The biting cold of the Northern Domain was a sharp contrast to the humid air of the East. Lin Chen lay in the snow, the world still spinning.
Every time he tried to focus his vision, the towering frost-pines seemed to tilt. The nausea from the random spatial jump was like a poison in his gut, making even the simple act of standing feel like an uphill battle.
Laughter—bright, youthful, and entirely out of place in this desolate wilderness—drifted through the trees.
"I'm telling you, if we don't reach Sky-Frost Institute by tomorrow, the elders will lock the gates!" a girl's voice rang out, clear as a bell.
"Relax, Lu'er. With our speed, we'll make it for the assessment with time to spare," a confident male voice replied.
Lin Chen forced himself to sit up, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his iron sword. His Spiritual Sense flickered out weakly. Three people. Their auras were vibrant: two at the 8th stage of Qi Refining and one, the leader, at the 10th stage.
The group emerged from a thicket of silver ferns and stopped dead. They stared at the jagged hole in the canopy and then at the disheveled young man sitting in a crater of snow.
"Heavenly Father... did you fall from the sky?" the girl, Lu'er, gasped. She wore a thick fur-lined robe of blue silk, marking her as a child of a wealthy clan.
Lin Chen stood slowly, his legs shaky. He suppressed his dark Qi, allowing only the neutral aura of his 12th-stage Qi Refining realm to show, though he looked so haggard that he seemed much weaker. "Teleportation... error," he rasped, his throat dry.
The leader of the group, a tall youth named Zhao Feng, stepped forward. He looked at Lin Chen's travel-worn clothes and the lingering spatial fluctuations around him.
"Cross-border? You came all the way from another domain through a random array? You're lucky to be in one piece, brother. Most people end up as a meat paste when those arrays fail."
The third youth, a quiet boy named Mu Chen, looked wary. "We shouldn't linger. The assessment starts soon."
Lin Chen leaned against a tree, the dizziness finally beginning to recede. "Which place is this?"
"This isn the Frozen Peak Range," Zhao Feng explained. "The nearest hub is the Sky-Frost Institute. We're on our way there for the annual disciple recruitment. If you've got no place to go and you've survived a cross-border jump, you must have some talent. Why not come with us? The Institute is the best place to get your bearings in the North."
Lin Chen hesitated. His first instinct was to hide, but he knew nothing of this domain's geography or its power structures. Traveling with "locals" was the fastest way to gather intelligence. "I am Lin Chen," he said after a moment, his voice losing its raspy edge. "I would appreciate the guidance."
The journey began with a thick layer of silence. Zhao Feng and his companions were naturally wary of a stranger who literally fell from the heavens.
Lu'er kept stealing glances at Lin Chen, curious about his origins, while Mu Chen stayed behind him, his hand never far from his weapon.
However, as the hours passed, the tension began to thaw. Lin Chen didn't speak much, but he saved Lu'er from a Frost-Snake strike with a flick of a stone that was so fast and precise it left the group stunned.
"You... your control over Qi is incredible," Zhao Feng noted, his wariness turning into a tentative respect. "Which sect did you come from in the East?"
"A small place," Lin Chen replied vaguely. "It no longer exists."
By the time the sun began to dip below the white horizon, the group had reached the foothills of a massive, shimmering mountain. Carved directly into the ice and stone was a sprawling complex of pagodas and training grounds—the Sky-Frost Institute.
The gates were swarming with thousands of youths from across the Northern Domain, all hoping to change their destiny. The air hummed with the collective nervous energy of the assessment.
"We made it!" Lu'er cheered, pointing to the massive Root-Testing Stone at the center of the plaza.
Lin Chen looked at the stone, then at the high-ranking elders sitting on the balconies above. This was his entry point. In this crowd, he was just another face, another rogue cultivator. Here, he would find the resources to hit the Foundation Establishment stage—and perhaps, some high-grade spirit roots to harvest along the way.