"I said all that needed to be said. The entrance is far from here, so everyone will be taken directly to the location by the formation. You will have exactly seven days, then your red disciple tablets will bring you back," the Fey announced, and everyone took a deep breath.
Hundreds of elders around nodded together, causing millions of spatial runes to appear and dance in the air, intertwining and forming a formation. All disciples were marked by the spatial runes, and within minutes, everything around them began to glow. A spatial distortion engulfed them, transporting them directly to their destination.
It took just a few seconds for the whale’s group to feel the distortion disperse. They found themselves in a world as dark as pitch, in the center of a vast desert covered with dunes towering like mountains. In every direction, the dunes stretched to the horizon, creating a seemingly endless maze of sand, making the landscape oppressive.
The eternal darkness was dense and impenetrable, with no source of light on the horizon. The sky was a veil of darkness where stars did not shine and the moon never rose. A thick Yin enveloped the skies, like a cloak sucking all life and warmth.
Despite being cultivators, the temperature was icy cold and the air dry. Everyone, not having felt anything like this in many years, was stunned. The cold was biting, penetrating to the bone, and the dryness of the air made each breath seem like an effort. The suffocating atmosphere weighed on everyone who dared to enter this domain.
’Hm... it’s as if the Yin is suppressed and sealed up high,’ Alm reflected, sensing it clearly. ’Only the laws of the earth seem to exist all around... there’s no trace of any other law or primordial energy. By the nature of the formation of the other sealed world, traces of primordial power should be somewhere; this place has definitely been altered.’
The entire whale’s group was together; indeed, all the disciples were close in the same region. As soon as they arrived, the elder disciples immediately turned and disappeared in one direction. The newcomers just carefully felt out the environment.
In this place, those who did not master the laws of the earth would have to rely solely on the laws of their inner runes. It was a hostile environment, and they had to adapt quickly in order to survive. They were used to using the laws of the environment to mitigate energy costs, but here they would have to bear everything and could exhaust themselves very quickly.
"Let’s go," the whale waved, and everyone moved.
Alm and Bruno advanced and used their bloodline; in this environment, they could sense through the earth farther than with their soul. It took only a few seconds to find an experienced disciple approaching something with battle fluctuations. They had to see this firsthand.
Everyone quickly moved behind him. They leaped to the top of a dune and observed a distant point. They all followed his gaze and saw a figure with a stone body, entirely made of rock, with a face that seemed carved. None of them had seen anything like it before, not even Kaiyka, who had lived practically three lives and came from another universe, knew of this race.
That Stone Golem stood still behind a mountain as if meditating. A male Fey with an aura of winds around him approached slowly, wielding a dagger.
That Fey made no sound or emitted fluctuations; to ordinary cultivators, he could only be seen with the eyes. But the golem looked literally like a stone without any aura or cultivation. However, when the Fey was a few meters away from him, everyone saw a pair of yellow eyes open on his stone face.
Suddenly, a powerful aura stirred the laws of the world.
CRACK!
The earth split open on both sides of that Fey, and then it was as if two palms clapped at an impossibly fast speed, crushing him like a mosquito. The Fey turned into a pulp of flesh and blood.
In the next moment, the Stone Golem closed its eyes and everything returned to normal. Everyone swallowed hard. They clearly felt the power of that golem; it was at the peak of mortal cultivation and, like them, on the brink of entering the divine realms. But now... it emitted no kind of power, as if that had never existed.
Ruri turned to the whale and saw their completely impassive face. But just by looking into their eyes, she noticed the inner astonishment of those two.
"Are these Stone Golems strange?" She asked softly.
The whale sighed. "Strange? I’d say it’s impossible for them to exist in this way..."
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The whale explained to everyone lightly. While it’s a huge advantage to maintain a stone body, to cultivate successfully, Stone Golems had to transform their stone bodies into flesh because flesh is the best vessel in this world to store Qi and advance through the realms. The more parts of their body that turn into flesh, the more powerful this race becomes and the greater their potential.
A Stone Golem near the divine realms should already have a complete flesh body. It wasn’t because they were in the Queen’s universe that they could find that normal; it simply was impossible for such a powerful Stone Golem to exist.
"Are they like natural races made of plants?" Kaiyka asked, genuinely curious. "I’ve never seen anyone of this race before, only read legends and thought they didn’t really exist."
The whale explained something that shocked her. Stone Golems are as common as humanoid races across universes, practically existing everywhere. They are born in environments rich in the laws of the earth and Yang, which was already strange for them to exist in this sealed world. But pure Stone Golems only gain a hint of intelligence and ego; their bodies are small stones buried deep in the planet’s crust.
Out of every billion Stone Golems, one manages to develop enough to sense Qi, accumulate enough to generate a proto-body, and thus interact with the world. All the rest perish before they can "live" and interact with the world.
"They are a common race, yet at the same time very rare to see in the world. However, the Golems here seem to defy logic. All their cultivation is concentrated in the core they call the Earth’s Heart, not in the body," the whale spoke thoughtfully, staring at the seemingly unconscious Golem in the distance. "When he used his power, I felt something similar to Thea’s, but he has a real cultivation that everyone can perceive, while Thea doesn’t have power measured in realms."
Thea, beside Rehvka, widened her robotic eyes, thinking that this could be a great opportunity for her to better understand herself.
After the whale and Kaiyka sensed the first Golem, even with them seemingly unconscious, they could easily track the others. Alm and Bruno weren’t as adept at using divine soul, but exceptionally in this world, thanks to the laws of the earth, they were as efficient as her in finding them.
The two didn’t need to move. Sitting back-to-back atop that dune, they focused together in different directions. It took them two hours to sense the entire ten kilometers of the first region.
"Sir," Kaiyka spoke softly.
"I saw it too," the whale replied and explained to everyone.
Not all Stone Golems were meditating. Some were walking, seeming to search for something... when they felt the disciples approaching, they simply diverted their path. As soon as the disciples found them, they attacked.
Each Golem clearly had a personality. Some tried to flee, others counterattacked with swift strikes, much like what they had seen. But one thing was certain: none of them attacked the disciples, always avoiding direct confrontation and reacting only when attacked.
’There’s no trace of primordial power here, nor have we found any other treasures in this place. Being nice now won’t help. We told Mistie to let the demoness invade and attack; within at most two days, the invasion should begin. We have to kill all the Golems and absorb everything to cultivate ourselves and make everyone advance, or we’ll really put ourselves in mortal danger,’ Alm spoke dryly to Bruno.
Bruno retorted, ’Fuck that, I’m not accepting killing them. There must be another way. There are too many things wrong here; we should first go to the center of the formation.’
’In sealed worlds, treasures are created with primordial power. Clearly, all the primordial power inside here was taken by someone powerful, who created the laws of the earth, suppressed the Yin in the heavens, and must be involved with these Golems. We won’t gain anything by going to the formation; we’ll just waste time. If we don’t start clearing everything now, we won’t have time to cultivate ourselves,’ Alm spoke, trying to convince Bruno as logically and calmly as possible. Bruno knew all this, but he didn’t want to accept this harsh reality.
It was almost certain that thousands or even millions of demons would attack, and they would be at the peak of the Divine Origin Realm. And it was practically obvious that there would be countless Empyreans with awakened manifestations among them. Almost all their allies weren’t even in the divine realms. Even if they could fight, with thousands and thousands of demons attacking and the unpredictable influence of manifestations, the situation was complex.
"They just want to live, and the sect is killing them?" Kisala spoke anxiously beside Ambry, interrupting their mental discussion.
The whale looked into their eyes and saw genuine pain and pure innocence in both. Alm sighed heavily; he couldn’t disappoint these children, couldn’t just say they were going to kill them now. Bruno took over and spoke lightly.
"Indeed. But, there are many unanswered questions. Were they looking for something, or were they meditating? We have to find out, but asking doesn’t seem like a good idea; after all, we are the oppressors who kill them. They’ll flee or retaliate when we approach."
At that moment, Rehvka spoke up. "Master, I can attract the Yin from the heavens into my body with my manifestation. I can conceal us all; let’s follow them stealthily."
Alm was somewhat surprised. The Yin in the heavens seemed suppressed by something, and even he could only access it with his tattoo at near-maximum power. Yet Rehvka had the same capability with her manifestation. The power of an Empyrean was something very abnormal, and the manifestation was something quite basic and common among them.
"Great, we need to head to the central formation of this world. Let’s do this stealthily while investigating the Golems," Bruno said with clear satisfaction at his disciple’s power, and everyone nodded.