The Dawn of the New World

He watched her storm up halfway through the staircase before remembering a very important piece of information.

"Tell the princess to be careful! It's a curse for trying to change one's fate!"

"He is being forced to live through a multitude of diverse timelines with each one being starkly different from the last but all of which end in tragedy. So when she is in there she will also be shown as a part of that world. To get out she has to wake him up, make him believe that the world he is in is false. The longer she stays in there the harder it will be to leave which will make her even forget herself."

Ma Jiang paused for a moment when she heard the last part but still didn't turn around.

'I didn't expect her to have such strong opinions. How very unlike her people...kind of reminds me of another princess I had heard about back in Mei. '

Jin Wang waited for her to enter the first room before taking his leave. He ran to the city gates first where Henrik and the other cultivators were already standing at the ready along with a small force of demihuman city guards and being led by Princess Inara herself.

Henrik was perched on top of a newly constructed stone platform approximately 150 meters behind the city gates. He was running around in a circle carving one inscription after another into the stone slabs to set up a formation.

Jin Wang observed from afar.

'Ho, a throng of third-tier spirit gathering inscriptions being used to power a fourth-tier 'Beast-Slaying formation. It seems I underestimated the fella,' he mused inwardly.

Formations and inscriptions, like many other things, are sorted according to the degree of complication in both creating and utilizing them. Tier 1 is the lowest while the one he was creating was a Tier 4 Beast-Slaying formation which was actually quite complicated.

Normally you would only see Peak Profound Realm cultivators using formations of this level because the raw mental fortitude required to remember all the hundreds of smaller parts and carve them according to the magnetic poles of a plane was not something just anyone could do.

And to pull it off at his level, it wouldn't be a stretch to call Henrik a once-in-a-thousand-year genius. But it was also quite obvious he didn't want to be seen that way and was purposefully keeping a low profile which would explain why he wasn't already snatched up by any of the higher powers.

Even enlisting directly under one of the ancients would be possible.

'A talent like his would go very far. I will keep it in mind.'

Even Jin Wang who had lived through so many eras, seen so many geniuses that had shaken the world was impressed by him.

There were lines of mortals being led to the left side of the city. The majority of the refugees had already been vetted and moved inside while these ones were the last ones to arrive.

All 70+ cultivators were gathered at the gates. They were to take center stage in this upcoming conflict which they didn't even truly understand.

Rhisiat who was the ex-protector of the hall was the vanguard. He stood at the front line with Fulke watching the black tide of corruption roll in. The defensive barrier that had been erected around the city was going to be the first line of defense.

Staying out of sight Jin Wang jumped and landed on top of the bone cage above the city cove. From there he could see for miles in all directions even under the cover of darkness.

In relation to the city the tear had opened on the left side and he could already see the first wave arriving. In fact, there were a few stragglers already trying to climb up the side of the cove.

They had four upper limbs, the two on the top ended in curved scythes while the bottom ones had three sharp claws. The head still somewhat resembled a human being's but the skin along the sides of the face was pulled back to reveal rows of sharpened teeth.

The legs were more akin to a horse ending in sharpened hoofs.

"They're already taking shape of the predecessors. The central hive mind must be close to awakening," he concluded based on their appearance.

The corruption always followed the same line of evolution. When Jin Wang had first discovered it within the depths of the void he began experimenting with it.

Every time it was introduced to any organic beings they would begin to devolve into whatever the corruption thought was best. As he introduced more and more different species to it the end result kept changing.

It was only when he corrupted some of the rarer abyss creatures that the overall evolution timeline changed for all corrupted creatures.

The hive mind of that time took parts from all the different species and made a new race of beings, the ones it thought were the apex predators.