The inner section greeted them not with an ambush of cunning predators or a sudden shift in the realm's hostility, but with the same rhythm they'd grown used to—beasts charging, Haotian stepping forward, one strike ending it. It became almost unsettling in its simplicity.
That is, until the scream cut through the mist.
It was high-pitched, raw with panic, echoing off the jagged stones and warped trees ahead. The entire team snapped toward the sound.
"Go," Lianhua ordered without hesitation.
Haotian gave a single nod. His foot touched down once—CRACK—and golden lightning arced across the ground. In the next instant, he was a streak through the trees, his speed tearing a wake through the fog.
Through the blur, the scene unfolded—a lone female disciple in tattered sect robes sprinting, eyes wide and unfocused, her breath ragged. Behind her, a pack of fanged, spike-maned beasts bounded over the terrain, their snarls shattering the air.
Haotian appeared in her path before she could even register him, scooping her up into a princess carry without breaking stride. She gasped, clinging to him instinctively as the world became a series of golden flashes.
In less than two seconds, they were back with Lianhua and the others. Haotian set the girl down gently, his expression unreadable as he turned back toward the pack now thundering into view.
The beasts saw their prey stolen and shifted direction with uncanny speed, claws gouging deep furrows as they tore toward the group. Haotian stepped forward—ten paces, nothing more—and let his breath deepen.
The air thickened.
Nine distinct elemental auras—flame, lightning, wind, earth, water, ice, light, shadow, and gravity—rose from him in interlocking spirals, merging into a single oppressive pressure. The ground beneath his feet splintered under the weight of it.
He thrust out his palm.
The strike detonated the air itself—BOOOOOOM—a colossal golden palmprint ripping through the clearing. The impact swallowed the pack in an eruption of light and force. The shockwave rolled through the forest like a tidal wave, shaking the very canopy above.
When the dust cleared, the ground was cratered, blood and shredded remains painting the stone. Only one beast still stood—half its body missing, its remaining leg trembling. It collapsed seconds later, lifeless.
The guards, unfazed, moved in to collect the beast cores, their expressions the same calm efficiency they had maintained since entering.
Lianhua knelt by the rescued girl, her tone softer. "You're safe now. Who are you?"
The disciple swallowed hard, lowering herself into a shaky bow. "Disciple Ru Mei of the Cloudveil Spirit Sect. My… my team… the beasts… they tore them apart. I—I barely escaped."
Her voice cracked, but there was still a survivor's fire in her eyes.
Ru Mei's trembling voice faded into the damp air, and for a moment, no one spoke. The mist hung heavy between them, muffling the faint crackle of leaves underfoot.
One of the guards shifted uneasily. "We should send her back to the outer section. She'll only slow us down."
Lianhua's gaze flicked to Haotian, weighing his expression. "With him here," she said, nodding toward him, "the realm holds no threat to us. She stays. Losing her in the wilderness now would be no different than killing her ourselves."
The matter was settled without further argument. Ru Mei bowed deeply, though the gratitude in her eyes warred with lingering fear.
They pressed on, the unnatural quiet of the inner section pressing in from all sides. The beasts that had so mercilessly slaughtered her companions did not return. Perhaps they sensed the oppressive aura in their midst—the quiet storm wrapped in human form.
Night fell like a curtain of ink. They chose a sheltered hollow beneath twisted stone outcroppings for their camp. The guards kindled a fire, the scent of charred wood mingling with the iron tang of freshly carved monster meat. The crackle and pop of cooking flesh carried softly into the stillness.
Haotian did not sit. Instead, he stood watch at the edge of the camp, eyes on the dark. The firelight caught faint traces of gold along his skin as he crossed his legs and lowered himself into a meditative stance. With a single breath, the world around him dimmed.
He summoned the Solar Verdant Flame Codex, the dual-natured heat and life essence flaring within his core. Green-gold fire curled around his fingers and sank into his meridians, spiraling through his cultivation channels with searing precision. He sought not just to strengthen his flames, but to refine them—elevating their purity until they could scorch void or heal life in equal measure.
Somewhere in the night, the mist shifted, but no threat dared step closer.
Dawn broke pale and quiet. The first to stir was Ru Mei. Blinking against the early light, she sat up to find Haotian already crouched over the fire, turning a small iron pan with steady hands. The scent of sizzling meat and herbs curled through the morning chill.
Lianhua's nose twitched before her eyes opened. She rose from her bedroll with a faint smirk. "I could get used to waking up like this."
Haotian offered a small nod of greeting, passing each of them a steaming portion. "Eat. We move as soon as you're ready."
By the time the fire was stamped out, the mist had thinned, and the team was already walking again—this time with the looming weight of the realm's core area ahead, where the true pulse of danger waited.
The forest floor sloped down into a basin where the mist seemed to thin, revealing a scene of chaos. Steel clashed against steel, shouts and the hiss of techniques cutting the air. Four distinct sect banners rippled amid the swirl of combat—bladesmen in crimson armor, spear-wielders cloaked in deep green, robed cultivators with swirling talisman scripts, and a unit clad in white-and-gold scale mail. They fought in a tangled melee, not for territory, but for what stood behind them.
At the basin's heart rose a tree unlike anything the realm had shown before. Its trunk shimmered with threads of amber light, bark laced with faint veins of jade. Branches reached skyward in elegant arcs, each tipped with broad, emerald leaves that glowed faintly under the filtered sunlight. Hanging from those branches were fruits the color of molten gold and pale jade, their skins faintly translucent, as though sunlight itself had been sealed within.
Lianhua slowed, her eyes narrowing at the sight.
Haotian, however, stopped completely, gaze locked on the tree. "The Solaris Jadeheart Tree," he murmured.
The others glanced at him. Lianhua caught the weight in his voice. "What are you thinking about?"
He didn't take his eyes off the branches. "Those fruits… they're pure essence condensed by nature over centuries. Each one can raise cultivation by a full stage and refine the body's constitution without the instability of a pill. They're worth more than most sect treasures."
Excitement sparked in their companions' eyes. A couple of the guards shifted their grips on their weapons. "Then let's go in and fight for them!"
Haotian finally turned, the faintest hint of amusement in his eyes. "No."
Confusion swept through the group. "No? Why not?"
"The real treasure…" he said, tilting his chin toward the basin, "…isn't the fruit."
Their brows furrowed.
"It's the tree."
A beat of stunned silence.
Lianhua's eyes widened in realization, her lips parting. "…You mean, you want to take the entire tree?"
Haotian's smirk was answer enough.
She exhaled a slow sigh and shook her head with a faint smile. "Of course you do."
One of the guards grinned. "Then… we just wait for them to kill each other and—"
Haotian cut him off with a slight shake of his head. "No. We're not waiting."
Now the confusion deepened.
"We'll take the fruits," he said, voice low and calm, "and the tree… and we'll take them all down."
The air seemed to thicken, the distant clash of weapons suddenly quieter under the weight of his intent. The group exchanged glances—and in their eyes, doubt and anticipation warred.
The instant the last of the bound disciples' muffled shouts faded into the distance, Haotian didn't waste so much as a heartbeat. He strode out into the open, boots crunching on the cracked earth, and the basin's air seemed to warp around him. The clamor of steel-on-steel and roaring techniques from the four warring sect groups crashed against his senses like a chaotic tide—but he didn't slow.
"Wait here," he said over his shoulder, voice low but absolute. The team halted instantly, eyes narrowing, knowing that when Haotian used that tone, it was already over for whoever was on the receiving end.
Then—BOOM!—he was gone.
To the disciples mid-fight, it was as if the air itself fractured. A golden streak blurred into their battlefield, and before their minds could catch up, bodies were already crumpling. Haotian's fists and palms struck like falling stars, each impact releasing sharp CRACKS as chi-imbued blows shattered defenses and dropped opponents before they could scream. He slipped through combat zones with surgical precision, ignoring their techniques, weaving past energy blades and spears like they were drifting leaves.
One man tried to shout a warning—his jaw caught Haotian's elbow and snapped shut with a sickening THUD. Another leapt back to form a hand seal—only to find Haotian had already pivoted behind him, palm slamming into his spine and sending him sprawling unconscious into the dirt.
No killing. No wasted movements. Only brutal, efficient takedowns.
Within moments, the furious clamor of sect warfare died into a field of groans and the twitch of broken stances. The basin echoed with an unnatural stillness, the faint smell of dust and ozone lingering in the air.
Haotian waved for his group to join him. "Tie them all. Strip their treasures and cores."
They moved fast—binding wrists and ankles, blindfolding each one with strips of torn cloth. Haotian knelt by the first man and pressed two fingers to his meridians—click. The man's cultivation locked like a sealed door. He repeated the process on every disciple, ensuring none would so much as twitch chi until long after they were gone.
"After some time, the seal will fade," Haotian said flatly. "By then, we'll be far away."
When the last captive was secured, he turned to the tree. Its leaves shimmered with a subtle light, and twenty-one swollen fruits hung heavy from its branches. The air around it carried a fragrance so rich it felt almost thick, teasing the edge of every cultivator's senses.
"Stay back," Haotian ordered.
Lianhua frowned. "Why? The fight's over."
"Because this," Haotian gestured toward the fruit, "will draw every beast in the area. They'll come from miles away."
He crouched on a nearby branch, posture loose but coiled, and waited. The sun dipped. Hours slid by. The bound disciples began to stir—groaning, jerking against their ropes. Then the scent changed.
A wave of ripeness rolled off the tree.
The air trembled with guttural roars.
Shapes burst from the tree line—fangs, claws, and eyes glinting in the dim light. Wolves with scales, horned apes, mantis-beasts whose forelimbs gleamed like cleavers. The ground shook under the stampede.
Haotian's eyes opened, and six golden lightning spheres materialized around him with a VMMM of raw energy. The spheres spun outward, orbiting him like miniature suns before lancing bolts into the first beasts.
CRACK—BOOM—CRACK!
Each strike blasted creatures off their feet, arcs of golden fire dancing over twitching corpses. Still, more came—leaping from rocks, climbing trees to drop from above. Haotian didn't move from his perch. He simply turned, lightning erupting in precise bursts, turning the basin into a killing ground.
Minutes later, silence returned. Smoke curled up from the blackened earth. The only movement was the slow sway of the treasure tree's branches.
Haotian dropped lightly to the ground and began plucking the fruits, storing them away. Then—while the others thought the harvest complete—he stepped to the trunk.
His gaze sharpened, pupils narrowing as the Eyes of the Universe flared to life. Lines of light traced through the wood, converging deep in the core.
"There," he murmured.
Chi roared through his meridians, elemental energy flaring in his veins. In one fluid motion, he drove his arm into the trunk—wood splintering in a SHRRK—and withdrew with a green-glowing orb cradled in his palm. Within it, a sapling pulsed with quiet life.
A rare smile touched his lips. "You're coming with me."
He slid the orb into a preservation box, sealed it, and stored it in his ring. Behind him, the great tree shuddered, its leaves collapsing into ash as the trunk withered to dust.
Without a word, he returned to the group. They left without a backward glance.
Hours later, when the captives finally broke free, they tore away their blindfolds—only to stare at a wasteland. The tree was gone, the fruits gone, the ground scarred by craters and scorch marks.
And every single one of their treasures… gone.
They hadn't been walking more than an hour after leaving the withered grove when the ground began to tremble. At first, it was faint—a low vibration beneath their boots—but then it built into a deep, resonant quake that set loose pebbles rolling from the slopes around them.
Haotian's head turned sharply toward the east. His Eyes of the Universe flickered for an instant, catching a ripple in the air—distorted heat waves that weren't from the sun. A moment later, the source came crashing through the shattered tree line: a beast easily ten meters tall, plated in obsidian-scale armor, its head crowned with jagged horns that pulsed with molten veins of light.
The air warped from the heat radiating off its body. Every step it took left molten footprints that hissed as they cooled, filling the basin with the stench of scorched earth. Behind it, lesser beasts—mutated by the realm's core energies—swarmed forward in a frenzy, driven by some unseen call.
Lianhua's breath caught. "That's—"
"An Obsidian Hellhorn," Haotian finished, his voice steady but cold. "Core realm guardian class. This thing's been absorbing elemental magma for centuries." His gaze swept over the swarming smaller beasts. "And it didn't come alone."
Before anyone could react, the Hellhorn let out a roar that shook the canopy, the sound laced with a pressure that made the weaker beasts scatter and the stronger ones howl in answer. In the same heartbeat, the wave of creatures surged toward them, the ground quaking under the stampede.
Haotian didn't wait. Golden lightning exploded from his body, spearing into the earth in branching arcs. "Stay behind me!"
The first of the smaller beasts leapt, only for Haotian's palm to slam forward—BOOM—a shockwave of condensed chi flattening a dozen at once. The Hellhorn lowered its head, molten light flaring along its horn ridges, and charged.
Haotian's eyes narrowed. "Good. Saves me the trouble of chasing you."
His chi surged, the Solar Verdant Flame Codex igniting through his meridians in a torrent of green-gold fire. In the same motion, he vanished from sight, the air snapping in a single sonic crack as he launched straight into the incoming behemoth.
Haotian blurred into existence right beneath the Hellhorn's charging head, one palm striking its jaw with a force that snapped its head back. Steam hissed violently where his hand connected—not from heat, but from the sudden plunge in temperature.
In the next instant, his aura shifted—golden fire snuffed out and replaced by a glacial-blue radiance threaded with silver streams. Water and ice surged through his meridians, condensing into frost that crawled along his arms.
The Hellhorn bellowed and tried to gore him, but Haotian twisted aside, one hand slicing across its neck. A shockwave of frozen mist exploded outward—CRACK—jagged ice crystals instantly spreading across the beast's obsidian plates.
It roared in defiance, stomping hard enough to split the ground, molten light surging along its horns as it tried to reignite its body heat. Haotian didn't give it the chance. With a sweeping kick, he unleashed a crescent of condensed water chi that slammed into its foreleg, the temperature plummeting in an instant. Obsidian armor groaned, then fractured under the thermal shock.
Another strike—this one a palm thrust—sent a pillar of freezing mist bursting straight into the beast's chest. The molten glow in its horns flickered, then guttered out. Ice webbed over its massive form faster than it could shake it off, locking its joints in place.
With one final step, Haotian drove his fist deep into the creature's sternum. A sharp crack echoed through the air—then the Hellhorn let out a strangled grunt and collapsed, the ground trembling beneath its fall. Its once-molten veins were nothing more than blackened cracks in a frozen shell.
Silence fell, broken only by the faint hiss of lingering steam.
Ru Mei's wide eyes lingered on him, her voice low, almost to herself. "…Just… who is he?"
Haotian didn't answer. He simply turned, brushing frost from his knuckles, and continued forward. The others exchanged glances, but none asked further questions.
They moved deeper into the core of the realm, the oppressive heat now tinged with a wary stillness—as though the realm itself had noticed him.
The group pressed on, the air in the realm core heavy with mineral-rich heat and a faint tang of blood from the battles that had already scarred the land. Ru Mei and Lianhua stayed close, their senses sharp for any sudden movement in the jagged terrain. Haotian, as always, walked ahead without visible tension, his steps unhurried yet unavoidably commanding the pace.
Outside the realm, tension was a living thing. The assembled sect elders stood in their designated zones, eyes fixed on the shimmering surface of the realm gate as though willing their disciples to return. For some, the wait was a silent prayer. For others, a silent dread. The faintest sound from the wind made shoulders twitch.
All except for one group.
The Burning Sun Sect sat in stark contrast to the rest, their elders lounging like they were at a garden pavilion rather than the edge of a forbidden trial ground. One elder reclined on a folding chair he'd somehow brought along, swirling a cup of spirit wine whose fragrance teased the air. Two others were cheerfully trading stories, laughter punctuating the stillness like hammer strikes.
Their nonchalance drew sharp glares. An elder from the Jade Rain Sect finally spoke, voice edged with disdain. "How can you sit there drinking as if this is a festival? Does the fate of your disciples mean nothing to you?"
The reclining Burning Sun elder smirked into his cup. "On the contrary, it means everything. That's why we're not worried."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Another elder scoffed, "Arrogance. You speak as though victory is already in your grasp."
The Burning Sun elder didn't even bother meeting his gaze, pouring himself another drink. "Not arrogance. Certainty. You'll understand when the gates open."
Inside the realm, Haotian moved through a narrow canyon where the heat thickened into a shimmering haze. A sudden tremor underfoot was his only warning before another Hellhorn burst from the rock wall, molten horns lowered in a killing charge.
Haotian didn't break stride.
As the beast lunged, his right palm swept up, a glacial-blue ripple trailing his motion. The instant his hand connected with its muzzle, the heat bleeding from the Hellhorn's body began to die. Crystalline frost raced over its face, into its eyes, across its horns.
The creature tried to wrench free—CRACK—only for its frozen jaw to snap under the strain. One knee lift from Haotian slammed into its chest, the impact exploding in a spray of icy shards. The Hellhorn collapsed without so much as a final roar, lifeless before it hit the ground.
Haotian shook the frost from his sleeve and continued forward as if swatting aside an insect. The others followed in silence, a faint shiver running through them despite the realm's sweltering heat.
The heat thickened into waves as the group pressed deeper, the ground beneath their boots crunching with fragments of cooled magma. Sparse streams of molten light pulsed through fissures in the stone, casting jagged shadows across their faces. The air reeked faintly of iron and sulfur, a stinging reminder that the core of the realm was no place for hesitation.
Haotian walked ahead, each step deliberate, unhurried, yet carrying the weight of someone who had already decided the fate of anything that stood in their way. His gaze swept the terrain—not hurried, not searching, but assessing with the quiet calculation of a predator. Behind him, Lianhua's steps stayed in rhythm with his, her eyes flitting between the shifting ground and Haotian's unreadable profile. Ru Mei and the others moved in silence, gripping their weapons, feeling the oppressive presence of the realm's beating heart pulling them forward.
A distant rumble rolled through the stone, vibrating up from the depths. Pebbles scattered from the canyon walls, and an unnatural stillness bled into the air. Even the constant hiss of steam from the fissures seemed to hold its breath.
Haotian stopped. His head tilted slightly—not in surprise, but in acknowledgment of the inevitability about to break through the rock. His right hand rose, fingers curling with a faint shimmer of blue light, cold and wet against the dry heat around them.
The ground split.
A Hellhorn erupted from beneath, its molten-crusted horns dripping with slag, eyes glowing with furnace-light hate. It charged instantly, a living avalanche of muscle and fire.
Haotian didn't step back. He shifted one foot into the ground, weight settling, and the air around his palm shifted into a frost-laden mist. When the beast was an arm's length away—SHHHK—CRACK!—he thrust forward, the strike slamming into the Hellhorn's snout with enough force to shatter the heat clinging to its body. Frost bloomed across its horns and skull, racing down its neck like veins of lightning.
The Hellhorn roared once, a strangled, breaking sound as the ice spread to its lungs. Haotian's left knee came up, smashing into its chest. The brittle echo of breaking ice exploded outward, scattering horn fragments and frozen gore across the black stone. The beast fell in silence, steam curling from the seams where heat met frost in its final breath.
Haotian lowered his leg, brushed a fleck of ice from his sleeve, and resumed walking without a word.
No one questioned it. They simply followed, each step taking them deeper into the oppressive glow of the realm's core, where the true heart of the trial waited.