Shang calmed down and exited the Reality Tear.
SHING!
Shang appeared on the outside, and for a moment, everything overwhelmed him.
There was so much around him.
He was so unused to having so much to look at with his Spirit Sense.
"Let's continue," the Sweeper said.
To her, not even a second had passed since Shang had entered the Reality Tear. To her, it was just like someone taking one step toward her.
Of course, she knew that Shang had gone through years of isolated traveling just now, but Shang's aura seemed to be normal and stable.
He didn't seem any different from before.
Shang only nodded without saying anything. He just wanted to forget whatever happened in the Reality Tear.
The Sweeper used her Remote Disruptor on the barrier, and the two of them left the dangerous area.
After going through the barrier, Shang and the Sweeper continued flying toward the west.
The barrier they had just passed was the furthest Shang had ever gone before.
From this point forward, he would enter lands he had never entered before.
The journey returned to its previous pace. The Sweeper kept going left and right to avoid all manners of beasts, and Shang simply followed.
Even though Shang hadn't been here before, the area didn't seem any different than the other ones, which was to be expected.
It was the same climate with the same trees and the same beasts.
The two of them didn't communicate during the journey.
Apparently, the Sweeper didn't mind that Shang had seen her appearance, but that was also to be expected.
There wasn't really anything she could do about it, even if she minded.
What was she supposed to do?
Kill him?
Her mission was to protect him, and if Shang died during it, she would have to pay a lot of reparations to the Temple of Blood.
So what if he saw her.
It didn't really make a difference.
After all, she also knew his face.
The two of them continued traveling for a couple more hours and passed by another border. Getting through that border was far easier than the previous one.
Then, they passed by another border.
By now, they had been traveling for half a day, and Shang assumed that they were over 50,000 kilometers away from the branch right now.
50,000 kilometers in only half a day. That was an insane amount of distance to cover in only half a day, and it was even more insane if one considered the fact that they traveled left and right all the time to avoid beasts instead of in a straight line.
On his own, Shang had taken far longer to travel that far back then.
Back then, he had to wait for fitting groups to travel with, and he even needed to earn money to pay for his travels.
Shang also knew that, if he were traveling alone, he might have already died.
Going outside for someone below the Ancestral Mage Realm was extremely dangerous, especially for someone from the Temple of Blood.
For the next ten hours, nothing of note happened. They just kept passing by one border after the other while avoiding beasts.
"We are going to reach the next dangerous area soon," the Sweeper suddenly transmitted to Shang.
"What do I have to look out for?" Shang asked.
"Nothing much. This is more something that I have to deal with," the Sweeper answered. "To the north is the central base of operations of the Natural Selection Company. The Chairman of the company is living there, and we can't afford to go anywhere close to him."
"On top of that, there are far more people watching and patrolling the surroundings. This is the base of the Enforcers, and 80% of them live and train here. While I am confident in being able to avoid nearly all Enforcers' Spirit Senses, I am not that confident in your ability."
Shang didn't protest since she was right.
"Because of that, we have to take a large detour to the south. The problem is that we will enter the territory that's the very reason why the central base of operations for the Natural Selection Company is here in the first place."
"The Eternal Maw's territory," the Sweeper said.
Shang was familiar with that title, but he didn't interject and simply let the Sweeper continue to talk.
"The Eternal Maw is probably the most powerful Beast Lord in the Natural Selection Company's territory. While nearly all the Beast Lords reduce their sizes, the Eternal Maw does the opposite and makes itself as big as possible."
"The Eternal Maw is a humongous worm with an Earth and a Darkness Affinity. We are not certain how big it is since the Natural Selection Company never publicized its dimensions, but we're estimating that just its mouth is five kilometers wide. We have no idea how long the entire worm is."
"While it ignores weaker Ancestral Mages and Ancestral Beasts, it aggressively goes after the more powerful ones. Because of that, it is strictly prohibited for any Mid Ancestral Mage or more powerful to go anywhere close to the Eternal Maw."
"If one of those gets too close, the Eternal Maw will destroy humongous areas of land and consume that person. That by itself isn't that big of a problem. If someone dies, that's their problem."
"The problem is that the Eternal Maw changes location by traveling towards its prey, which means that more powerful Ancestral Mages could enter its Spirit Sense. The Eternal Maw would then chase that Ancestral Mage, and more Ancestral Mages would appear inside its Spirit Sense."
"In short, if the Eternal Maw moves, every powerful Mage in over a 100,000-kilometer radius might die to it. That would also include our branches."
Shang imagined what that would look like.
An impossibly gigantic worm just moving in one direction, its maw wide enough to easily engulf the Storm Eagle.
"Of course," the Sweeper continued, "even if the Eternal Maw ignored our branches, we still wouldn't want it to damage the Natural Selection Company. Without the Natural Selection Company, we wouldn't have any business here."
"We have to slip past the defenses and travel between the defenses and the Eternal Maw's Spirit Sense. That's the only way to get you past this place."
"We can't get too close to the defenses, or they might see us, and we can't get too close to the Eternal Maw, or it will kill me, leaving you alone in this location."
"I don't think I need to tell you what that would mean for you."
