Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 867: A Strange Realm

Li Yu was completely still on the patch of glowing moss. He kept his breathing shallow and his eyes closed. He had traveled through unstable spatial tears before. During his previous journey through such a chaotic rift, he had experienced the terrifying dimensional rejection force but here he felt none. The universe possessed a natural immune system designed to eject foreign anomalies that tried to force their way into closed realms. It was a suffocating and agonizing pressure that constantly tried to crush an invader into nothingness or hurl them back into the void. Back then, he had barely been able to withstand it.

Now he was in the Law Integration realm and he was vastly stronger. His foundation was stronger. By all accounts, the rejection force should be exponentially more violent this time because a stronger anomaly disrupted the spatial fabric much more severely.

But the crushing weight never came. Li Yu uncurled his right fist and looked at the broken half token resting in his palm. It had somehow ended back in his hands.

The dark stone was glowing with a faint and rhythmic purple light. The carved turtle seemed to pulse with every beat of Li Yu's own heart. He extended a thin thread of his spiritual sense into the stone but found no answers from it.

Li Yu did not know the true nature of his journey however. He did not know that the chaotic plunge through swirling colors was actually a journey backward through the grand river of time. The pressure he had braced himself for was not a dimensional barrier but a temporal rejection force. The token was currently shielding him from the defense system of time itself. As far as Li Yu was concerned, he had simply been spat out into a wildly different realm.

He didn’t know it but the energy within the stone was slowly degrading. It was not a permanent solution. Eventually the token would run out of power and the river of time would notice the glaring anomaly walking across its surface. When that happened, the rejection force would return with a vengeance.

Before Li Yu did anything else, he needed to check on his important passenger. He had never traveled through such a violent rift while carrying another person’s soul before. The chaotic transition could have easily shattered a weakened spirit.

Li Yu crossed his legs and settled into a meditative posture on the glowing moss. He closed his eyes and projected his consciousness directly into his inner space. He manifested in the sky above his Ocean of Qi.

The space was completely undisturbed. The sky was clear and the spiritual waters were calm. It would seem the chaotic journey had not affected his internal space at all. Li Yu floated down on the replica island that Elysia had created to find here tending to the fields. She seemed perfectly fine and wasn’t even aware of the shift.

Li Yu let out a long breath of relief. He would have never forgiven himself if his sudden cosmic accident had harmed the Ancestor he was sworn to protect. An entire people would have died alongside her. Satisfied that his inner state was secure, Li Yu opened his eyes and returned his full attention to the physical realm.

He stood up and began to truly survey his new surroundings.

The forest was unlike anything he had ever seen. The sheer scale of the environment was utterly staggering. The canopy high above was so incredibly dense that it blocked out most of the sky, trapping the forest floor in a perpetual state of emerald twilight.

The air was incredibly humid and thick with the smell of rotting vegetation and rich wet earth. But what stood out the most was the ambient Qi.

In most realms Li Yu had visited, the spiritual energy of the world was relatively refined. It flowed through established leylines and felt crisp and clean in the lungs of a cultivator. The Qi in this isolated realm was different. It was heavy, chaotic and aggressively wild.

Breathing it in felt like inhaling hot water. It took a conscious effort from Li Yu to filter the Qi and refine it into something his body could safely use. Thankfully this was something that his body did naturally at all times so he was relatively unaffected by the foreign environment.

Li Yu began to walk. He did not know where he was going but staying in one place in an unknown wilderness was a guaranteed way to become prey. He activated a subtle stealth technique around his body to mask his scent and muffle his footsteps. Li Yu began to move like a ghost through the giant undergrowth.

For the first few hours the forest seemed relatively peaceful. He saw massive glowing insects buzzing around giant blooming flowers. He watched a vibrant blue lizard the size of a carriage scramble up the side of a colossal tree trunk.

But as the first day dragged on, the true nature of the realm revealed itself.

The ground suddenly shook violently. Li Yu leaped silently into the branches of a large fern and hid himself. A moment later, a terrifying beast crashed through the undergrowth. It resembled a massive wolf but it possessed six legs and a thick hide covered in jagged bone spikes.

The creature was easily at the Soul Formation level entirely based on its raw physical strength. It was not cultivating any specific techniques. It was just a predator fueled by the dense Qi of the forest. The spiked wolf sniffed the air aggressively and then sprinted away into the gloom hunting for blood.

Li Yu realized he was in a hostile environment. He continued his journey with extreme caution to avoid dangers. He avoided open clearings and stuck to the dense shadows of the massive roots.

When the emerald twilight finally faded into black darkness, Li Yu decided to set up camp. He found a hollowed out cavity near the base of a giant tree. He arranged a few simple arrays around the perimeter of the cavity using low grade spirit stones.

He sat down inside the dry hollow and pulled a meat skewer from his storage ring to cook. He ate quietly in the dark and listened to the terrifying symphony of the primal night. The sounds of the forest were deafening. He heard the agonizing shrieks of massive beasts being torn apart in the distance and would send out his spiritual sense to see what it was. He heard the heavy thud of colossal footsteps shaking the earth miles away. He heard the chaotic crackle of wild elemental Qi as predators fought over territory.

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It was a world governed by what seemed like the law of the jungle. The strong ate the weak and there was no room for negotiation or mercy. Li Yu spent the next seven days traveling through the endless forest.

It was a grueling and isolating experience. He did not see a single sign of civilization or any other types of life besides random beasts. There were no paved roads, no carved monuments and no ruined temples. There was only the endless expanse of giant trees and deadly predators.

On the third day, a massive rainstorm hit the forest. The drops of water falling from the canopy were the size of boulders. They crashed into the earth with explosive force and turned the forest floor into a raging river of mud. Li Yu had to use his water Qi to create a repelling shield just to avoid being crushed and soaked by the torrential downpour.

On the fifth day, he nearly walked into a patch of carnivorous vines that hung from the high branches like harmless green ropes. He tossed a heavy rock into the vines and watched in grim fascination as the plants whipped forward with blinding speed, wrapping the stone and crushing it into fine dust in a matter of seconds.

He survived by relying entirely on his vast combat experience and his stocked storage rings. He did not need to hunt or forage which allowed him to maintain a low profile. He observed the hunting patterns of the beasts and learned to recognize the subtle shifts in the Qi that preceded an attack.

By the end of the week he was covered in dirt and sweat but he was unharmed. He was beginning to understand the rhythm of this violent world. On the morning of the eighth day, the environment finally began to change.

The colossal sized trees slowly began to thin out. The thick canopy overhead fractured and allowed actual beams of bright golden sunlight to reach the forest floor. The suffocating humidity lessened and the Qi in the air grew slightly more stable.

Li Yu picked up his pace with the shift. He navigated through a dense thicket of tall ferns and finally stepped out of the oppressive shadows.

He emerged onto a wide rocky plateau. The view before him was breathtaking. A massive mountain range stretched across the horizon under a sky that featured two distinct glowing suns. Deep valleys carved through the stone and distant rivers sparkled in the dual sunlight.

He had finally made it to the edge of the forest.

Li Yu took a deep breath of the fresh air and stretched his arms. He felt a sense of relief as walking through that green forest for a week without seeing a single person had been incredibly taxing on his mind.

Before he could even decide which direction to travel, a sudden rush of wind hit the back of his neck. Li Yu did not turn around but his Law Integration senses flared instantly. He dropped into a low crouch just as a massive heavy net woven from thick glowing vines slammed onto the rocky ground exactly where he had been standing a fraction of a second earlier.

The sound of leathery wings snapping open echoed across the plateau. Five figures dropped from the sky and surrounded him in a perfect circle. They landed heavily on the rocks with loud thuds.

Li Yu slowly stood up and analyzed his ambushers.

They were humanoid in shape but they were entirely beast in nature. They stood over seven feet tall and their bodies were covered in thick overlapping scales that shimmered with a dull metallic crimson color. They possessed the fearsome heads of dragons with elongated snouts, sharp teeth and swept back horns. Large leathery wings were folded tightly against their broad backs. Their hands and feet ended in vicious curved claws that scraped against the stone.

They were dragon people.

They wore crude but highly effective armor crafted from metal and hardened leather. They each carried heavy spears. The five dragon people leveled their spears at Li Yu. Their golden reptilian eyes were narrowed in deep suspicion.

"Do not move, creature." The guard standing directly in front of Li Yu ordered.

The guard spoke in a harsh guttural language that sounded like grinding stones. Li Yu kept his hands visible and did not summon his aura. He wanted information on this place, not a fight.

"What is this thing?" Another guard asked. He tilted his dragon head to the side and sniffed the air loudly. "It has no scales. It has no fur. It has no feathers. It looks incredibly weak."

"It must be a prey animal that wandered out of the dark woods." A third guard chuckled. He prodded the air with his glass spear. "It smells strange. But meat is meat."

They were genuinely confused by his appearance. It was immediately clear to Li Yu that humans were either incredibly rare or completely nonexistent in this specific realm. They did not recognize his race at all. They just saw a soft, hairless creature walking out of a deadly forest and assumed he was food.

"I am not prey." Li Yu said calmly. The five dragon guards flinched in surprise. The fact that the soft flesh creature could speak their tongue rattled their confidence slightly. They tightened their grips on their spears but did not attack.

"Silence!" A booming voice echoed across the rocky plateau.

A sixth figure dropped from the sky and landed with ground shattering force just outside the circle of guards.

This dragon person was significantly larger than the others. His scales were not a bright metallic crimson but a deep and faded maroon covered in heavy white scars. One of his horns was broken off near the base and his leathery wings were tattered at the edges. He carried a massive broadsword resting casually on his broad shoulder.

He was clearly the leader of these people. The younger guards immediately parted to let their captain through. The old captain walked up to Li Yu and stared down at him. His golden eyes were sharp and highly intelligent. He did not look at Li Yu like a piece of meat. He looked at him like a complicated puzzle.

"Put your spears away." The captain ordered his men without looking away from Li Yu. "Fools. Do you really think a simple prey animal could survive walking out of the Labyrinth of Lost Scales alone?"

The young guards looked at the dark oppressive tree line of the forest behind Li Yu and then quickly lowered their weapons. The name of the forest clearly carried a heavy and terrifying reputation among their kind.

The captain leaned forward. He sniffed the air around Li Yu just like the younger guard had done but his reaction was vastly different.

"You do not smell like a beast." The captain rumbled. He narrowed his eyes. "But I am old enough to know better than these fledglings. I have traveled far and wide and seen many strange things in my long life. You are a human."

Li Yu remained silent and waited.

"Or." The captain continued, his voice dropping to a low dangerous growl. "You are an incredibly powerful ancient beast that has chosen to take a human form to mask your true strength. Either way, standing out here makes you suspicious. And that brings trouble to our territory."

The captain gripped his broadsword with both hands and rested the tip against the rocky ground.

"You are trespassing on the hunting grounds of the Crimson Scale Clan." The captain declared formally. "State your purpose human or we will treat you as an invading threat."