A World Worth Protecting

1

War between the Federation and the Dao Palace had become an inevitability. Wang Baole was unaware of that at the moment, though, as he was still unconscious. Little Missy had used the Immortal Platform to send him to a place he wouldn’t have been able to reach with his own level of cultivation!

It would have been challenging for him to reach this place even with his status as an adopted disciple, as a certain opportunity was required for it to present itself. Little Missy had given him that opportunity!

The skies weren’t the dark and ruined skies of the sword body. Half of it was painted a pitch-black, while the other half was a burning, fiery red. If one were to take a closer look at the skies, they would be able to see the air warp and distort itself in the red part of the sky. The red half of the heavens seemed to be rippling with intense heat!

The pitch-black half resembled a starlit sky. Countless stars scattered across the half. The land… was a flat plain. There was no Sea of Fire, no green meadows, no ruins or corpses that were clear signs of past battle.

Wang Baole lay on the ground, motionless. He had suffered catastrophic injuries. His unconscious body healed sluggishly even with the green lotus inside it.

Time passed slowly. No one knew how much time had gone by, as the skies remained unchanged. There seemed to be no concept of day and night here. Nothing changed. Everything seemed eternal. At least, that was what Wang Baole saw when he opened his eyes—an unchanging, eternal sky.

<em>Where… am I…</em> Weakness and intense pain surged through his body, and there was bewilderment in his eyes.

He had been awake for an entire day, but his mind remained fuzzy, it was a complete blank. It was as if there was a gap in his memories. He had stared dumbly at the sky for one whole day without any visible reaction.

As the day passed and his injuries repaired themselves, the gaps in his memory began to fill in. His memories still seemed fuzzy though, possibly a side-effect of unleashing some terrifying mystic technique right before he had passed out.

<em>The Death Dao Battleship… Daoist You Ran… a murderous pursuit… the scabbard…</em> Fragments of his memories began to surface. Wang Baole lay there, his thoughts confused. His breathing suddenly quickened as his eyes regained slight focus.

<em>I remember now. I was being pursued by Daoist You Ran. At the last moment, I triggered a hexed strand inside my scabbard… it killed him!</em> Wang Baole became alert at that thought. His mind and his body tensed. He sat up immediately, scanned his surroundings, and then lifted his face skyward.

The vastness of his surroundings and the bizarre-looking sky drove Wang Baole into a long bout of silence. He shut his eyes slowly and called out for Little Missy. He didn’t receive a reply.

When he opened his eyes again, he took stock of his injuries and discovered that nearly half of his injuries had been healed. His mind was still a bit foggy. There was something else that didn’t affect his body much. The memories in his head—he could remember many things, but they felt more distant.

He had quite a few ideas about what had caused that. The one he thought was most likely to be right was… how this might have something to do with him forcibly activating his scabbard.

“My level of cultivation wasn’t high enough for me to wield the scabbard. Is that why when I forcibly unleashed it, it affected my memories, sorta like a partial memory wipe…” Wang Baole muttered to himself. He rubbed at his forehead, then scanned his surroundings again. He wanted to know where he was.

Now that he had regained consciousness, he began studying his surroundings in detail. Gradually, his breathing began to quicken, and emotions flickered across his face. He took a deep breath, then got to his feet. He fought against waves of dizziness as he raced across the lands, inspecting the surrounding area. Then, he returned to his original spot and stood there as waves of emotion threatened to pull him under.

<em>This isn’t the sword handle, or the sword body, or any kind of island. There’s no Sea of Fire or any hexes around!</em>

<em>The temperature… is lower than the temperature found in the sword handle and the sword body…</em> Wang Baole’s heart began to race. He stared at the sky and studied the red half of it for some time. Then, his eyes shifted to the starlit black half. He stared at the stars, located familiar celestial bodies, then shuddered. He knew where he was!

<em>The tip of the sword…</em> Wang Baole stared at the ground beneath his feet. A bolt of lightning seemed to flash across his mind, sending his body shivering. It took him a long while before he was ready to accept reality, that he was indeed at the tip of the sword.

He had his guesses about how he had arrived here.

“Was it Little Missy… did she bring me here when I was unconscious?” Wang Baole muttered. He didn’t do anything reckless. Instead, he sat down and pulled out his pills, then continued the healing process.

He remembered Daoist You Ran perishing, which meant that war between the Federation and the Dao Palace had just been avoided. Even if war were to break out, the difference in power between the two would not be as vast as it had been. The Federation wouldn’t be at the Dao Palace’s complete mercy.

That was why Wang Baole wasn’t panicking at the moment. He took a few days to allow his injuries and his body to recover almost fully. His memories finally cleared up as well. Then, he got to his feet, his eyes alert, and began to comb the area.

As the Grand Supreme Elder of the Vast Expanse Dao Palace, Wang Baole knew things a typical Dao Palace disciple didn’t know. For example, the tip of the sword… was considered a restricted area of the Vast Expanse Dao Palace. Legend spoke of the land being where the ancient elders of the Vast Expanse Dao Palace slumbered!

The weakest of these elders were at the Planet realm, while some of them were even at the Eternal Star realm. Feng Qiuran had said that she believed that some Star Domain realm elders had survived and were at the tip of the sword.

She had no proof, but Mie Liezi had shared her beliefs. Wang Baole had only listened to what she had said casually. He might have thought about entering the sword tip one day, but he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon!

With Little Missy back in slumber, Wang Baole had to be even more careful. He slowed down his pace, surveying his surroundings while on the move. The sword tip was vast, but it clearly couldn’t compare to the sword body. He traveled for a few days before the land began to look different even though the skies remained unchanged.

It was as if the land had been divided into two halves by someone. A long barrier made of ice and snow stretched before Wang Baole, without an end in sight.

Wang Baole stood before the ice and snow and stared at the snowy lands ten feet ahead of him. He pondered for a moment, then took a step forward and crossed over.

A frosty, bone-piercing wind rushed at him the moment he stepped onto the snowy lands. It hit the barrier behind him and stopped. It was as if the snowy and windy land existed on a plane different from that of the flat plains behind him.

The skies were divided into two halves, one fiery hot and the other starlit, and the land was covered with ice and snow. The bizarre sight made Wang Baole more cautious. He didn’t stop moving, but he didn’t rush himself. He advanced carefully. After a long time, he finally saw three enormous, indistinct-looking buildings in the distance. He stopped in his tracks as his eyes widened.

After a long while, Wang Baole sucked in a cold gasp of air and began moving faster. The three towering buildings became clearer in his eyes as he approached.

They were three… thousand-foot-tall palaces, which were sealed in clear ice. They resembled three glaciers!

Wang Baole was awed by their majesty. When he got within a certain radius of the buildings, suddenly… a wisp of consciousness darted out from the palace on the left!

It was like an invisible, fearsome hurricane that swept across the air and rushed at Wang Baole like powerful waves. Wang Baole was like a tiny raft adrift in the ocean. His mind turned blank instantly. The terrifying wisp of consciousness didn’t keep its hold over him for long, retreating instantly. Then, a voice, cold and devoid of emotion, echoed in the air.

“As an adopted disciple, you are qualified to shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding the Dao Palace. You may access the first Spiritual Palace for a chance to achieve phenomenal breakthroughs in your cultivation!”

Wang Baole didn’t have time to react to those words before the enormous palace on his left let loose a series of loud cracking sounds. Layers of ice cracked and shattered instantly, falling apart and revealing the entire palace before Wang Baole’s eyes!

Having been released from its icy prison, the palace began to emanate a crimson glow. The light transformed into an enormous pillar of light that rose to the heavens!