Lin Xiao circled around the sky-reaching wind pillar, descending thousands of kilometers, and after traversing forty to fifty floating islands, he finally discovered traces of humans on a large floating island spanning over a thousand square kilometers.
However, these were simply indigenous humans. There were several hundred thousand humans on the floating island, developing a fairly impressive civilization, and had already begun to master the power of magic, with huge floating airships traveling between the different islands.
Centered around this large floating island, within a radius of a thousand kilometers, twenty of the nearly one hundred floating islands showed traces of indigenous human activity, similar to colonization. In total, they made up about two million humans - the most populous of the many races Lin Xiao had seen on the hundreds of floating islands.
Whenever there are different races, there will naturally be wars over living territory, and although the various races were small in numbers, their battles were still earnest. Humans, relying on floating airships to travel and attack between islands, were considered one of the dominant forces among the myriad islands.
Lin Xiao watched with great interest for a long time, as the humans living on these islands had not discovered his presence.
Although there was a very powerful being hidden within the storm pillar, there were no powerful creatures on the surrounding islands, and no True God-level being was seen.
This did not mean there were no strong beings in this space; the time flow in this space was so stable, it would definitely attract many outsiders lost in the Chaos Territory to settle here.
The prerequisite was that they could find this world alive.
After leaving a mark on one of the floating lands near the storm pillar, Lin Xiao left this area and flew away from the storm pillar, wanting to see the situation of the other sky-reaching storm pillars in this world.
However, as he moved away from this storm pillar and its surrounding floating lands, he discovered that the farther from the storm pillar, the more chaotic the void time became, gradually transitioning to the chaotic time state of other worlds outside this one.
Clearly, stability was limited to the region around the sky-reaching storm pillar. The farther from the pillar, the weaker the light wave effect, until it was gone.
No wonder the races on these floating islands were only active within a radius of about a thousand kilometers around the storm pillar and did not venture beyond this range.
With the lifespan of mortals spanning just a few decades, once they left this stable area, if the time flow varied too greatly, they could age and die in minutes.
Of course, this had no effect on Lin Xiao who, ignoring the impact, dived headfirst into the void and soon disappeared without a trace.
There were also some floating lands in the sky-reaching storm pillar that floated in the void, but without the unknown power of the storm pillar, the time flow here was as chaotic as in other worlds. The creatures living here went through life cycles incredibly quickly, maturing in an extremely short time from birth.
Lin Xiao roamed through this place of no heaven above and no earth below, occasionally seeing floating islands in the void and sometimes spotting flying creatures wandering through the void across the islands.
After an indeterminate time, having traversed perhaps a distance of millions of kilometers - which would have encompassed even the largest of planes - he still had not encountered a second sky-reaching storm pillar. If it weren’t for the faint sightings of other storm pillars piercing the heavens at the Vault of Heaven, he might have thought this world contained only one.
One day, he saw a sizeable floating island from afar. Before getting closer, he noticed several huge shadows in the wind belts at the island’s edges, approaching from afar.
At first, he thought they were some large monsters entering the island, but as he drew closer, he saw they were four huge airships over a hundred meters in length, fitted with cannons, firing shells towards the floating island from a distance.
Soon, the island also launched a counter-attack, but it was only with crossbow arrows. Although powerful, many arrows missed the mark and those that hit the large, metallic airships were mostly deflected. Even direct hits did not necessarily penetrate.
The airships quickly crushed the defenses at the edge of the island and burst through the wind layer into the interior.
Viewing this with interest, Lin Xiao followed and saw that the four large airships had entered the periphery of the island. There was a vast open space which appeared to be a town acting as a port. It had already been bombarded and breached by the cannons. Numerous fully-armed soldiers, resembling octopus men, directly jumped from the nearly touching airships into the town and began fighting with the similarly octopus-like beings inside.
At the same time, a striking castle was located in the interior of this floating island spanning twenty to thirty square kilometers, surrounded by many cultivated fields and farms. The floating island was like an independent kingdom, and now around three hundred octopus men were reinforcing towards the port.
The octopus men at the port were clearly no match for the invaders, with a noticeable gap in weaponry and average combat power. Especially when the invaders seemed to sense the approaching enemy reinforcements, the largest airship in the center lowered a gondola, and a group that was clearly leaders among the octopus men were let down. Among them, a tall octopus man raised a longsword with one of his tentacles, and an invisible wave spread out like lightning.
Feeling the influence, the invading octopus men seemed to become frenzied, and their combat power soared, overwhelming the already struggling defenders.
"Nightmare?"
Lin Xiao wasn’t particularly concerned with the outcome of the conflict between the other races, and stopped mainly out of curiosity, as it had been a long time since he had seen such a low-level battle.
However, he did not expect to find a surprise during this pause. When the octopus man leader used his skill, Lin Xiao sensed the aura of the Children of the Nightmare Divine Realm.
Indeed, the octopus man leader was not a Child of Nightmare, but the power it was wielding came from the Children of Nightmare.
Upon detecting the presence of a Child of Nightmare, Lin Xiao was instantly intrigued.
The invaders swiftly defeated the port’s defenders and faced the Octopus men in battle outside the city. In this massive battle involving over five hundred people, the leader of the invaders used his skills several times to change the tide of the battle. Lin Xiao paid close attention and confirmed that the power emanating during the skill deployment indeed came from a Child of Nightmare.
That is to say, there must be a Child of Nightmare behind this Octopus man, bestowing power upon him.
Then, Lin Xiao took action; a streak of white light descended from the sky into the crowd, and the Octopus man leader vanished.
With the leader suddenly gone, the invaders’ formation was thrown into disarray, their morale plummeted, and they were routed by a round of attacks from the defenders and scattered in escape.
Lin Xiao ignored these changes; he now sat cross-legged in the void, a hundred kilometers away from the floating island inhabited by Octopus people. The Octopus man lay unconscious in front of him.
This race might be called Octopus people, but in reality, they are not evolved from actual octopuses. They appear to be some sort of humanoid species, with limbs that are not arms but four muscular tentacles and hair composed of many small fleshy tendrils, giving them an octopus-like appearance.
These muscular limbs don’t have skeletons, only pure flesh, and are as flexible as octopus tentacles.
Lin Xiao had no intention of waiting for the creature to awaken to question it. Instead, he lightly touched the forehead of the Octopus man, and after a few seconds, a look of surprise crossed his face as he muttered to himself:
"Could it really be such a coincidence?"
Directly reading the soul memories of this Octopus man, he accessed all memories from its birth to now in one go and found the source of its Nightmare Power.
The result was both surprising and expected.
The one who had granted power to this Octopus man was indeed a Son of the Nightmare Divine Realm, but the origin of this power surprised him. Or more accurately, the origin of this Octopus man was surprising, because both the invading Octopus men and those they attacked were actually derived from a very powerful Son of Nightmare Divine Realm creature.
In plain terms, these Octopus people were a species derived from a Divine Realm creature of a Son of Nightmare Divine Realm; they are not natives of this world.
However, having been in this world for a very long time, and having propagated through countless generations, they are virtually indistinguishable from the indigenous population.
Although this Octopus man leader is also one of the Octopus people, he is different from his kin; he bears the mark of another Child of Nightmare and has the ability to harness the power of a Child of Nightmare, which are the skills he had just deployed. And such natives in this world have a unique name—Heroes!
"What a familiar name!"
Lin Xiao stood up and looked into the distance. From the memories of this Octopus man Hero, he learned that the vast area ahead was the territory of the Nightmare Empire, where countless Nightmare Lords ruled over different regions, each centered around a Sky-reaching Storm Pillar, and were constantly waging war to gain control over these pillars against rulers of other empires.
Although the status of this Octopus man Hero did not grant him knowledge of the other empires’ main constituents, his lord was merely an ordinary Child of Nightmare, not yet qualified to participate in the grand battles with other empires. Lin Xiao could guess that they were likely empires established by Descenders from other Divine Realm civilizations.
Meaning, within this unimaginably vast space, it was quite possible to encounter other Sons of the Human Divine Realm who had inadvertently become lost in the Chaos Territory.
Although it’s rare for Children of Divine Realm to enter the dangerous Chaos Territory, and most who do enter can’t survive the dangers of numerous worlds to find this one, there will always be some who, due to various accidents and good fortune, make it eventually.
With a single finger, Lin Xiao killed this Octopus man and reached towards the floating island over a hundred kilometers away.
The space above the floating island suddenly distorted; the large island was compressed and deformed by an invisible force and, with a ’bang’, broke apart into several large pieces, squeezing towards the center.
The Octopus people on the island had no time to react before dying in this destructive natural disaster, along with the collapsing island turning to mush and merging into a giant stone sphere.
At the exact moment he destroyed the floating island, deep within the Nightmare Empire, a will suddenly awoke within a Sky-reaching Storm Pillar, a faint thread of black light flashed out from within the pillar, shooting towards a particular direction.
By then, the stone sphere formed from the floating island had already been completely engulfed by distortion and quickly disappeared.
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Lin Xiao exhaled; a streak of brilliance flew out in front of him, transforming into a Jade Brand made of flowing light. A message appeared in his mind out of nowhere:
"Divine Realm Fragment: Fallen Child of Nightmare Divine Realm Fragment. Collect ten Divine Realm Fragments to form a complete Seed of Divine Realm!"
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