Xiong Jun spoke first, his voice gruff. "I'm not going. Who knows what hellhole is behind that portal?"
"Do you think I'm asking you? Xiong Jun makes one. Two more to go." Li Chen glanced at him.
Xiong Jun's eyes bulged, and his thick neck stiffened. He wanted to curse, but then remembered how pathetically he had lain on the ground earlier, unable to move. In the end, he gave a sullen snort and turned his face aside, accepting his fate.
Li Chen turned his gaze toward the other six. After a moment's thought, he said, "The other two will be Di Tian and the Scarlet King."
Di Tian's expression remained unchanged. He merely nodded slightly, standing with his hands behind his back, his golden eyes betraying no emotion.
The Scarlet King, however, turned all three heads at once, his six eyes widening. "Huh? Me too?"
"What, do you have an objection?" Li Chen glanced at him.
The Scarlet King's three heads looked at one another, then all shrank back at once. "No. No objections."
With that, he gave each of the three twelve End Portal Frames and Eyes of Ender.
"Once you're inside, build a portal like this and activate it. Then you can teleport back."
Di Tian, Xiong Jun, and the Scarlet King jumped into the portal in turn.
A brief wave of dizziness struck, as though someone had grabbed their heads and violently swung them around.
Then came a sensation of falling without end.
Di Tian's eyes snapped open.
An endless void surrounded him, faint purple light shimmering through the pitch-black darkness. There was neither sky nor ground in sight, only boundless darkness carrying him in a rapid plunge. The entire world was as deathly still as a silent tomb.
Something's wrong.
Di Tian instinctively mobilized his soul power to steady himself, but nothing happened. They continued to fall.
"Xiong Jun! Scarlet King!" Di Tian shouted in a deep voice.
Xiong Jun's furious roar came from beside him. "Di Tian! I can't fly! Was that human trying to kill us all along?"
On the other side, all three of the Scarlet King's heads spoke at once. "I can't fly either!"
Di Tian's brow furrowed deeply.
Li Chen had only said that The End was a dimension. He had never described what it was like inside.
Who could have imagined that The End was an expanse of nothingness where one fell forever?
Just then, a sudden surge of excruciating pain shot through him. His vitality was draining away.
Di Tian instinctively looked down, only to freeze. There wasn't a single wound on his body.
Yet the agony was too real to ignore. His vitality was draining rapidly, and he could distinctly feel himself growing weaker.
He enveloped his entire body in soul power, trying to resist it, but it did nothing.
"That damned human must be trying to get rid of us this way."
Xiong Jun's curses still echoed in his ears, but Di Tian's thoughts had already moved elsewhere. His golden dragon eyes rapidly scanned the deathly silent void.
His vitality continued to drain, a portion every half-breath. Though the rate wasn't particularly fast, the problem was that this fall seemed to have no bottom.
His soul power barrier was useless, and every defensive measure had failed. Xiong Jun's suspicion wasn't entirely unreasonable.
But if Li Chen truly wanted to kill them, there was no need for this extra step. He could have easily killed them while they were suppressed, when they couldn't even fight back.
If even someone strong enough to suppress them so easily needed them to explore this place, perhaps he wasn't using the opportunity to eliminate them. Perhaps The End was simply this dangerous.
Di Tian trusted his own judgment, but trust was one thing. Right now, surviving was what mattered most.
Di Tian closed his eyes, and the soul power inside him began surging wildly. Tearing open space in an unknown realm could easily cause spatial turbulence, but he had no other choice now.
He drew a deep breath and spread his perception as far as he could, trying to find the weakest point in this space.
Yet the farther he probed, the more alarmed he became.
The spatial barrier of The End was far, far sturdier than he had expected. Compared with the space of the Douluo Continent, the difference was like an iron plate versus a thin sheet of paper.
The gap was far greater than tenfold or even a hundredfold.
Di Tian's brow drew tighter and tighter. He had the strength for one strike, and one strike only.
If that strike failed to break through, he, Xiong Jun, and the Scarlet King would truly leave their lives in this endless void.
"Xiong Jun, Scarlet King, come closer."
Then he began burning his own soul power. He thrust both arms out, forming two enormous dragon claws that savagely tore at the space before him.
Spiderweb cracks appeared in the spatial barrier, but only a narrow split opened, barely three inches deep. It was nowhere near enough to create a passage.
Di Tian's dragon pupils abruptly contracted. It was even sturdier than he had expected, but he couldn't stop. He even began burning his vitality.
"BREAK-OPEN!!!"
Di Tian let out a deep dragon roar. The scales on his arms shattered inch by inch, and blood spattered.
The spiderweb cracks spread wildly, and the fissure continued to widen. He couldn't even ascertain what lay on the other side before dragging the two beasts through it.
The instant the three disappeared inside, the fissure slammed shut behind them.
What greeted their eyes was still a vast void and silent darkness.
But their vitality was no longer draining, which meant they had at least temporarily escaped that bizarre region. That counted as good news, perhaps.
After roughly another three minutes of free fall, the outline of grayish-white land flickered into view in the dim light, far, far below.
"Di Tian!" Xiong Jun's voice suddenly burst out beside him. "There's land! There's land down there!"
Di Tian was utterly drained now. Otherwise, he would have liked to give the excitable Xiong Jun a smack. Still, it at least allowed him to breathe a sigh of relief.
As they continued falling, the island gradually revealed itself in full. The entire island was made of pale yellow stone. By his estimate, it was no smaller than the Star Dou Great Forest.
Enormous black pillars rose from the ground around the island.
From a distance, those pillars hadn't seemed remarkable, but as they drew closer, Di Tian finally realized just how immense they were.
Each was as thick as a mountain and rose over a thousand feet, perhaps even higher. A dark purple sheen gleamed across their black surfaces, and their tops supported several crystals emitting faint purple light.
An enormous dragon-shaped figure lay coiled in the center of the island.
The aura that creature radiated was remarkably pure, blending seamlessly with the island.
As he continued descending, a feeling both profoundly familiar and strange washed over him, freezing his blood for an instant and making him want to submit to the enormous dragon on the island.
"How is this possible?!"
It was suppression rooted in bloodline and the very hierarchy of existence.
Xiong Jun and the Scarlet King beside him were no different. Before that enormous dragon, they couldn't summon even the slightest thought of resistance.
Before they could react, a flash of purple light swept past, and they appeared directly before the Ender Dragon. At such close range, merely the aura radiating from the dragon was enough.
Di Tian's entire body stiffened, unprecedented shock churning in his golden eyes. He opened his mouth, only to discover that no sound would leave his throat.
The Ender Dragon lowered its head to gaze down at the three, its dark purple slit pupils cold and impassive, as though examining three ants that had strayed into its territory.
Xiong Jun's legs trembled. All three of the Scarlet King's heads bowed low, and even their breathing became cautious.
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