The ash fluttering through the air around the charred wasteland was much denser close to the ground, it almost resembled a blizzard as Liang Chen made his way around the area. His shoes had turned to ash mere seconds after he set foot on the scorching land, the soles of his bare feet stinging slightly thanks to the intense heat. The smell of sulfur was so thick that it was almost suffocating, it was especially bad around the violet-leaved trees that dotted the area, their strange leaves seemed to radiate the stench from every inch.
Compared to the trees, the azure cracks bubbling with magma seemed far less vicious and were instead quite a bit stranger. Liang Chen could see the magma bubbling within the cracks, he had seen some of the leaves falling into the magma and turning into white ash, so by all rights the magma should be terrifyingly hot. But as he got close to the cracks, it wasn't an intense heat that he felt but rather a dreadful chill, it was as if the thing flowing within the cracks was liquid ice.
Liang Chen even tore out a piece of the earth and tossed it into a nearby crack to make sure, but sure enough, the earth turned to ash that joined the rest of the surrounding blizzard. Liang Chen curiously peered over the edge of the closest crack, observing the deep blue magma for a bit longer. But he was forced to retreat after one minute, the horrific chill that the magma unleashed was freezing his hair and even starting to seep into his soul so he couldn't keep staying by the crack. The chill started to fade again once Liang Chen retreated a certain distance from the crack, one of his fingers rubbing Yumao's chin as he muttered to himself.
"What a curious place...Eh? People?"
Liang Chen's eyebrows ticked up in surprise just as he finished his mutter, his gaze turning southward. A group of about six people just entered his range of detection, the electricity flowing through their nerves resonating with his own law of lightning. His brows furrowed slightly when the people entered his range, his senses were a tad bit repressed since he had only just entered this major universe so he didn't notice the group until they got within seven kilometers of him.
It wasn't that they got so close to him that caused his brows to furrow, it was the fact that they were walking around in a dangerous place like this. This wasn't exactly the best place for someone to go around and sightsee, they had likely come here with a goal in mind, whether it be training or resource gathering. For all he knew, this place might even be under the control of whatever organization they were a part of, his appearance here would definitely arouse heavy suspicion if that were the case. Of course, all of these were just what-if's that flashed through Liang Chen's mind as he planned his next step, but even so, his instincts told him to avoid encountering the group of people for now.
His instincts, after he got them under control at least, had never steered him wrong before so he didn't choose to go against them in this instance. He turned away from the group and stopped moving at his previously leisure pace, increasing his speed as much as he could and leaving the area like a bolt of lightning.
He had to alter his direction multiple times as he ran so as to avoid the cracks covering the wasteland, he also had to divert a bit of his focus to control some wind that could blow away the surrounding blizzard of ash. But moving at a faster pace, of course, meant that he could traverse the wasteland quicker to find an exit, as well as civilization.
Speed was one of Liang Chen's fortes, and although his long-distance dash was worse than his short-term speed, he was still able to reach speeds that others at his cultivation level would find mind-boggling, crossing nearly 50 meters every second. But even so, he still had to run for 12 hours before he finally spotted signs of civilization, heaving a deep sigh of relief and exhaustion when he spotted the first road and noticed that the reddish-black earth was starting to turn normal again.
Liang Chen stopped running once the earth had taken on a brown hue and he spotted a small hut standing in the distance. He placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward, greedily gulping in air and starting to massage his thighs and shins. This was the first time Liang Chen had run for so long, and the end-result left his mind utterly boggled. He knew how fast he could run, and he knew for how long he had just been running, so he knew just how vast a distance he had covered.
A bit over 2000 kilometers, that was how far he had to run before he finally spotted an exit to the scorched wasteland. And for all he knew, the place where he arrived hadn't even been the center of the wasteland, he might have actually arrived rather close to the edge. If just a single wasteland was this large, he failed to even guess at how large the entire planet might be, much less how large the entire universe was. From the looks of it, getting to the Heaven and Hell Dominion might take him an unexpected amount of time.
He spent a bit of time catching his breath and tossed Yumao some food, he had been stuck on top of Liang Chen's head for the full 12 hours of running, forced to bite onto Liang Chen's hair to stabilize himself. Liang Chen took out some water and food from his interspatial ring and took care of his own needs, finally heading for the small hut after resting for almost half an hour.
He had already sensed that the hut only contained a single person, the sole living being within the surrounding seven kilometers. Liang Chen walked up to the hut, which was actually missing the entire side of the hut that should be facing the road and thus looked more like a shack upon closer inspection.
The inside of the hut was separated into two parts, a left and a right. The left part contained a three-meter wide array built atop a crystal plate split into several smaller circles that one could freely spin, and the right side contained a round table and two chairs. There was currently a somewhat aged man sitting on one of the chairs, his slightly drooping eyebrows and his ear-length brown hair starting to lose their color. A simple ceramic pot releasing the faint fragrance of rose tea was placed on the table in front of him, an empty bowl placed next to it.
The man was holding another one of the light blue bowls, slowly sipping tea from it, his dark brown robe slightly stained from the various drops he had spilled over time. The man noticed Liang Chen the moment he walked around the side of the hut and arrived in front of the open part of it, his hand slowly lowering and placing the bowl back on the table. He turned his head slightly, his neck producing a slight clacking and clicking sound that was more reminiscent of metal grinding against metal than it was of a neck turning.
His eyes were both completely white without the slightest trace of any color, he didn't even have any pupils. But even so, when those empty eyes landed on him, Liang Chen could feel a gaze roam over his entire body. The man stood up from his seated position and started walking towards the array plate, each step sounding strangely heavy while also looking somewhat stiff and stilted.
His movements caused Liang Chen's eyes to narrow slightly, they were simply too strange to look natural. He focused his senses on the old man, who didn't bother with Liang Chen and simply started to spin the parts of the array plate. His other laws weren't too suited for it, but his law of death and his law of lightning allowed him to somewhat peer into the man, one tracing the man's signs of life while the other traced the electricity running through his body.
And it was thanks to these two laws that he made a rather startling discovery, the man in front of him wasn't alive at all, he didn't even have a normal body. He had no signs of life coming from his body, nor did he have a body made of flesh and blood. The electricity running through him didn't pass through veins and flesh, it passed through metal and crystal, powering hundreds of tiny arrays that all connected themselves to a crystal filled with electricity and Qi where his heart should be. The man had been a puppet all along, but he was so well-made that Liang Chen only discovered it after inspecting the man closer.
Liang Chen's gaze turned to the pot of tea on the table, giving what remained in one of the bowls a quick inspection. It smelled like normal tea, but looking at it closer it was actually filled with a surprising amount of energy. It could be used as a type of cultivation resource, but in this case, it seemed to be used to power the electrical crystal that served as the core of this puppet.
The puppet finished fiddling with the array while Liang Chen was inspecting the tea, the runes covering the plate lighting up with a soft white light. The puppet stepped away from the array once it finished the task, sitting down in its seat and picking up the cup of tea again without even looking at Liang Chen.
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"Sand's Journey city, that's as far as the Dark Dawn will send you, the rest of the way you must traverse yourself, show your personality and carve your own path."
Liang Chen's thoughts started spinning for a bit as he tried to figure out just who this puppet was talking about. And when it clicked, his pupils couldn't help but contract a little. He had yet to meet anyone calling themselves Dark Dawn, but he had once heard about a person who carried the Dark Dawn moniker. The Dark Dawn Lord, one of the people who could stand shoulder to shoulder even with the Bloodwind Emperor and the Human Emperor. Liang Chen had never met this Dark Dawn Lord before, but looking at how Chang Yun had learned of him through the Bloodwind Emperor and the Nine Star Demon God, Liang Chen could easily guess that this was how the Dark Dawn Lord had heard about him.
Liang Chen wasn't quite sure what he should make of his luck, it could be considered both great and terrible. He had contacted or had some brushes with quite a few great rulers, the Nine Star Demon God, the Human Emperor, the Bloodwind Emperor, he'd even inherited the technique of the Ocean God Xiang Hong. Of the rulers he knew about, it was only the Void King and the Heaven Splitting King that he had yet to brush into. Encountering so many great beings could be both a blessing and a curse, it was a walk in the park for any one of them to kill him after all, there was no telling what might set them off.
Liang Chen's gaze wandered between the puppet and the active array for a bit, his hand unconsciously raising and giving Yumao's head a few rubs. Yumao affectionately rubbed against Liang Chen's hand, letting out a soft hissing sound in response.
"Yeah, forward's the only path we can take."
Liang Chen stepped into the array once he finished his mutter, space around him starting to twist slightly, covering his vision. The twisting only lasted for a few seconds before it vanished, the cover in front of his vision disappearing to reveal that he had appeared in a hut identical to the one he had just been in. He could see a large city constructed out of what appeared to be light yellow rock standing a few tens of kilometers in the distance so he knew that this wasn't the same hut he had just been in. The puppet sitting at the table didn't raise its head when Liang Chen arrived, simply stretching out its arm to point at the square city as it spoke.
"All grains of sand leave the ocean and journey to become great mountains, take your first step and show how far away you can get from the ocean."
The puppet returned to drinking its tea after speaking, Liang Chen stepping down from the plate and starting his trek towards the city. There was a road connecting the hut and the city, a vast plain covered in green grass and yellow sunflowers stretching out on both sides of the road. But strangely enough, the plain was rolling slightly, as if the earth beneath the grass was actually water that was blown around by the wind.
Liang Chen touched the earth at the side of the road, but while it did indeed feel a bit soft, it was from as watery as he originally expected. Using a finger to scoop out some of the earth also showed that it looked just like normal earth, it was just that it carried with it a slight trace of the law of water. Liang Chen placed down the small bit of earth and continued heading for the city, he was already starting to see quite a few people entering and leaving the city from all around.
As he got closer to the city he saw that the buildings weren't made from light yellow stone, they were actually all constructed with sand. The grains of sand stuck to each other and were packed so densely that Liang Chen only managed to notice the peculiarity with the buildings when he was a few hundred meters away from the city. He easily blended in with another group of people that were heading for the city, they all seemed to be farmers judging from their clothing and the sacks of wheat and vegetables that they were either carrying in their hands or on the wagons they brought along.
There were no guards or the like around the city, there wasn't even a wall or fence to keep people out, you could enter from all sides. But there seemed to be some unwritten rules that the people here were following, the group he was blending in with split up right in front of the city. Those carrying somewhat finer items and wearing better clothing headed to the left of the city, where the buildings were a bit bigger and had more space between each other. The rest, on the other hand, those carrying the grain and wearing somewhat muddy clothing after their long hours of work, headed for the right of the city, where the houses were much smaller and built more closely together. From the looks of it, not even a major universe could escape the divide between the rich and the poor.
Liang Chen followed the group that went to the right, it didn't matter which side he entered the city from so he figured he might as well follow this group all the way to the market where they would sell their wares. After all, he had more people to care for now so he would need to buy things like grains and vegetables to plant, maybe even cows and chickens that he could keep within the orb in his interspatial ring.
The others around him picked up their pace a little once they entered the somewhat narrow earthen streets of the city, lowering their heads slightly as they tried to pass through the area as quickly as possible. Liang Chen allowed his gaze to drift around the area as he walked, confirming his thoughts that this was likely the poor district of the city. The people he saw were all clad in patched robes, most of them thin and pale with slightly sunken in eyes.
Some of them were clearly non-cultivators who didn't have the aptitude or opportunity to cultivate, but he also saw the occasional cripple who was missing a limb or two or even had a deep indent where their dantian should be. They had likely been crippled in a battle at some point, he could still feel a very faint presence of Qi within them.
Yumao also swept the surroundings with his gaze, albeit he only did it with a slight trace of curiosity about his surroundings. Liang Chen had only spent a total of five minutes within the city when the faint sound of something violently knocking on wood reached his ears. He focused his senses on the knocking sound, just barely able to pick up a few words mixed in with the sound.
"...Ay? We've already been patient and waited for so long, do you really think we'll continue to wait without results? The five-month period you begged for is over, hand him over and we'll scratch the debt, he should be able to just barely cover it."
Liang Chen stopped in his tracks, turning his head slightly towards the direction of the sound. He saw that the people closest to the sound were all hurrying away from the area, lowering their heads slightly, a trace of pity flashing past their pupils. Liang Chen raised his hand again and stroked Yumao's head, a mutter escaping his lips.
"No rest for the wicked, huh? Alright, let's go."
Yumao let out a hiss of excitement, his eyes lighting up as Liang Chen broke away from the group he was following and headed for the sound of the violent knocking.