Zhi Xuan moved like a shadow—his body remained unseen, yet his silhouette appeared even without a light to illuminate the horizon. He reappeared atop a tree branch nearly thousands of li away from the Hongmeng Empire. He pulled out a pitch-black jade token, channeling a small thread of his Divine Sense into it.

  "He is not in Yao Gu," Zhi Xuan murmured, opening his eyes. "He is already at the border of Huang Tu. This jade token contains his Divine Blood, allowing me to trace his steps."

  Before him, the Middle Continent seemed endless. He faded back into a shadow, creeping through the air and carrying a silent scent of metal. Zhi Xuan looked down, where the expanse of the Middle Continent appeared like grains of dust in his eyes. After some time, he located a formation altar situated atop a hill.

  Zhi Xuan appeared before the formation altar, waving his hand to bring out high-grade spiritual stones. He walked into the center of the formation; with a gentle wave of his hand, light radiated upward, piercing the clouds. Zhi Xuan faded into the light and vanished from the altar.

  WHUSH!

  He reappeared at another formation altar near a high mountain range, stepping out and gazing at the sky. "Great Saint, do you have another way to cross the void between the Plains?"

  "Crossing the void between the Plains is no simple matter of grasping the wind, Zhi Xuan," Ruo Xianxue replied from the depths of his soul, her voice carrying a heavy, ancient resonance. "These mortal formation altars can only connect points within a single Plain. But look at yourself—you possess that Divine Cauldron."

  Zhi Xuan furrowed his brow. "The Divine Cauldron?"

  "Yes, that Divine Cauldron has been tempered with Xuan-Huang energy. You can utilize it to cross the void," Ruo Xianxue explained. "However, the risk is that you might be thrown to a location other than your intended destination. If you intend to look for the Merchant Alliance to board a ship, you will find it difficult, as no one wishes to go to Huang Tu."

  Zhi Xuan stood motionless atop the silent hill, letting the sharp mountain wind sweep through his black-and-white robes. His sapphire eyes stared into the distance, where the boundary between sky and earth seemed to merge into an impenetrable mist.

  "Perhaps that is better than being suspected by the Merchant Alliance for heading to Huang Tu," Zhi Xuan said calmly, weighing his options. "But let us see if the Divine Cauldron can truly withstand the storm of the void."

  Zhi Xuan raised his hand, concentrating energy into a single point, reinforced by the Law of the Heavenly-Blood Body which was etched by thousands of Slaughter Seals. With a heavy swing that exerted a pressing weight of energy, he punched the air beside him.

  BAM!

  The space before Zhi Xuan exploded in a deafening silence, torn apart by a raw power that exceeded the boundaries of an ordinary practitioner's logic. A throbbing black rift appeared in the air, revealing a wild and irregular flow of void energy, ready to swallow anything that dared approach. Without a hint of hesitation, Zhi Xuan waved his sleeve, summoning the Heavenly Trifold Reincarnation Cauldron.

  The Divine Cauldron appeared with a low whistle, spinning above his head. Earth-yellow Xuan-Huang energy seeped out like a heavy curtain, wrapping Zhi Xuan’s body in a protection born from the origin of creation. Zhi Xuan leaped, merging into the Divine Cauldron, which instantly shot into the dimensional rift.

  WHUNG!

  The Divine Cauldron hummed lowly as it moved through the void. It appeared to be battered by the crushing void energy, making the cauldron unstable. Inside the dimension of the Divine Cauldron, which glowed with the Law of the Four Seasons, Zhi Xuan sat, breaking into a cold sweat.

  Zhi Xuan closed his eyes tightly, his mudra locked firmly over his knees. Every thud heard from the outside synchronized with his racing pulse. Within his inner space, he felt the Xuan-Huang energy working tirelessly, patching every fine crack that appeared on the cauldron's defensive structure.

  "My Soul Artifact," Zhi Xuan hissed, forming a mudra to stabilize his own soul. "If my soul wavers, this Divine Cauldron will spin out of control."

  A violent tremor struck Zhi Xuan’s entire consciousness. Out there, within the void corridor that knew no time or direction, a spatial storm roared like thousands of hungry ancient dragons, tearing at the outer walls of the Heavenly Trifold Reincarnation Cauldron.

  Zhi Xuan felt an incredible weight pressing down on his back. As the owner of the Soul Artifact, every scratch received by the Divine Cauldron was felt directly by his soul. He coughed, and fresh blood carrying hot energy vapor sprayed from his mouth, staining his tattered robes.

  "Hold on!" Ruo Xianxue’s voice barked, echoing amidst Zhi Xuan’s inner storm. "If you allow a crack to appear in your mind, the law of the void will enter and evaporate your existence into nothingness!"

  Zhi Xuan did not answer. His teeth ground together to endure the pain piercing through his marrow. He pressed his palms together, forcing the Law of the Heavenly-Blood Body to protect himself, the thousands of Slaughter Seals beneath his skin glowing.

  Outside the cauldron, the curtain of earth-yellow energy began to dim, but Zhi Xuan continued to spit out his essence blood to fuel the cauldron's fires. He saw through his divine sense how the dark purple and jet-black spatial flows swirled, attempting to grind the Divine Cauldron into fragments.

  Suddenly, a spatial explosion occurred directly in their path. The shock was so violent that the dimension within the Divine Cauldron, usually stabilized by the Law of the Four Seasons, fell into chaos. Xiao Die and Ao Sheng, situated in the corners of the dimension, turned pale, their auras dimming as they tried to maintain the spatial stabilization around them.

  "Zhi Xuan! The path is collapsing!" Ruo Xianxue screamed.

  "I know!" Zhi Xuan retorted, his eyes now bloodshot—not from anger, but from the pressure of blood vessels nearing their breaking point. "I will not let this void swallow me!"

  He released his hand mudra and performed a powerful pulling motion, as if he were dragging the weight of an entire continent. He summoned the Six Paths Reincarnation Disk within his soul. The six gates manifested inside the cauldron’s narrow space, absorbing part of the pressure crushing his mind.

  Every second felt like thousands of years. Zhi Xuan felt his soul being pulled in opposite directions. The void was not just trying to destroy his body; it was attempting to erase his memories, his identity, and his very existence.

  "I... cannot die here yet," Zhi Xuan murmured, his voice hoarse and trembling.

  He unified the remnants of his divine sense into the center point of the Divine Cauldron. The remaining Xuan-Huang energy was condensed into a sharp orb of light. He no longer tried to defend; he chose to strike back. With a surge of extraordinary will, he directed the Divine Cauldron to crash into the center of the vortex before him.

  BOOOOOOM!

  The world suddenly went silent. A blinding white light swallowed everything. Zhi Xuan felt his soul thrown, spinning through an endless darkness before finally feeling a harsh, forced pull.

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  The Divine Cauldron emerged from a shrinking black hole in the sky, hurtling down like a falling star wreathed in flames. It slammed into the ground with a force that created a crater dozens of zhang deep, sending a plume of dust and sand soaring into the air.

  Thick smoke and hot steam rose from the crater, carrying the scent of Xuan-Huang energy friction against the surrounding natural laws. At the bottom of the crater, where the earth had turned to glass from the heat, the Heavenly Trifold Reincarnation Cauldron stood tilted, its bronze surface now covered in silver scratches—remnants of the void storm.

  The cauldron vibrated for a moment before slowly fading, shrinking into a bead of light that entered the forehead of a man lying there. Zhi Xuan lay gasping for breath. He tried to rise, but every movement felt like thousands of needles being driven into his meridian centers. He spat out a mouthful of blood.

  "You are lucky, Zhi Xuan," Ruo Xianxue whispered, her voice sounding exhausted, as if she had just squeezed her own soul essence to keep Zhi Xuan’s consciousness intact. "A moment of weakness, and your soul would have been left in that corridor, becoming food for space ghosts."

  Zhi Xuan did not answer. He immediately swept out Heavenly Jade to stabilize his depleted energy. His sapphire eyes, now dimmed, scanned the landscape above the crater. The sky here was not the clear blue of Xing Luo, yet he also sensed that this was not Huang Tu.

  Suddenly, his ears caught the sound of hissing sand blowing in the wind—not a natural wind, but a rhythmic movement. At the edge of the crater, five human figures appeared, wearing tight clothing made of beast hides reinforced with bone plates on their chests and shoulders. Their faces were smeared with strange, earth-red symbols.

  "Zhak'ra tu mara?" one of them, a burly man with a bone spear on his back, called out in a tone full of caution.

  Zhi Xuan narrowed his eyes, trying to focus his vision which was still blurred from the spatial shock. The language they spoke sounded foreign and harsh, unlike anything he had heard on any of the Plains.

  "They are barbarian practitioners," Ruo Xianxue whispered in his consciousness. "You’ve been thrown to the fringes, Zhi Xuan. This is a barbarian territory untouched by civilization."

  The burly man stepped down into the crater, the tip of his spear—made from a giant fang—glowing a dull red. He stared at Zhi Xuan’s robes, which displayed a quality of heavenly silk unmatched in this remote place. In their eyes, Zhi Xuan was an object fallen from the sky—either a fallen god or a wounded demon.

  "I... have no ill intent," Zhi Xuan said, his voice hoarse. He tried to stand, but his legs trembled.

  Seeing Zhi Xuan move, the four other figures immediately slid down from the crater's edge with surprising speed. Their movements were agile, resembling wild beasts. They surrounded Zhi Xuan, pointing bone daggers and bows at him.

  "Grak-sha! Grak-sha!" one of them, who was smaller but had very sharp eyes, shouted while pointing at Zhi Xuan’s forehead—the spot where the Divine Cauldron had vanished.

  Zhi Xuan raised his hand, pressing his finger to his forehead to understand their language through the Ancient Heaven Memory inheritance. A surge of divine sense from the memory inheritance flowed rapidly, dissecting the sound structure and soul vibrations of the barbarian shouts. Within a few breaths, the harsh sounds that previously sounded like animal roars began to transform into meaning within Zhi Xuan’s mind.

  "Sky object! He carries a large stone inside his head!" the small figure shouted, his eyes gleaming with greed.

  The burly leader of the group growled lowly, the muscles in his arms tensing. "Quiet, Shuha! Look, he fell from the sky. And he is shaped like a man, not a large statue."

  He looked at Zhi Xuan with wild yet wary eyes. "Stranger, who are you? Why did you fall from the sky?"

  Zhi Xuan wiped the remaining blood from the corner of his lip with a slow movement, his eyes staring sharply at the barbarian leader. Through the resonance of the Ancient Heaven Memory, he replied in their language, sounding hoarse yet authoritative.

  "I am a lost wanderer," Zhi Xuan replied, his voice calm despite the immense pain racking his body. "I seek no conflict with your tribe. Tell me, where am I? Is this the land of Huang Tu?"

  The burly man was stunned for a moment to hear this stranger speak their language, albeit with a very ancient accent. He lowered his spear slightly, but his vigilance did not fade.

  "You speak our tongue?" the burly man probed, scratching the back of his neck. He pointed toward the far south. "Huang Tu? Itu is the land across the savage sea. Here, it is a land separated from Huang Tu."

  "Across the savage sea?" Zhi Xuan repeated, his brow furrowing deeper. He glanced at Ruo Xianxue in his mind, but the Great Saint only snorted, appearing equally confused by their wildly missed destination.

  "Then what place is this?" Zhi Xuan asked again, trying to regulate his breath, which still felt constricted by the lingering void pressure.

  "This... we call it the Land of Giants, the land of the giant hunters," the burly man answered, patting his bone-plated chest. "My name is Shanhu."

  The small man named Shuha spat to the side, his eyes never leaving Zhi Xuan’s clothes. "Shanhu! Don't be too friendly. Look at his robes, it is a sky object!"

  "Shut up, Shuha!" Shanhu barked, making Shuha shrink back. Shanhu looked at Zhi Xuan again. "Stranger, how did you get here?"

  Shanhu stepped closer. Zhi Xuan stood on guard, but what happened next was Shanhu measuring his own height against Zhi Xuan’s, which appeared the same, causing the four figures around them to jump and shout like wild animals.

  "Not a Giant! He is not a descendant of the giant gods, Shanhu!" Shuha shouted in delight, spinning around nimbly. "Look, he is the same size as us! But his skin is so smooth, like forest animal meat!"

  "Shanhu, is he a descendant of the sea god race?" asked one of the barbarians who had been silent, a woman with dreadlocks decorated with wolf fangs. She sniffed the air around Zhi Xuan, her nose twitching. "The smell... there is no hunter’s scent. He smells like burning flowers."

  Another burly man holding a giant stone axe chimed in, his voice heavy like a rockslide. "Look at his hands, Shanhu. How can someone this soft survive falling from the sky hole? He must be using magic!"

  "Look at his left hand!" Shuha pointed excitedly, leaning in. His eyes widened as he saw that half of Zhi Xuan’s body was jet-black. "Look at those red marks; they are like ours. Yet they are different!"

  Shanhu leaned in, his wild eyes fixed on Zhi Xuan’s exposed left arm. There, thousands of Slaughter Seals glowed blood-red against the darkness of his jet-black left hand. To these barbarian practitioners, the marks looked like ancient tattoos representing the status of a great warrior.

  "Marks... warrior marks," Shanhu murmured, his voice now filled with an undecipherable vibration. He stepped back, thumping his fist against his chest—a wild yet sincere gesture of respect. "Carving those tattoos with stone must have been very painful, yet you carved them over the forest monsters you killed."

  Zhi Xuan fell silent for a moment, letting the barbarians' misunderstanding serve as a temporary shield for his true identity. He had no intention of explaining that those were the thousands of lives he had taken, or that his jet-black left hand was a curse and a blessing from the Law of the Heavenly-Blood Body he walked.

  "Many monsters have fallen," Zhi Xuan replied shortly, his voice returning to its flat tone yet carrying an invisible authority.

  Shanhu nodded with a serious expression, as if that short answer was undeniable proof of heroism. He signaled his companions to lower their weapons completely. "Warrior who fell from the sky, you cannot stay in this crater. The breath of the sky hole will lure predators here. Come with us to the settlement."

  Zhi Xuan hesitated. However, he realized his current condition—he had not recovered and needed time to absorb Heavenly Jade and stabilize. Forcing himself to cross the Savage Sea in this state would be a death sentence.

  "Show the way, Shanhu," Zhi Xuan said, stepping forward with a limp.

  They began to climb the edge of the crater. When Zhi Xuan reached the top and saw the landscape before him, he was stunned once more. As far as the eye could see, the land was filled with the ruins of bones that looked like giant wild beasts and the skeletons of massive beings that seemed to belong to an ancient age.

  "Land of Giants," Zhi Xuan murmured, looking around. "So, these are your ancestors?"

  Shanhu stopped for a moment, looking at the expanse of bleached bones under the scorching sun with a gaze full of worship and sorrow. "Not our ancestors, Sky Warrior. We are merely the survivors living atop the remnants of their grandeur."

  Zhi Xuan stepped onto the parched earth, each footstep creating the sound of crunching sand and small bone fragments. He could feel the remnants of energy—very thin yet incredibly sharp—seeping from those giant bones: a fragment of will from a past so strong that even time could not fully erase it.

  "A will that refuses to fade," Zhi Xuan thought, glancing toward Ruo Xianxue. "Great Saint, do you recognize them?"

  "Hmph, remnants of Gods," Ruo Xianxue replied, her voice carrying a rare hint of respect. "They may have existed here before the splitting of the Nine Plains in the Era of the Great Emperor. But look now; only bones remain."

  They walked through a valley formed by giant ribs arching upward, resembling terrifying gates. Shanhu and his group moved warily, their wild eyes constantly scanning the gaps between the bones.

  "Be careful," whispered the woman with dreadlocks, Nara. "Among these bones, there are hunters hungry for the hunt of our flesh."

  Just as Nara finished her sentence, a shadow darted from behind a giant bone crack that resembled a pavilion pillar. The movement was so fast it left only a sharp whistle of wind. A six-legged creature with scaly gray skin, the size of a tiger but with double fangs like daggers, pounced toward Shuha, who was at the back of the group.