(Day 1)
This was a vast cultivation world.
Since endless ages ago, countless living beings had absorbed the Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth, cultivating themselves in pursuit of immortality.
In a corner of this brand-new world...
A rectangular frame built from blocks of obsidian suddenly appeared out of thin air upon the land. Within it was a layer of white, translucent light, continuously breathing out white particles into the surroundings.
Suddenly! A Block Person rushed out of the light screen!
Accompanied by the familiar yet unfamiliar white distortion of a Hell Gate, a prisoner who had been trapped in that blocky pixel world for years stepped into a brand-new world!
Passing through that unprecedented white Hell Gate, Fang Zheng, a Block Person with a crude, vacant face, trembled with his imprisoned mortal mind. Thrilled beyond measure, he turned his head to inspect this new world.
He looked at the bloodstained earth beneath his feet, dyed blackish-brown.
This place was not made of blocks and pixels. Like Earth, it possessed detailed textures of every kind of matter.
He spoke with some difficulty. "I... I..."
He looked up. "Hm?"
Fang Zheng hesitated. "This... the art style here seems a little off?"
His intense excitement gradually cooled, making Fang Zheng realize that something was wrong.
Looking up, he saw a majestic Mighty Pass towering on the horizon.
What an immense existence it was.
It was so immense that it seemed as though all the stars, planets, matter, and energy of an entire universe had been condensed together to forge it.
As far as the eye could see, something resembling a city wall stood between heaven and earth. Its left side had no end, its right side was equally boundless, and when he raised his head, the space above was just as deep and infinite.
White and rainbow-colored lights permeated the gray mist, shrouding the sky and the ends of the horizon. Only that incomparably massive Mighty Pass stood unwavering.
Fang Zheng could only see a grand city wall, riddled with enormous scars that looked like blade cuts, axe marks, fist imprints, and palm prints, stretching across some unimaginably distant horizon, along with gates that were equally astonishingly huge.
"What? What kind of place is this? Why is it so huge?"
"And what are those points of light?"
Fang Zheng could see groups of glowing specks floating densely across the walls of that grand city, dotting them like pearls.
Puzzled, he took out a telescope from his Inventory and enlarged his field of vision as much as possible.
"Hmm?!"
Fang Zheng stared carefully once more.
"Those are... stars?!"
The tiny points floating on the wall of that enormous city—a city so vast it defied ordinary physics and whose full extent could not be seen—looked strikingly like stars when magnified through the telescope.
Fang Zheng even saw something resembling a solar corona erupting from one point of light.
"Roar!"
"Chirp!"
Before Fang Zheng could observe or think further, strange beast roars and bird cries arrived from the distant horizon.
Fang Zheng was still marveling. "If those really are stars, that city is ridiculously absurd!"
"Could this be a Xianxia World?"
Suddenly, atop the distant Mighty Pass, amid the beast roars and bird cries, a tiny white streak of light and a minuscule crimson spark descended from a wall of unknowable height, racing and flying toward him across the astonishingly vast land.
Before Fang Zheng could think, much less calculate their speed, a Flame Divine Sparrow as huge as an asteroid and a Snow White Giant Tiger even larger than it, its body seemingly carved from neutron-star matter, had already rushed before him.
Their speed was simply too terrifying. Fang Zheng could not react at all.
"Roar!"
The Snow White Giant Tiger pounced at him like a white supergiant star.
Though Fang Zheng could not understand why he could still see the tiger when it seemed to have already exceeded the speed of light, in only a few seconds, the white tiger rapidly closed in on him from the city wall.
Its body expanded endlessly in his vision, becoming a white canopy that covered heaven and earth.
Only when it was almost upon him, as the white sky pressed down, could Fang Zheng see that even the short hairs between its paw pads—the tips of those hairs—were countless times larger than Mount Everest on Earth.
Unable to react, Fang Zheng's blocky pixel body, standing in the Void, was slapped down by the Snow White Giant Tiger's claw.
Theoretically, no matter how fast an enormous object moved, when viewed from a microscopic perspective, it would appear extremely slow because of relative velocity.
But the tiger claw tore through space at a horrifying speed. It was wholly unconstrained by its supergiant-star-like size and moved at the frequency of an ordinary tiger.
Thus, it unleashed a terrifying speed that theoretically far surpassed light itself, reaching an incalculable multiple of it!
Fang Zheng had no idea how many times that bizarre giant tiger had struck him with its golden claws.
Nor did he know how many times those tiger fangs—whose tips alone pressed down like continents—had bitten and torn at him.
Fang Zheng only knew that when he finally reacted, all he could see was a brilliant golden shockwave filling his entire vision.
"Boom boom boom!!!"
Thunderous roars echoed in Fang Zheng's ears, yet they brought no pain whatsoever to his Block Person body. Nor could they drown out the other faint sounds he sensed.
Those tiger-claw strikes and fang bites, which theoretically exceeded light speed by an unknown number of times and could shatter spacetime in an instant, destroying several superclusters, failed to inflict even the slightest pain or injury upon the Block Person standing blankly at the entrance to the Immortal Ascension Road.
His invincible body, immortal and indestructible in Creative Mode, seemed to work just as well in this new world with its apparent Xianxia style.
Within those seemingly endless brilliant golden shockwaves, accompanied by an equally resounding bird cry, the flaming bird—far smaller than the giant tiger yet still as massive as the moon—also launched an attack.
Blood-red, viscous liquid flames erupted at an equally incalculable, terrifying speed from its beak, which was as huge as two continents splitting apart.
Like the eruption of a Quasar, yet surpassing it by far more than several orders of magnitude, the crimson torrent of light washed over and scorched Fang Zheng, who was enveloped by the brilliant golden shockwaves.
Years ago, after Fang Zheng had first suspected that he had transmigrated, he had already estimated his abilities through various methods.
He knew very clearly that the refresh rate of his Block Person body and Minecraft's three dimensions, like the tablet he used to play Minecraft, was capped at only 120 frames per second.
Back in Minecraft's Block World, everything operated at that refresh rate. Thus, aside from limiting the maximum speed at which Fang Zheng could place blocks, it had caused no other issues.
But in this brand-new world with its apparent Xianxia style, the flaming bird and giant white tiger that had suddenly rushed out from the celestial city moved far too fast, vastly exceeding Fang Zheng's visual refresh rate.
Therefore, when the flaming bird and white giant tiger formally attacked, Fang Zheng could not see them at all. Not even a single frame existed in his vision.
Only after 8.33 milliseconds had passed and the first frame refreshed in Fang Zheng's vision did he slowly begin to react.
I've been attacked!
Enveloped by intertwined golden shockwaves and blood-red divine flames, Fang Zheng was still dazed.
"Space... has been shattered?"
He could clearly see that the space around him, under the ravages of those attacks, no longer seemed intangible. Instead, it resembled crumpled silk, folding into numerous prism-like fractures.
Amid the ceaseless roar, Fang Zheng could also hear a low scraping sound like metal grinding together. Dense golden-red and pitch-black patterns emerged in the space around his Block Person body like a spiderweb.
The golden-red patterns resembled chains, firmly piercing into the black patterns, binding, sealing, and reinforcing them to prevent their spread.
Fang Zheng stared in astonishment. He could see that the brightness where he stood was terrifyingly intense, yet his vision was completely unaffected. Unlike a human, he was not blinded by excessive light, nor were other details obscured.
He could see with utter clarity that within the viscous shockwaves, brighter blood-red and brilliant golden patterns formed vast numbers of strange abstract symbols. Like birds in flight and beasts in combat, they twisted and changed constantly like living things as they wrapped around him.
Runes containing Supreme Dao Laws intertwined into Law Chains. While forcibly suppressing spacetime within this area, they made space itself increasingly viscous, like gradually solidifying divine iron or molten gemstone.
At this moment, the Vermilion Bird and White Tiger Law Phantoms of the Immortal Ascension Road's Mighty Pass seemed truly alive after suppressing the audacious ant that had invaded the Immortal Ascension Road checkpoint.
The White Tiger, as enormous as a supergiant star like Betelgeuse, lay leisurely upon the land and licked its fur. The moon-sized Vermilion Bird stood upon a single strand of White Tiger fur like a bacterium, grooming its feathers.
As True Immortals who had guarded the Mighty Pass suppressing the Immortal Realm in ancient times, they had left behind a Law Phantom engraved upon the Immortal Realm Barrier in that distant past.
Though the Immortal Realm had long since shattered amid war, the Mighty Pass that protected the Immortal Realm Barrier had been worn away, and the guarding True Immortals had been slain, their Law Phantoms still guarded the Immortal Realm's Mighty Pass, which itself was now only a Law Phantom, just as they had when alive. They continued defending against invaders beyond the shattered barrier fragments of the Immortal Realm.
Upon this boundless continent phantom, stretching several light-years across and likewise constructed from laws rather than matter, the many majestic Primordial Divine Mountain phantoms standing upon the earth had been their creations in life.
Beneath every Primordial Divine Mountain, there had once been a powerful being or strange entity too difficult to kill directly, suppressed to death.
"What the hell are these things?"
"Were those the Vermilion Bird and White Tiger commonly found in Xianxia novels? Are there Azure Dragon and Black Tortoise too?"
Fang Zheng, the blocky pixel person who had just transmigrated again only to be inexplicably suppressed, was completely baffled.
He turned and looked at the white Hell Gate light screen that should have been beside him.
In Creative Mode, Fang Zheng could clearly sense that the bizarrely huge white tiger and flaming bird had just attacked him, yet he had still taken no damage and suffered no displacement.
So if that was the case, then the white Hell Gate standing beside him—a gate likewise made of obsidian blocks from the Minecraft world—should not have been displaced either, right?
"And if that white Hell Gate is gone, it probably means it was blasted to pieces by that attack, right?"
"I can't return to the Minecraft world?"
Fang Zheng did not care. If he could not return, then so be it.
He did not want to go back to that damn place made only of blocky pixels anyway!
Looking at his Inventory, Fang Zheng muttered, "Anyway, it seems I still have Creative Mode abilities, so it doesn't matter."
"No matter how bad this place is, it's still better than that damn Minecraft world."
Fang Zheng was excited. "If this is some fantasy cultivation world, I should be able to communicate with its people."
"I'm sick to death of villagers who only grunt and those dim-witted animals!"
After muttering neurotically to himself for a while, Fang Zheng shifted his attention back. "Right, this thing is probably some kind of formation restriction, isn't it?"
"What if I'm really trapped and can't get out?"
"In a Xianxia World, people get sealed away for thousands or tens of thousands of years at the drop of a hat. That would be worse than death!"
Fang Zheng's mind had originally stagnated on the verge of collapse. Only the stimulus from that unfamiliar white Hell Gate had restored a little of his reason, and he had no desire to be sealed away for thousands or tens of thousands of years the moment he arrived in this colorful Xianxia World.
He looked at the fully solidified mass beside him, woven from brilliant golden and blood-red crystals and Rune Chains, then tried using Creative Mode's aerial movement.
However, just like in the Minecraft world, Flight Mode could not move whenever it was blocked by any block other than liquid.
Fang Zheng tried raising his hand again. Even under the restraints of that solidified gemstone-like substance, his blocky arm moved as it had when buried in sand in the Minecraft world—it could pass straight through without collision, entirely unaffected by the restraint.
As his blocky hand swung at high speed, this place of suppression, where countless Law Chains writhed, effortlessly shattered open a block-sized gap exactly the same size as a Minecraft block.
Seeing the tiny blocky gemstone fragments vanish into thin air as the block broke apart, Fang Zheng's anxiety receded, and he felt barely a little more at ease.
The Block Person body he had despised so much in the Minecraft world now brought Fang Zheng an indescribable sense of security in this new world.
He pondered. "Does Creative Mode's ability to destroy all blocks still exist here as well?"
"Then I'm relieved."
"Roar!"
"Chirp!"
As Fang Zheng rapidly chipped one block-sized gap after another into the solidified gemstone, countless runes that had previously slowed to a crawl and flowed only gradually began spinning frantically again within the endless golden-red gemstone mountain range that imprisoned him. Outside, the Vermilion Bird's cry and White Tiger's roar became increasingly deafening.
The Vermilion Bird divine flames, capable of burning the Void and incinerating the Myriad Daos, fused in an instant with the White Tiger's baleful aura, which radiated endless slaughter and destruction like a divine blade of heavenly punishment.
Under the interweaving and entanglement of Dao Law divine chains, the White Tiger and Vermilion Bird phantoms outside, which had been about to return to the city, continuously poured their Divine Power Dao Laws, radiating Extreme Dao Pressure, into the mountain range.
In an instant, all the Law Chains moving through the golden-red gemstone mountain range erupted and ran wild.
Those divine Law Chains continuously arranged, combined, and transformed, actually piecing together an incomplete Four Symbols Killing Array.
Like levers and gears forming a gigantic hydraulic press, the array compressed the full power of the White Tiger and Vermilion Bird Law Phantoms layer by layer, condensing it into a terrifying offensive capable of suppressing and killing an expert at the Peak of Human Dao!
Then, that horrifying power charged toward Fang Zheng, the Block Person who was continuously digging out a passage, seeking to grind him completely into nothing with the Vermilion Bird divine flames and White Tiger Slaughter Power, leaving not the slightest trace behind!
Before you continue