn’t hide his purpose. “However, space fragments are hard to get, as most of them are guarded by powerful beings.”

“You mean there are other living creatures here?” Ye Feng had scanned the area with his mental power as soon as he entered and found no living beings at all, so he was puzzled about where the groups ahead of him had gone.

“There are indeed no living creatures here!” Long Tian’s reply was rather terrifying. “There are terrifying undead creatures here—not the ghosts we see in the human world, but beings that transcend the laws of life and death, existing in another form after death.”

“I don’t quite understand…” Pearl interjected again. “Could you explain it in language we can comprehend?”

“Alright,” Long Tian shrugged. “Let me put it this way: Everyone knows about the existence of the Netherworld. After a normal being dies, its soul is guided to the Netherworld and enters reincarnation.”

“But the Netherworld has a limited capacity. It can’t accommodate some souls, just as the Heavenly World rejects those from the Divine World. The Netherworld also rejects powerful souls that exceed its capacity, preventing them from entering reincarnation.”

“So after dying, these powerful beings can only wander in the material world of the same dimension as us. But their physical bodies are too damaged to support their powerful souls. Unless they find bodies stronger than those they had in life, because their souls absorb weaker souls daily to grow, their soul strength has long surpassed what their bodies can handle. Thus, they can only control their bodies for short periods; otherwise, it causes even greater damage. The rest of the time, they let their bodies rest. At their level, even if they die, their bodies still have self-healing abilities—though these abilities are countless times weaker than before, not to mention repairing the wounds that led to their downfall.”

“And almost all of the space fragments I need have been taken by them.” Long Tian’s final words left Ye Feng and the others speechless.

“You clearly know how powerful those guys are, yet you still want to steal things from them?” Pearl wanted to rip open Long Tian’s head to see what was inside.

“Do you know why those who have transcended life and death still collect these spatial fragments?” Long Tian looked at Pearl. “Because the power of rules can make them stronger. Even after transcending life and death, they can still grow stronger by understanding the rules contained within these spatial fragments. As long as I obtain these fragments, I can quickly become stronger than them.”
“Brother Long, what’s really wrong with you?” Ye Feng took a deep breath and asked the question he didn’t want to ask. “Your strength is already immense in the Heavenly Realm. There are barely a handful of people in the entire realm who can defeat you. Why push yourself like this?”
“That was in the Heavenly Realm. In the Divine Realm, I’m nothing!” Long Tian shook his head.
“Cultivation is inherently a defiance of fate. Your current pace of cultivation is unprecedented. Even if I used a thousand times faster time acceleration from the Realm of Refinement, it would still be comparable to yours. But I know that haste leads to failure, and an unstable foundation will only bring disaster in the future. Since we met in the Heavenly Realm, aside from chatting with us for a few days on the first day, you’ve spent almost all the time since then practicing in your room, refusing to even come out for meals, even though we don’t need to eat…”
“I want to become stronger because I don’t want to see things beyond my control happen again. Only by being strong enough can I avoid losing you all again.” Long Tian clenched his fist tightly. “Do you know how sad I was when you were taken away that day? From that day on, I told myself I would never let such a thing happen again. I want my friends to stay by my side forever. Even if you die, I’ll break into the Netherworld to retrieve your souls! That’s why I must transcend life and death, and even become stronger!”
“You’re being too harsh on yourself…” Ye Feng shook his head helplessly. “Sometimes, one should learn to let go. If we hadn’t chosen the path of cultivation and were just ordinary people, we would likely have turned to dust by now. Perhaps we’d have already been reincarnated and no longer recognize each other… For ordinary people, even decades is considered lucky. Maybe we’re different—we have long lives and are much luckier than ordinary people. We should be content, not dwell on self-pity.”

“If one day I truly perish, please don’t bring me back to life. Let me fall into reincarnation. Perhaps I won’t meet you in my next life, but this life is enough. Let others have the chance to be with me in the next life. Maybe I’ll forget you, but those happy memories will still be there, right?” Ye Feng patted Long Tian’s shoulder. “Let go when it’s time to let go. Don’t burden yourself too much…”
Not long after Ye Feng finished speaking, the entire land suddenly darkened, as if the sunlight had been covered by dark clouds.
The sky remained pitch black, but the light, unknown from where, seemed to disappear from afar, with darkness sweeping toward where Ye Feng and the others were.
“Run!” Long Tian’s face showed terror.
Ye Feng and the others didn’t have time to ask and quickly followed Long Tian in flight.
“Hurry!” Long Tian urged frantically while looking back at the speed at which darkness was approaching. “There’s a mountain ahead. Let’s hide there quickly!”
“That mountain looks like a skull…” Pearl observed carefully before arriving at that conclusion, but still followed to hide in the crevice beneath the skull.
As darkness neared, Ye Feng asked, “Can’t we avoid being swept by this darkness?”
“Not exactly. Look in the distance…” Long Tian pointed in the direction they had just flown from.
Where the light had vanished, Ye Feng saw a set of bones exposed in the soil move a few times, followed by a thick skeleton crawling out of the dirt.
“No way… Do these undead come out to dance when night falls?” Ye Feng was speechless.
“That’s not it. It’s because the light here accelerates the decay of their bodies, so they choose to be active at night and bury themselves in the soil during the day.”
“Well, I have to admit, these guys aren’t as stupid as I thought.” Ye Feng’s words didn’t sound like praise; at least his tone and expression showed he wasn’t complimenting them.
“What should we do now?” Pearl asked.
“Wait until daybreak, and they’ll fall asleep!” Long Tian came up with a rather stupid idea. “If we go out now, they’ll tear us to pieces. You know, these guys are far stronger than us. Just one of them could kill us instantly.”

“You’re right, little one. Don’t you think it’s impolite to hide in the gaps between my teeth?” As darkness swept by, a voice sounded in Ye Feng and the others’ ears, and at the same time, a seismic-like sensation arose beneath their feet.