The System had polished its teleport like a whetstone to steel, but to keep planes from warping like ripples in a pond, it kept hard limits. It only fires once per plane, and it’s banned in city-worlds dry of Spirit Energy, like wells gone to dust. The landing point must be some place Nana Toki has stepped through herself, an anchor like a nail in wood, or the jump just dies. In short, it’s useful like a paper umbrella in a storm, so Nana treats it like a free town portal, a single-use talisman flicked home.
The glare thinned like melting frost, and when their eyes opened, the world had shifted like dunes in wind. Black stone walls rose on both sides like cliffs of night, and the road was sown with bones like a white thicket, man or beast no longer clear. The air carried an off smell, damp as rust and rot, and Nana Toki finally placed it like a bead on a string—the gorge where she’d first slipped in through a time rift, the Wildbeast Wasteland.
“Great. I’ve spun circles in this cursed place for nearly two weeks, like a moth in a jar, and got nothing but trouble.” Her gaze snagged on a rusty iron sword stabbed into a boulder like a withered banner. “How did I ever fancy that idiot Nesting Phoenix?” Now she had to scour the world for her and mop up her mess, like sweeping leaves in a storm—what a sin.
“...” Don’t ask this System. How would I know two snake-brained lunatics would pair up like reeds in the same wind?
Standing beside her like a shadow, the System rolled its eyes like marbles. “Anyway, the Immortal Realm hounds are shaken off like dust from a sleeve. As long as Blue Magpie doesn’t flare Spirit Energy like a beacon, your trail stays dim. Use this stretch in the Wildbeast Wasteland to cultivate, like roots drinking deep.”
“I get that. But we’ve still got a big, very immediate problem staring at us.” Nana’s dead-fish eyes were ponds gone still as she pivoted with her System. “What do we do with this gigantic Heavenswallow Serpent?”
“...”
Under their layered stares like twin blades, the Heavenswallow Serpent understood that a body like a hill draws every arrow. With a flicker of mind like a pebble dropping in water, the massive serpent blurred and reshaped into a willowy woman draped in teal, a robe like river moss.
“How about now?” She stood calm before Nana, half a head taller, like a cypress over a sapling.
Her skin was pale as new snow, her eyes a clear spring, with a thin frost of indifference like dawn on glass; she carried an effortless grace like a crane on ice. In the cool lift of chin, an alluring tilt flashed like a fox’s tail—one glance snagged the eye like a hook, and looking away felt like pulling barbs. No wonder, Nana thought; a thousand-year snake demon keeps the serpent’s beauty even in human skin, like moonlight under scales. It made her wonder what the Azure Crow Fairy—Blue Magpie’s former life—had looked like, a face lost like a song in wind.
Nana went a little blank at Blue Magpie’s profile, clean as a crescent moon, then caught the serpent’s gaze like a thrown pebble and reeled her eyes back. “Mm… overall, not bad.” She smoothed her tone like a hand over silk. “Then I’ll ask the senior to keep an eye on us for the next stretch.”
Her free carry, the System, couldn’t fight anymore, but it was fine; now she had the Heavenswallow Serpent, a mountain at her back like a warm wall. Old wounds still marked the serpent like scars in bark, but Void Refinement is Void Refinement; even as a silent mascot at her side, it set her nerves at ease like a lamp in fog. So this is what it feels like to have a powerhouse near—Nana loved it like fire on cold hands. She recommended, in her heart, a few more contracted beasts just like the Heavenswallow Serpent.
However—
“...”
Dreams are fat as geese, reality is bones and wire. The Heavenswallow Serpent didn’t answer Nana; instead, she stepped behind Blue Magpie like a shadow finding its owner. “Apologies. I only look after my lady,” she said, voice cool as spring shade. “Your life or death… has nothing to do with me.”
“...” That’s discrimination. I object! Nana’s protest fluttered like a leaf, then fell.
She couldn’t really argue; a millennia-old beast is an ancient pine in a gale, and she was a mere Foundation Establishment sprout. Why would a being like that pledge heart and blade to her, if not for the leftover glow of the Azure Crow Fairy on Blue Magpie like moonlight on water? If the serpent wouldn’t guard her, so be it; she’d just grind harder like a millstone. As long as Blue Magpie was safe under a Void Refinement umbrella, Nana could breathe like a chest unbound.
They rested in the gorge until breaths steadied like coals dimming, and when everyone’s state was seven or eight parts restored, Nana rose and turned toward the exit like a needle seeking north. Nearly two weeks had slipped by like sand through fingers; even Boundless Peak’s dogs couldn’t squat here forever like stones.
The four of them walked two by two toward the mouth, footsteps steady as a metronome. Beyond the canyon, emerald mountains and silvered greens spread like a rolling sea, denser and wider than the forest at the entrance, a primeval sweep like a page never touched.
“Stepping in here—is this finally the true Wildbeast Wasteland?” Her breath feathered in the green like mist.
They had gone less than a hundred meters when distant roars rolled like drum thunder—bear and tiger, and a chorus of beasts Nana couldn’t name, voices like bronze jars struck rough. “Looks like plenty of disciples training nearby,” she said, one brow lifting like a drawn bow.
She didn’t seek them out; she led her three companions deeper like a stream picking the lowest path. She remembered the Wasteland opened to more than the Heavenly Ascent Sect; disciples from all directions had poured in like migrating birds. She didn’t have time to herd that flock; her purpose was a single line drawn in sand—stop the Protagonist Lord from getting the Immortal Phoenix Flame Grass and the Holy Fruit of Illusory Feathers. Whether she got them herself was smoke on water; as long as he didn’t, it was enough. As for other sects, she wouldn’t kick a hornet’s nest unless someone stung first.
“Where are you going?” The Heavenswallow Serpent’s voice drifted like wind through pines. A survivor of the Chaos of the Three Realms, she knew that pushing deeper was walking toward old snares like roots under leaves. “We’re near a danger zone. Go any farther, and you may hit ancient arrays, prickly as briars.”
It wasn’t that she couldn’t cut those arrays, but with wounds in her body like cracks in ice, a misstep into the wrong net would hold her like tar, slow and merciless. Better to cultivate than bleed hours into barren ground.
“Ancient arrays are a small thing,” Nana said, calm as a stone in a stream. “There are many ways to crack a knot like this. I’m looking for a hidden Tempering Pool.”
She’d done her homework like maps drawn in margin ink. Rumor said the Wasteland hid a natural pool where every drop weighed like the fifth or sixth layer of Foundation Establishment, a hammer of water for flesh and bone. Nana wanted to find it before the Immortal Phoenix Flame Grass and the Holy Fruit of Illusory Feathers ripened, so once those matters were settled she could dive straight into training like iron into quench.
They moved with pauses, like hunters and hares, and soon reached the central edge of the Wasteland, a seam in the land like a scar. With the Heavenswallow Serpent walking with them like a stormcloud, the lurking beasts stayed in brush and shadow; they had a seventh sense like birds before rain, and even when cultivators hid their power, the beasts tasted the pressure like iron on the tongue.
Thanks to that, their road held fewer thorns. But the central tracts were barren as a skull. Rivers lay dry like old bones, mountains had leached their colors like banners sun-bleached, and the horizon ran black-gray like ash across a page. In that collapse hung a breath of raw antiquity, a miasma that made the skin crawl like ants.
“Is this… demonic miasma?” Nana frowned, crouched, and lifted a pinch of black earth like cold soot, her voice a soft thread.
Strange. First, the Immortal Realm’s aura had brushed the mortal world like a stray breeze; now, demonic taint smeared the soil like ink. Was this one of the main battlefields of the Chaos of the Three Realms?
Seeking an answer, Nana glanced back at the Heavenswallow Serpent. The serpent’s ear twitched like a cat’s, and she only nodded, a pine bough weighed with snow. “It is one of the main fields. Innumerable Immortal and Demon cultivators fell here, like stars dropping from a torn sky. There are likely many remnant divine senses still drifting, like ghosts in fog. Do you still want to go in?”
