A pale white haze veiled the void. Compared to elsewhere, the chaos over Wang North Boundary was brighter—and colder. At times the chaotic qi here carried snow and frost, a景 unique to Wang North Boundary. It lay very close to the North Extreme; upon reaching Lin North City this phenomenon grew even more pronounced. The North Extreme's chill bled into this region; even the Scar couldn't block all of it.
It was said a supreme treasure lay within the chaotic North Extreme, ceaselessly radiating cold that not only blanketed the entire North Extreme but, seeping through the Scar, affected parts of the Central Domain as well. Others said that long ago the Scar wasn't located here at all, and the area that is now Wang North Boundary once belonged to the North Extreme—so of course it would be cold. Both versions had their believers. Lin Moyu felt either could be true. If the North Extreme truly had such a treasure, it would certainly be in the hands of the North Extreme's Supreme.
Lin arrived at Wang North Boundary and saw many people from the Upper Domain. Though they were human like those of the Central Domain, there were marked differences: their hair was uniformly black—an utterly pure black that shone strikingly against the white. It wasn't like the hair of Central Domain humans; you could tell at a glance. Rumor had it their power was so pure that it even turned their hair that color.
Since the Upper Domain folk had come to Wang North Boundary, the Central Domain Alliance, per their mutual agreement, had ceded parts of Wang North Boundary and Lin North City to Upper Domain control. Aside from keeping some necessary personnel, most Central Domain people had withdrawn. One could say the place was now administered by the Upper Domain. This had happened many times before; the old hands of Wang North Boundary didn't find it strange—indeed, they were grateful. Without Upper Domain help holding the line, their own burden would be heavy and many would die.
No sooner had Lin stepped out of the teleport array than someone waiting outside hurried up to him. "Greetings, Elder Lin. I'm Che Yi. I've been here specifically awaiting you. I'll escort you to Lin North City."
Che Yi had received a message from Mu Tianze and had been waiting for days.
"Many thanks for the trouble," Lin said. "I was delayed a few days in Wang East Boundary."
"The matter at Wang East Boundary has already spread through the Alliance," Che Yi replied. "Elder Lin's battle power truly commands admiration—slaying over ten thousand East Extreme experts and more than a hundred Perfection-level foes alone… to us it's like a miracle."
No wonder he was so respectful. Che Yi himself was a Perfection expert; even if he weren't a council elder, merely receiving Mu Tianze's note wouldn't make him this deferential. In this world, strength does the talking. Be strong and you're respected—even if only on the surface, at least people won't dare offend you.
"You flatter me," Lin smiled. "Let's go."
"The warship is ready—please follow me," Che Yi said, and explained the current situation in Wang North Boundary. Because the North Extreme could act at any time, the Upper Domain Alliance had taken over Wang North Boundary; Lin North City was temporarily sealed. To go from Wang North Boundary to Lin North City, one had to use a Central Domain Alliance–only warship. That was why Mu Tianze had arranged for someone to guide Lin.
Along the route from the teleport array to the warship stood Upper Domain Alliance cultivators, all on edge, eyes wary—as if they were wound too tight. Lin found it odd. The war hadn't even started yet—was such tension necessary? The way they looked at him, it was as if they were staring at an enemy.
Che Yi didn't explain until they were aboard and had flown clear of Wang North Boundary. "Pardon the sight, Elder Lin. That's just how the Upper Domain Alliance are. They're in charge here now; our Central Domain credentials don't carry much weight."
"I've met a few Upper Domain Alliance people," Lin said. "They didn't seem like that."
"There are two completely different temperaments among them," Che Yi said. "One sort is extremely genial—everyone's a friend. The other sort is what you just saw: they don't smile, and everyone looks like a foe to them. They're like that even with their own; everything by the book, rigid to a fault—hard to reason with. On this trip to Lin North City, without this warship, even your status wouldn't help much."
Lin chuckled. So that was it. He guessed their extreme purity of power had shaped similarly pure—and simplistic—mindsets.
"Still," Che Yi went on, "there's a good side: if everything's by the rules, so long as you meet the rules they won't make trouble."
"I recall North Extreme people once infiltrated Wang North Boundary and almost destroyed it," Lin said.
"Correct," Che Yi nodded. "The North Extreme has humans too; they slipped in and stole a warship. The Upper Domain Alliance 'recognized ships, not people'—and got ambushed. After that, they added another rule: recognize ships and people."
Lin shook his head, smiling. The Upper Domain Alliance really were something. Different lands breed different folk—too true.
The warship was fast, blinking through the void again and again, and soon they reached Lin North City. It, too, lay within a cross-domain grand array. The flow of chaotic qi made the city's temperature plunge; the entire place was coated in a snow-white hue. It wasn't actually snow, just a white like snow. From afar Lin North City looked like a block of white jade—beautiful.
The warship slowed. Lin saw the cross-domain array enveloping Lin North City. It was powerful: the main array not only had astonishing defense, it could counterattack. Even a top Perfection expert like Pan Sihai couldn't damage the main array. Many thought this was simply because a Supreme's formations were strong; only Lin knew the true core that made these arrays so formidable was the Calamity Supreme. He had set the core of the cross-domain arrays; that was the source of their strength. The sub-arrays, by contrast, were much weaker—otherwise the East Extreme sub-array wouldn't have been broken. Even there, the core set by the Calamity Supreme typically wasn't damaged, so sub-arrays could be repaired.
By now Lin was very familiar with the cross-domain formations. This one was no different from the others. Once he teleported to the North Extreme, he could refine the sub-array, then use it to back-refine the main array—silently, without anyone noticing. When finished, as long as he didn't act, the cross-domain array would look and function exactly as usual.
After docking, they disembarked. Che Yi went ahead to coordinate with the Upper Domain Alliance personnel. Only after repeated verification of Lin's identity and a round of checks were they allowed to use the array. As Che Yi had said: if you meet the rules, the Upper Domain people aren't hard to deal with.
The grand array engaged. Carrying a breath of chill, Lin transmitted from Lin North City to the North Extreme. Passing through the Scar, he glimpsed its shape in the twisted scenes—the Scar, too, had been affected by the North Extreme and looked somewhat different.
The world in transit was monotone—mostly white. The temperature kept dropping as they neared the North Extreme; its cold had seeped into layer upon layer of space, all the way until the end of the teleport. Lin appeared in the void; cold qi gathered in his hand and condensed into an array disk. Through it he could return to the sub-array.
Just as he was about to go back, he sensed an unusually fierce chill and looked up—to see an iceberg smashing down at him.
To be attacked the moment he arrived was unexpected. The incoming iceberg packed real power. He didn't overthink—one punch met it head-on. The berg shattered; Lin was blasted tens of thousands of miles back. Amid flying shards, a man lunged out from behind the ice, holding an iceberg-shaped treasure that gleamed coldly. In an instant ten thousand icebergs appeared in the void, layer on layer crashing in from all directions. One after another, unending, they left Lin no room to dodge.
He could clearly feel himself being locked; there was no escaping. He glimpsed a Dao stretched out—the assailant stood upon it.
"A top-tier Perfection expert." Lin's gaze went cold. The man's strength was great—no weaker than Jiyan at his peak, only a hair's breadth from quasi-Supreme. Such experts were rare; even in the entire North Extreme there were only a few. For him to run into one the moment he arrived—hard to call that a coincidence. Most likely the foe was waiting specifically for him.
He punched again and again, smashing berg after berg, but was carried farther and farther away—within a few breaths he was already very far from the teleport array. The attacker was clearly trying to blast him out of that zone.
"Master, space is off. Someone tampered with this region—you're in a half-transit state," Little Tree suddenly warned.
Lin had only vaguely felt space was "off," not with Little Tree's clarity. Tampering with space to put him in half-transit meant that while he seemed to be knocked millions of miles away by the icebergs, he'd in fact been flung an unknown distance. In the vast void, getting back to the sub-array's location would now be much harder.
He realized the enemy had lain in wait not necessarily to kill him, but to drive him away from the cross-domain array so he couldn't refine it. Why do that? He thought of one possibility: the foe was an enemy of the Calamity Supreme. The Calamity Supreme had said not everyone supported what they were doing—there were fellow travelers, bystanders, and opponents. The one striking at him was likely of the last kind.
But top Perfection experts generally wouldn't know the Calamity Supreme's designs; those who knew were basically quasi-Supremes or Supremes. Lin studied the attacker and noticed something off: though he looked like a top Perfection expert, his eyes were lifeless. He had a soul, but not like a true living being—and its essence surpassed Perfection.
"A clone. The question is—of a quasi-Supreme, or a Supreme?" Lin had seen through it: this was probably the avatar of some quasi-Supreme in the North Extreme—or of the North Extreme's Supreme himself. He knew the North Extreme had two quasi-Supremes and one Supreme. Any of the three were possible. Whoever it was, they hadn't come to kill him—only to keep him from refining the array, to sabotage the Calamity Supreme's plan.
If they didn't intend to kill him, he could go all out. It was only a clone; it wasn't as if he couldn't win. And if he could force his way back into that zone and into the sub-array, they wouldn't be able to stop him.
"Fight back!"
The thought had barely formed when Little Tree cried, "Master, beware!"
All the icebergs suddenly stopped, large and small, fixing in the void to form a grand formation. It activated, evolving a colossal iceberg—so vast it dwarfed domains. Lin had never imagined an iceberg could be so huge; a mountain of ten thousand miles inside a domain would be a speck beside it. This berg, by weight alone, could crush a domain to pieces.
Boom! Once formed, the iceberg collapsed. Instantly the entire space shattered; countless passages opened, vortices blooming with openings that led to the Ancient Wilds. Lin had been there once. The foe had forcibly broken every spatial layer to cast him into the Ancient Wilds—completely expelling him from the North Extreme.
The vortices birthed a tremendous suction, as if invisible hands were seizing him. Without outside interference, Lin could have resisted it—but now an enemy was targeting him from without, and a fresh wave of icebergs had already formed and was about to crash, sealing every retreat.
He tried to use Corpse Burst, but found the ice had warped space and affected his soul so he couldn't lock onto targets. In this situation, it seemed the only path was into the vortex and off to the Ancient Wilds—the path his enemy wanted, not the one he wanted.
"Little Tree!" Lin barked, pulling out the Calamity-Ferrying Boat and diving inside.
"On it!" Little Tree answered. Roots shot like lightning, breaking through the bounds of space-time to forcibly open a corridor amid the shattered layers. Regardless of where it led, the Calamity-Ferrying Boat streaked into it. Lin vanished. In the next heartbeat the icebergs dispersed as well.
The top Perfection avatar stared at where Lin had disappeared—the swiftly fading corridor—and frowned. "...Troublesome." He sent a thought toward a far-off place, then turned and left.
Deep in the North Extreme, two figures were playing a game. The board was enormous, the void itself gridded into more than a thousand lines—larger than Mu Tianze's nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-line board. The two players' cultivation surpassed Mu Tianze's. One wore a deep-blue robe and had long blue hair; the other was bare-chested with a head of red hair. A killing chill emanated from both.
The blue-haired man's eyes were cold. He regarded the board and said quietly, "That stone… escaped."
The red-haired man blinked. "Weren't you trying to drive him off? If he ran, isn't that perfect?"
The blue-haired man shook his head. "Driving him off means making him leave the North Extreme—not vanish without a trace."
"Oh?" The red-haired one looked surprised. "Even you don't know where he went?"
A shake of the head. "Perhaps he's already outside the North Extreme. Perhaps he isn't. Hard to say."
"Escaping from under your hand—that's some skill," the redhead chuckled. "If you ask me, just kill him and be done with it."
"Do that and you and I both die," the blue-haired man said.
"Impossible," the redhead scoffed.
"You can't grasp how terrifying he is. Only those who have crossed hands with him will understand. To say nothing of others—the recently returned Great Sword Venerable: if she burns her life, she could cut you down and badly wound me."
"I achieved the Dao late," the redhead said. "I haven't crossed any of those few. But our realms are similar—how big can the gap be?"
"Vast," the blue-haired man replied. "I can oppose the layout he set—because I'm afraid of dying. And precisely because I don't want to die, I cannot kill his 'piece.' Do you understand?"
"So the best is to confine without killing?" the redhead asked.
The blue-haired one still shook his head. "Not even confine. Only watch."
He set a stone into the void and murmured, "Where have you gone?"