The Jambu Gate opened, and Xiang Yuan stepped through. The world of utter devastation before his eyes plunged him into silence.
The sky was dim, shrouded in heavy gray clouds. Sunlight pierced the overcast veil, refracting a murky, dusky red glow. The light seemed like tangible dust; every breath felt as though countless tiny blades were slicing through his lungs.
The air was poisonous. It scraped his throat!
The earth was parched and cracked, enormous spiderweb fissures covering the surface like ugly scars. They formed abyssal chasms, splitting cities apart and swallowing collapsed skyscrapers.
The streets of broken walls and ruined buildings were filled with rubble and ash. When fierce winds swept through, they rolled the dust into grayish-red whirlwinds, revealing withered bones buried beneath the sand.
The rivers had dried up, their beds exposed. Murky stagnant water, like rust, gave off a rotten stench.
As far as the eye could see, there was not the slightest trace of green. It was like a wasteland after nuclear annihilation—silent, dead, and steeped in despair.
Xiang Yuan rode the wind upward, but after rising one meter off the ground, he failed and dropped back down. He gave a soft sound of surprise, sensing that the laws of heaven and earth in this realm were incomparably suppressive, shrouded in a fog that prevented him from seeing their true nature.
The laws of heaven and earth in this world were extremely unfriendly toward cultivators. Those in the Innate Realm could not borrow the force of heaven and earth, and even the protective Gang Qi of the Foundation Establishment Realm could not be used.
By rights, where there was a nerf, there should be compensation. But this world went its own way, endlessly nerfing, nerfing people to death, without offering the slightest bit in return.