Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 788 - 787 - Strange World

It was a strange sensation.  From what others had told him, once someone was sufficiently strong enough, an ascension pool was much like rising to the surface in a pool of water.

Natural buoyancy was the closest he had gotten to it.  The reality was his aura would surround him and the next realm would pull him into it.

It was the theory at least, but the connection he had made after his tribulation did not exactly work that way.

It was more like he had to fumble in the dark for a way up but once he found it, he had to carefully hold on as he climbed or he would fall back down!

Emerald light was flowing all around him and cascading like tendrils along fine lines of Qi.  He was essentially climbing very fast until he broke through some kind of membrane.

He only knew of it because he was suddenly being dragged back down!  Why was that happening?

He was then struggling through a feeling of mud more than anything but his emerald Qi sliced through it like a hot knife through butter.

Time became meaningless but it was at that moment that the true danger of that warning came home.  Any other cultivator that was not a 6 elemental and a Divine bloodline that came with massive stamina reserves, would die at that point.

They would simply exhaust their Qi.

Lind, on the other hand, used more muscle power to accelerate his movement and his harmony was able to extract dregs of Qi to be refined of all types.  It was a bitterly slow process but he could do it.

He quickly sent a transmission and hoped it got through as he could only feel a muddled connection to Ethry at best.

Finally, after an unknown period of time, blazing sunlight blinded him as he was unceremoniously spit out on to dead grass.

The yellowed grass was all he could see before exhaustion dropped him.  He had been focused on only rising so any other issue was suppressed.

Now all his body's demands and constantly drained dantian screamed for Qi and rest.  He was about to oblige when the pressure tension in his body screamed at him for attention!

There was hardly any Qi in the air!  It was far below what an Immortal would need to keep Qi inside!

It was a very familiar feeling from when he landed in the Barren Realm.  The pain was far higher but thanks to being exhausted of Qi, he was not doing too badly.

His body was recovering fine due to his blood and flesh being so much more powerful.  Food, sun, and rest were all he would need and he had plenty of it.

Still, he could only crawl after a bit of time under the sun.  Normally, a sunny day would be enjoyable even in a parched field but the air was wrong.

The grass and dirt were wrong too.

It was all too weak!  He felt like he was back in the mortal realms.  The lower mortal realms to be clear.

While a small pocket or artificially created space might exist, his physical senses told him the breeze came from a strange place.  It was dead in a different way but he could not quite put it into words.

His vision saw nothing but yellow grass barely moving in the breeze but it was strange.  It was not dry, just dead.  It should be dry, yet it was still damp to his touch like it was struggling to live.

"The plants need higher density Qi to thrive the same as me.  So what is going on?"  His voice sounded raspy but he did not want to risk damaging his ring.

[Master, the many resources inside are safe.  Despite the strange status around us, I feel no strain.]  Haro added to the mystery.  Like him, he should be feeling a strain on his structure to be in such a thin Qi area.

He had to push it aside as he cast around for salvation and found it.  It was easily over 100 kilometers away, but it was a spot of green in the sea of yellow.  He would take it!

Compared to his ascension, it was a walk, well crawl, in the park.  His body felt so damned heavy without Qi!  He also instinctively felt becoming a dragon would be worse for him.

It was all of a sudden when the strain lifted and he was in a brush filled area of life!  It was green but only just barely.  The density of Qi was more acceptable but only enough to feel less pain.

He could not recover so easily.  It still gave him leeway to stand up and stretch a bit.  He then surveyed the strange landscape.

Behind him was the sea of yellowed grass and he could tell Qi was actually getting stronger very slowly.  It was likely due to the ascension pool being reconnected, but it would take millions of years at that speed.

He could see several more green areas with low brush at random intervals.  It was like a natural change between flatlands and mountains.

It was not always stark but gradual.  In the current case, he was in a more dense Qi area.  It was like the density acted as a natural barrier but it was not the ascension pool that was the source.

He could not find a source, actually, which annoyed him but his aura was useless at the moment.

He had to rely on his physical eyes to see better plant life almost randomly scattered about but getting thicker to the north.  Now that he saw the sun setting to the west, assuming it was west, he had orientation to go by.

Sighing, he forced his body to move but felt safe to at least have some water and food.  It was only at that moment he froze.

No water.  He had yet to even catch a whiff of it!

How were the plants thriving without even small rivers or creeks?  Storms brought some rain but the air felt far too dry to ever have it.

He had yet to see a cloud as well.

There were no beasts or insects either!  He moved on as fast as he could but eventually night fell to reveal another surprise.

The moon was not alone in the sky but they barely seemed to glow.  Normal planetary physics were not at work from what he could tell in the cultivation worlds.  From what he could tell, it was all Qi.

The moon in the Heaven Realm land was a clear indication as it balanced the powerful yang of the sun with yin, but here it was different.  He saw 6 moons of varying sizes and colors but they were all muted.

He also thought they looked damaged of all things.  The largest was the darkness moon that only his eyes could pick out but he saw traces of demonic Qi around it too for shadow.

It was interesting but he had to keep moving.

It was a month later after thousands of kilometers that a fresh smell finally entered his nose and the Qi density rose enough to match the Heaven Realm.

He could finally use elixirs to recover without worry about his Qi exploding from within.  He also could finally hear life around him.  A brook or creek was nearby and the buzz of insects were clear with beasts but it was still wrong.

The strongest aura he felt was at the World Realm.

The density was more than high enough for Star or Moon Tiers but only World Realms.  Once he recovered enough he took true stock of his situation.

His aura had a strange shape when he could finally spread it out.  He simply could not sustain it in the thin areas and it took on a rather odd shape like a squid or simply many peaks and valleys in all horizontal directions.

Up, however, was the clearest.  Directly above his head was pure Qi and he finally understood.

"It is falling like rain from above but why not consistently?"  He spoke much more clearly yet did not push himself as he simply recovered.  His sliver drank in Qi like a sponge and his Laws shimmered in every facet.

It was only then he felt what was wrong, truly wrong.  There were hardly any Laws!

According to all records, Law Traces could be found in most things in the Celestial Fields.  Some areas were much better or focused, but it was ubiquitous for Immortals to be able to accelerate their cultivation in the current realm.

Yet, he found nothing.  There was not even a single spark of a Law anywhere!

He narrowed his aura as finely as he could but it did not matter.  There was nothing around him at all.

"It is like the world was reborn and started over."  He was about to give up when his eyes snapped directly south.  His aura was distorted by the dead zone he had left behind but there was still a path around he could follow.

It was massive but it was just more of the same.  He suddenly lost all connection to his Qi after about 1000 kilometers.  It was not like the thin areas where it could not be sustained and dispersed.

It died.  He focused in that direction until he found a direct path he could speed down.  Compared to his previous speed he was a blur but a new shock awaited him at the end.

His eyes found a curtain of Qi falling from the sky but beyond it was still easily seen.  He at first thought it was desert but it was more.  It was stone dead.  No Qi at all!

The purely white sand was empty of all Qi as far as he could tell.  His own Talents simply ceased to work past the curtain.

He summoned an herb carefully preserved from his ring before tossing it through the curtain.  He did not dare to use his Qi directly but it went through easily.

The instant it crossed the curtain, the herb vaporized into nothing!

"I stand corrected, it all died completely.  There was nothing but the Cataclysm and it has slowly recovered."  He looked up and knew he found the source of the return of life.  He did not know why it fell at all but he could build a simple skyship if the density rules applied like the mortal realms.

It was a project for another time as he had to keep mapping out the strange new world he was in.  His first priority was to make a base of operations but he needed to see if the current living areas were static or shifting before settling down.  He would continue to follow the signs of life and hoped to get a gauge for how long they had existed.

Hopefully, he could find clues to what happened but he suspected the answers lay in that cataclysmic zone he just found.  Only time would tell.