The Shattered Star Wasteland lived up to its name.
As far as the eye could see, the land was a dark, somber crimson, as though soaked in the blood of countless Gods and Devils. Jagged, grotesque rocks stabbed viciously toward the gray sky like the bones of giant beasts. The wreckage of shattered stars lay everywhere, the largest as massive as mountains, even the smallest the size of houses. Scattered across the wasteland, their surfaces still bore blackened scorch marks and terrifying impact craters. The thin, violent spiritual energy carried an unshakable aura of destruction.
This had once been one of the main battlefields where the Ye Clan had quelled a rebellion spanning several star domains. Countless mighty cultivators had fallen here, stars had been blasted apart, and even the Great Dao had been ground away. Countless ages later, the place remained utterly devoid of life. Only the whimpering wind threaded through the ruined walls, sounding like the wails of departed souls.
Ye Chen and his companions landed on a relatively flat stretch of ground.
"Good grief, this place is still as desolate as ever." Shi Meng stamped his foot, feeling the ground beneath him, as hard as divine iron, and grinned. "It's been almost a hundred years since we last came here with the young master to pick up Star Cores for fun, hasn't it?"
The "Star Cores" he spoke of were the most concentrated essence left behind after a star's destruction, containing tremendous energy. In the outside world, they were top-grade materials for Artifact Refining and setting up formations. Here, however, they were no different from roadside pebbles, casually picked up back then and used to skip across water.
"Yes, time really does fly." Ye Ling gently raised her hand, an emerald halo flowing from her fingertips as she tried to sense the vitality here. Before long, however, she knitted her delicate brows and shook her head. "Apart from a few kinds of Demon Moss that feed on Killing Intent, I can barely sense any signs of life."
Mo Yu's figure flickered like a phantom among several enormous pieces of stellar wreckage before he returned silently to the group. "Space is relatively stable within a hundred li," he said quietly. "There are only a few minor unstable nodes, nothing too threatening. The energy fluctuations toward Mount Annihilation... are extremely chaotic, but a powerful sealing force has isolated them."
Ye Chen nodded and looked toward the far end of the wasteland. There, heaven and earth seemed shrouded behind a gray curtain, with distorted light and traces of torn space faintly visible. That was the direction of Mount Annihilation. Both the response of the Primordial Chaos Purple Qi within him and the faint coolness coming from the Grand Void Concealment Pearl against his chest pointed clearly toward it.
"As planned, we're 'passing through' to gather some 'Meteoric Iron Essence' and 'Blood Fiend Crystals,'" Ye Chen said calmly, offering an excuse prepared long beforehand. Both materials could indeed be found here and served as supplementary ingredients for certain special artifacts. Though they were hardly precious to the Ye Clan, they were enough to conceal the group's movements.
"Yes, young master!" Everyone understood and immediately spread out, pretending to search earnestly for materials.
Ye Yun held two fingers together like a sword. A sharp streak of Sword Qi swept across a house-sized piece of stellar wreckage, precisely shaving off a sheet of metal gleaming dark silver: Meteoric Iron Essence. His movements were practiced; clearly, this was not his first time doing such a thing.
Shi Meng simply swung his fist into a dark red crystal rich with Blood Fiend Qi. With a thunderous crash, the crystal shattered, exposing a purer core that he grabbed in one hand.
Ye Ling and the girl skilled in formations wandered seemingly at random nearby, secretly laying down small warning and interference wards as a precaution.
Ye Chen did not join them. He stood with his hands behind his back, chaotic halos flowing through his Dual Pupils as his gaze pierced layer upon layer of spatial barriers. Once again, he "looked" at the transparent rift at the heart of Mount Annihilation.
With the distance reduced, his perception grew clearer.
The rift resembled a shallow scar branded onto the skin of space. It was not motionless, but slowly "breathed" in a steady rhythm. With every "breath," it released a fluctuation more ancient and more voidlike, utterly at odds with the surrounding aura of destruction and deathly stillness.
"Young master." Emperor Xuanwu's voice sounded beside Ye Chen's ear, grave and solemn. "That rift... makes me deeply uneasy. It doesn't seem to belong to any spatial phenomenon we know. The fluctuations it gives off even make the emperor-level laws within me feel faintly... sluggish."
Even an Immortal Emperor feels his laws grow sluggish? Ye Chen's heart tightened slightly. This lent further weight to his suspicions. This rift was anything but ordinary.
"Uncle Xuan, can you tell where it leads?" Ye Chen asked through voice transmission.
Emperor Xuanwu fell silent for a moment, then shook his head. "I can't tell. I tried probing it with my divine sense, but it was like a clay ox sinking into the sea. I couldn't sense anything on the other side. It's as though... pure 'nothingness' lies beyond it, an absolute void where even the Great Dao doesn't exist. Yet it differs from the absolute void we know. It seems... 'alive.'"
A living rift? Ye Chen's brows lifted slightly.
Just then, Ye Xiaoshan, who had been following at the back of the group and repeatedly studying the nameless fragment of a page in his hand, gave a soft sound of surprise.
"What is it, Xiaoshan?" Ye Chen withdrew his gaze and looked at him.
Ye Xiaoshan scratched his head and said uncertainly, "Young master, this page fragment... seems, seems a tiny bit warmer than before?"
"Warmer?" Ye Chen walked over and took the fragment. It remained icy cold to the touch, with no change in temperature. Still, he trusted that Ye Xiaoshan would not speak without grounds. The boy possessed an extraordinary sensitivity to strange objects like this.
"It isn't actually giving off heat," Ye Xiaoshan said, struggling to find the words. "It's a kind of... feeling. As though it's moved closer to something and produced some sort of... resonance?"
Resonance?
Something stirred in Ye Chen's heart, and he looked toward Mount Annihilation again. That was it. The closer they drew to the rift, the stronger the strange feeling from this page fragment became. Could it be a token? A key?
He tried feeding an exceedingly faint thread of Primordial Chaos Purple Qi into the fragment. This time, it did not remain unresponsive. The twisted, incomprehensible symbols on its surface flashed briefly with a dim light, so quickly that it almost seemed an illusion.
At the same time, Ye Chen distinctly sensed the transparent rift deep within Mount Annihilation quicken its "breathing" ever so slightly!
They really are connected!
A keen light flashed in Ye Chen's eyes. He was now all but certain that the rift's appearance was no accidental natural phenomenon. It had a direct causal connection to this page fragment—or rather, to him, Ye Chen!
"Young master, movement!" Mo Yu, who was keeping watch, suddenly called out in a low voice, his figure instantly melting into the shadows.
Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and looked warily toward Mount Annihilation.
At the edge of the region shrouded by the gray curtain, space rippled like water. Several bedraggled figures stumbled out, bearing obvious wounds and traces of erosion from the Annihilation Wind. Judging by their clothing, they were the Ye Clan guards assigned to the current watch at Mount Annihilation.
After rushing out, they immediately sat cross-legged and circulated their energy to heal their injuries, traces of lingering fear still on their faces.
"They're from the patrol," Ye Yun said quietly. "It seems the situation inside is more unstable than we imagined."
Ye Chen's gaze flickered. Even the guards responsible for watching the place could be injured; that alone showed how dangerous it was inside. Yet the greater the danger, the stronger his desire to explore became.
He glanced at the icy, Nameless Fragment in his hand, then looked toward the rift that only he could clearly perceive.
"Get ready," Ye Chen told everyone through voice transmission, his voice carrying unquestionable resolve. "We'll find an opportunity to get closer."
Risk and opportunity went hand in hand. This rift, which made even an Immortal Emperor feel "uneasy," might be the very key to breaking his thousand-year life of boredom. He had a powerful premonition that beyond it, an entirely new, unknown world awaited him.
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