novelraw Chapter 1694 - 1693 - Unexpected
Chapter 1694 - 1693 - Unexpected
Lind had moved east in nearly a straight line but had to stop in the human occupied areas. It seemed the events at Kalder City had stirred up a hornet's nest. Patrols, and even raids, were ongoing.
He had not seen any of the other beasts, at least 5 more according to what the Shen had said, but he had seen signs of their movements.
Mostly, he had seen signs of remote settlement and what looked like studying for setting up simple arrays. They would not work on Earth but they must have assumed they had to try.
The scents were too faint for him to pick out what they were but at least one more dragon was present as an old blood stain remained in a rocky area of old Illinois.
Things had shifted so he could not be certain if it was an original place or a new one anymore.
He moved on and after about a solid week, he came to the misty curtain floating across the eastern lands.
A sudden thought came to him then.
The Divine Lands had been struck by tragedy. The Western Continent was destroyed. The Southern and Northern Continents had their weather disrupted and many places shifted due to that no doubt.
The Eastern Continent became the home of the Fiends. Such a coincidence was not ignored by him.
The fact the scale was so much smaller mystified him, though. The power of a Fiend, even a Heaven Realm, would wipe Earth from the universe without any difficulty.
Hell, a Sky Realm could shrug off nuclear weapons of any race.
Lind had seen the kind of power they could dish out and take, radiation damage was nothing to them.
Yet, that was on the assumption elemental Qi existed. Thus far, only his body had defied the limits of the trial. He assumed it was only his harmony at first but he began to notice other differences.
His body seemed to be the same as it was in the Divine Lands! That should have been impossible!
The only other difference he could think of was that his soul was a native! Could being from Earth allow some kind of loophole in the restrictions too?
He had no way to test that at the moment but he did have a way to test the path forward. He took in a deep breath before stepping into it.
A feeling of warm moisture washed over him but little else. He kept moving and eventually felt his body flare with harmonic Qi.
Something had tried to invade him!
He slowed and monitored his condition but it was fine. He proceeded as the sunlight vanished and only his bestial instincts could guide him.
He should be heading into complete devastation but he froze as he suddenly came upon a town. Not one of the mix of old and modern he had seen thus far but a town with gas stations, bars, and even a small stripmall!
He saw no sign to identify it but he also had no idea if it was real.
Something more, there were lights! It was honest to goodness electricity!
The state of it was not great, but it was functional! He could see some of the cheaply made things, like the strip mall, had started to collapse but the older homes and buildings endured.
He moved carefully but there was no one around. No smells, no sound, not a thing at all!
"The rest of the continent is in some kind of ruins but the supposed point of impact is intact?" Lind sneered at the confirmation that everything was a pack of lies. The destruction was real but anything he had been told about how it happened was crap.
Who had made the lies was up for debate as no one was actually lying to him when they spoke. They believed them! It also told him that anyone who knew the truth was either dead or had been conveniently unavailable.
He also frowned at the 2 beasts' story. They said they encountered things in the fog but no mention of civilization? They could have entered at a different point and been in a forest or something, but the east was fairly dense with cities and such.
Farther south, maybe? There were a lot more open spaces that way but he had not specified it with them.
Where was the power coming from too? Lind doubted decades of neglect would magically keep lights working.
He froze then. Had it been decades? The damage was relatively new for certain but if everything else was lies, could it go even deeper? He knew what year it did not happen but that was it!
The questions piled on but he moved up the street and simply evaluated the decay. It took him sometime before he came upon a car with visible rust and other damage not explained by impacts or anything else but the passage of time.
His Forger experience confirmed finally that roughly 18 years had passed for the wear on the vehicle but that left one last mystery. There was zero sign of any seasonal damage.
It was just the constant passage of time! The seasons had not stopped outside, of that he was certain.
Why had they stopped inside the dark fog?
A thought occurred and he attempted to conjure a tiny wisp of Origin Flame. The expected restrictions did not stop him!
The bright spark lit up the street and a distorted roar came from his left.
He looked up to see what looked like an amorphous shape quickly moving away from him. The roar made his hair stand on end.
There was nothing natural about that thing!
He quickly extinguished the flame and did a more direct test. He tried to fly via manipulation of the world but it failed. Dragon flight, however, was working once more!
How was that possible?!
Lind closed his eyes and gently extended his aura. The fog retreated from him to at least 5 meters all around him before it stopped.
So the restrictions were lighter but not removed. Sure enough, his speed was abysmal compared to his current physical ability.
Still, it was safer in his mind to fly for a bit. The strain on his stamina was nothing.
He flew up and kept an eye out for any dense areas but aside from the first, there was nothing.
"So, they had not lied. There are things in the fog." He activated his Talents next and nearly fell out of the sky.
Qi! There was Qi everywhere!
It was not faint either but at least at the level of a mortal realm! A World Realm could be cultivated inside the fog!
His Touch did feedback it was strange. It was not as robust as it should be. It felt slimy even but he could not pin down why.
He retracted them both as nothing new was revealed and landed on the roof of a bank. At least, he thought it was a bank as it had the drive thru collapsed in the back of it.
He tried Laws and Daos but they did not respond at all. He frowned as it was odd enough to have a space where he could use some of his cultivation but it completely sealed Laws and Daos that should be everywhere regardless.
He then tested resonance. It took the better part of 3 days but he finally smiled.
"So that is it. Time and Space are being manipulated here. Someone punched a hole in reality." That was his best guess. If a battle in a higher realm had gone spectacularly bad, it might breach the void to other places.
Yet, it should have healed over time. Especially with such weak worlds like Earth, Heaven and Earth should have forcibly ejected any invading force quickly. There still would have been damage but it would have long started to recover.
"Invasion into a lower world then, but why?" Lind just kept piling up questions but neither explained the strange creature. What was it? Why had it fled from his Origin Flame as if it had seen the end of the world?
Lind shut everything down and simply sat on the roof to wait. He needed some answers and before wandering blinding the dark fog, he needed the beasts.
Days passed but he sensed nothing. His instincts were calm and the darkened world reminded him of nothing so much as a dead wasteland like one might see in a horror movie.
Still, the scrape of stone alerted him but he was shocked he sensed nothing else. A flick of his fingers and Origin Flames encircled the roof.
Three dark shapes screamed in terror but they had nowhere to flee. Lind saw them clearly as nothing more than fog but then his eyes went wide.
He had cycled quickly through Laws and Daos before his harmony responded! Humans! The creatures were humans!
The unearthly sounds now turned to him and they extended broad limbs to strike him but the instant they touched him, they screamed anew.
Emerald flames lit up their bodies!
The shifting shapes shrank until emaciated figures were revealed. Rotting clothes fell away and the last gasp of life left them before they turned to dust.
Lind knew what they were! Thralls! They were thralls!
They had been used like soldiers and barely kept alive by their Fiend master! His rage was all encompassing at that moment but he restrained himself. The power he could use would wipe them out but it would destroy the world even in the strange place he was in.
He extinguished the flames and flew off. He had to find answers!