The rattling of chains woke John from a deep slumber.
Pain.
That was all John felt at the moment. Excruciating pain. He was used to pain, had been bathed and baptized in its all his life, and yet the pain still nearly overwhelmed him. The pain eventually became manageable, a hazy fog lingering in his mind. His thoughts were scattered and chaotic, unable to make sense of anything that was going on.
He eventually managed to push the hazy confusion aside, at least enough to think, but the pain still remained. Memories of what had happened to him resurfaced, like dreams from long ago finally remembered.
'I…I remember the Divine Source Monastery…fleeing from the Asura…the formation and tunnel of light.'
Piece by piece, his memories returned. John's eyes snapped open as he finally came to.
"The tunnel. Master!" he cried out, sitting up quickly.
Pain wracked his body once more as he did so, a groan of pain leaving his mouth. He pushed aside the pain as best he could, more pressing thoughts on his mind. His last memories had been the storms of spatial chaos breaking into the tunnel of light, the power of it knocking his already fractured body into unconsciousness, his master transforming into a being of death, fighting against the storm.
John looked forward, and then turned his gaze to both sides, feeling confusion at what he was seeing. He blinked several times to make sure what he was seeing was real, and not some illusion from suffering so many head blows during his recent plights.
No matter how many times he blinked, the scene remained the same. An enclosure, or more aptly, a cage, surrounded him. The cage was quite large, about thirty yards wide and tall, and consisted of thick bars of some metal on all four walls and the ceiling above, each spaced four inches apart from the next.
Between the gaps were flickers of formation light, allowing one to see out from within the cage, but not escape it, even if one was small enough to fit through the bars. Looking through the gaps between the bars, John noticed he was in a large, verdant forest. Trees towered high into the sky, easily several miles tall, their branches reaching out in all directions, each wider than a house.
Thick vegetation covered the forest floor, while a trail through the forest stretched back behind the cage, and forward in the direction they were going.
John blinked several times again, shifting his gaze from the forest outside to the cage within. There he noticed other people, people who he had overlooked when he had woken up.
"There's others here?" he mumbled to himself, still trying to clear the fog of what was going on. He felt like surging with power and breaking free from wherever he was, but his body damaged and his Qi still spent.
He sent his divine sense inwards, and groaned at what he saw. Torn muscles, fractured and broken bones, meridians on the verge of rupturing. It was one of the worst conditions his body had ever been in, and using any power at the moment would cause his injuries to worsen, perhaps to a level that became permanent, crippling him forever.
John carefully inspected himself, then withdrew his divine sense. His gaze returned to the others in the cage, taking note of each of them. There were eight others, broken off into seven groups.
None of them were Lilian, causing him to frown with disappointment.
Seven of the individuals were sitting alone, six of them appearing to be middle aged cultivators, two men and three women, and the last a male who appeared to be in his twenties.
They wore relatively simple clothes, the women plain dresses, the men plain robes. Each of them were bound by their feet, chains tied to each foot, and then to the cage floor.
The two sitting together were the youngest of the bunch, one boy and one girl, both appearing to be around sixteen or seventeen years of age. The boy had short blonde hair and a relatively handsome face, the girl long blonde hair that drooped down to her shoulders, framing a beautiful yet still immature face. Both had green eyes that shimmered like crystals catching the light, making them stand out from the other rather plain looking people in the cage. They too were chained like the others.
John inspected their auras out of habit, and raised an eyebrow.
'Both are in the Heaven Tribulation Realm!' he mused internally, slightly surprised.
Based on their age, or what he guessed was their ages, them being in the Heaven Tribulation realm at sixteen made them geniuses, at least where he came from. That level of talent was something only pinnacle geniuses had been capable of on his homeworld, although the memories of what had happened reminded him he was no longer on his homeworld.
He had come to some foreign, unknown place, injured, separated from Lilian, caged in some unknown contraption. All of them were staring at him with wide eyes, his actions alerting them that he was awake. They stared at him as if he were a wild beast of some sorts, with only the young boy and girl looking at him with nervous curiosity. They were clearly fearful of him, but also curious, like observing an exotic beast, albeit a dangerous one.
After inspecting the others and realizing there was no immediate danger, John sent his divine sense inwards towards his soul space. There he found Kirii, sleeping soundly.
"Kirii!" John called out through their soul connection, startling Kirii awake.
"Aye!" Kirii came to quickly, like a child found doing something bad, and expecting to be scolded.
"How are you sleeping? What's going on?" John asked, demanding some answers.
While he had suffered grievous wounds during this ordeals, Kirii had been safe and sound within his soul space. Thanks to their soul connection, Kirii was able to see everything happening around John while he was safe within the soul space. Knowing this, John wanted some answers.
"I…" Kirii exclaimed, unsure what to say.
John breathed in and out deeply, and then calmed his mind.
"It's alright," he said to Kirii, assuaging his companion. "Just tell me what happened after I fell unconscious. What happened in the tunnel of light? What happened to Lilian? Where are we? What is this place? Start from the beginning when I lost consciousness, and don't leave any details out, understood?"
"Aye," Kirii replied, his voice more cheery as he was no longer being scolded. "But why don't I just show you instead."
Before John could ask, images appeared in his mind, Kirii's memories, sent through their soul connection to John's mind. John didn't know Kirii could do this, but remained silent as it was not important. He focused on the images playing in his mind, memories what what Kirii had seen.
Memories of the tunnel of light fracturing, storms of spatial chaos flooding into it. Memories of Lilian transforming into her ultimate combat state, protecting John and herself from the storms. The battle raged on for some time, Lilian's aura growing weaker as she spent Qi, and became injured.
Even after stepping into the World Expansion realm, the power of the spatial storms had nearly overwhelmed her. She had been wounded all over, her injuries appearing no less gruesome than what John had suffered. As they surged through the tunnel of light, the light grew weaker and weaker, the tunnel become more and more transparent.
The spatial storms intensified as they sped toward, the power of the storms about to completely overwhelm them. Suddenly, the tunnel vanished, John and Lilian appearing high in the sky, thousands of miles up, above a massive world even larger than their own.
Multiple continents of unknown size dotted a massive ocean, one that seemed to stretch on forever. They fell down towards this world, speeding towards a continent below, one that seemed even larger than the Divine Martial Continent.
The winds around them howled with furious intensity as they fell, small storms of spatial chaos whipping into them due to being so high above the planet still. John saw the memory as a strong breeze, one containing both winds and spatial chaos, slammed into them, the power of it forcing them apart. It threw Lilian, now gravely wounded and Qi completely spent in one direction, John in another, the two of them heading towards different parts of the world below.
