A woman who appeared in her mid-thirties stared out her window and at the night sky. It still seemed like a dream to her, all that had happened in the last ten years.
She could still recall her father hosting the Vast Heaven God at Azure Leaf City all those years ago. Since when had they stopped addressing him Senior Vast Heaven or Grandmaster Vast Heaven and reverentially addressing him as Vast Heaven God?
Ziye couldn't remember.
She could still remember the shock when they saw Vast Heaven God shift Fan City into a world with denser spiritual qi than the Demon Cage Realm. Maybe it was from that point that the seeds had been planted.
Before the Vast Heaven God left, he had brought them to a newly created realm known as the Starry Sky Immortal Grotto. He had said it wasn't a realm and would only last a thousand years or so, but to her and the rest of the denizens of the Demon Cage Realm, it was no different than an act of god.
Because only divinities could hold such miraculous powers.
Although the Starry Sky Immortal Grotto was eternally night, it was safe. It wasn't like it was dark or hard to see. The amount of light was akin to a constant full moon despite only stars covering the night sky.
Still, the citizens of Fan City hung lanterns to increase the brightness. Humans were creatures that always sought greater light.
She knew the world was dangerous, but it hadn't hit her how dangerous the world was until Azure Leaf City had been destroyed. Perhaps that's why her attraction to Lushu had deepened. He wasn't the most handsome or gentlest man she had met, but he gave her a sense of safety.
Ziye had thought peaceful days had finally arrived when they settled down in the Starry Sky Immortal Grotto. She knew of Lushu's ambition to grow stronger, perhaps even surpass the Vast Heaven God. She hadn't gone against his goals. If anything, she only encouraged it more.
However, all her dreams of a peaceful yet happy life came crashing down when she heard of Lushu's death.
Had she not discovered her pregnancy at the time, her mind might have shattered. Ziye gave birth to the last remaining connection to Lushu, Jinshu. She watched him grow up from a helpless child to a man worthy of his father, but some part of her couldn't help but worry that he would leave her too. The worry only increased when Jinshu's strength started to near his father's.
Then, the Vast Heaven God appeared again. Ziye had already forgotten his facial features except for those pair of bedeviling eyes. But compared to last time, she couldn't see any of his features at all, as if they were covered in an illusionary veil, not that she would dare to gaze at his face anymore.
The Vast Heaven God exuded an invisible pressure that made her and everyone in Fan City bow their heads. Had the pressure been any greater, she and the rest of the residents would have literally prostrated themselves to him.
She later learned that he appeared to take Jinshu as his disciple. Apparently, he heard Jinshu's prayers in the temple they had erected in his honor.
Ziye was both relieved and worried. Relieved, because with someone as powerful as the Vast Heaven God guiding him, Jinshu's would become smoother. Worried because of the secret she carried about her husband's death.
No one else knew because he had told Ziye to keep it a secret, but before he left, Lushu told her that someone known as Grandmaster Xia wanted to speak privately to him outside of the immortal grotto. She didn't know who this Grandmaster Xia was, but she could guess.
Someone as powerful as Lushu described had to be people from the same origin as the Vast Heaven God.
To this day, Jinshu still thinks that monsters had killed his father, and Ziye didn't want to shatter this lie. She feared that if Jinshu sought revenge against the Vast Heaven God's companion, he would be exterminated. She didn't know why the Vast Heaven God accepted Jinshu as a disciple, but she had a feeling that he didn't know or care about the fact that Lushu died under Grandmaster Xia's hands.
Even if Jinshu grew more powerful than the Vast Heaven God and Grandmaster Xia, she didn't want him to take revenge because it would bring him into conflict with the rest of the immortals. She would rather take the secret to her grave.
Her fear grew even more when the Vast Heaven God took relocated Fan City again. This time, according to him, it was a complete world and not a realm, though she didn't understand the difference.
The qi density surpassed that of the Starry Sky Immortal Grotto. Though, she was quite reluctant to part with that place since it contained her memories of Jinshu. And now, the qi density was growing even more.
She gazed at the starry sky. Even though the stars were just tiny dots of light to her, she could see vague apparitions from the formation of constellations. She could see a majestic fish that seemed to be able to swallow the whole world, a great bird with unparalleled speed, an azure dragon full of vitality, a white tiger exuding sharpness, a vermillion bird radiating intense heat, a black tortoise discharging frost, and a yellow dragon that seemed to be the center of it all.
Each one of them exuded a charm that she couldn't put into words. But the one that drew her attention the most was the constellation with the lower half of a snake but the upper half of a woman.
The half-woman half-snake was death itself.
Ziye knelt on the ground and prayed. She prayed that the goddess of death would spare her son. It didn't matter if the goddess of death took her life, it didn't matter to Ziye, as long as Jinshu lived.
"What is this?!" Dong Chifan asked in shock.
He had been trapped in this world for over a decade. After Tianyi left him to his own devices, he wondered what Tianyi was thinking, letting him go. It was only later that he realized he wasn't released.
Somehow, Tianyi had transported him to a barren land. Well, not barren, but devoid of any other humans. He had tried to search for an exit out, thinking it was an immortal grotto, but he discovered that this prison was even larger than the Huang Realm.
Stranger still was the fact that it was round! This shocked him since all realms were flat, and he didn't know what kind of abnormal prison he was located in. Thankfully, he discovered more people later on, but they were pitifully weak and did not seem to be people of the Huang Realm.
Dong Chifan blended in with them and extracted information from them to learn that this world was a planet known as Sixth Heaven. Planets were realms that were round like a sphere and not flat, with spatial boundaries separating them from the Vast Void. Aside from that, he learned that Tianyi relocated them from a hostile realm known as the Demon Cage Realm.
Using this information, Dong Chifan tried to find some secret exit. So far, the only location he hadn't explored aside from the sea was the tallest mountain on Sixth Heaven. Even with his Immortal Realm cultivation base, he couldn't scale the mountain due to the immense pressure.
While Dong Chifan was still trying to find a way to escape and return to the Huang Realm—he was still a member of the Leakless Sect after all—night suddenly descended. He hadn't noticed anything different at first except the darkened sky, but to his shock, he felt the worldly laws laid bare to him.
Of course, it was only a certain amount of worldly law, but it was still enough to dazzle him. It had taken him over a thousand years to reach the Immortal Realm and ascend back to the Huang Realm, but he still hadn't mastered a worldly law.
When the constellations appeared, his eyes were immediately stuck to the kunpeng constellation, specifically the kun fish. He could discern the Law of Space contained with the kun constellation, but what attracted him more was the parts of the Law of Devouring that he practiced.
Dong Chifan sat in a lotus position and began to observe the kun constellation with all his heart and mind. As he tried to comprehend the Law of Devouring contained within the constellation, his body lit up with mysterious runes, and the World Piercing Mammoth Boar emerged behind him as an apparition.
Slowly, the body of the gigantic boar elongated as its tail thickened and tapered off. Its fur thickened and hardened into countless scales. Its limbs shrunk and gained fins, but it was still halfway transformed from a boar to a fish.
Dong Chifan frowned as he discovered his progress had slowed down. After deliberating for a bit, he stood up and flew upward. He was afraid of accidentally nearing too close to the spatial boundaries and being exiled from Sixth Heaven, but his desire for the worldly law overrode his fear.
As he climbed higher and higher to the sky, Dong Chifan discovered that he didn't see any spatial tears or boundaries that usually existed in realms. Furthermore, he felt the increasingly harsh conditions as he flew higher and higher.
"This is a planet?" Dong Chifan asked breathlessly as he took in the round world below him.
He looked up to see the Vast Void. There was no spatial boundary separating the world below and the Vast Void as he had thought. He stilled his bewildered thoughts and focused on the kun constellation. Whatever the reason, he had to reap the benefits first.
For whatever reason, the esoteric laws that normally couldn't easily be sensed were laid bare to him, but he knew such a condition wouldn't last long, so he had to take advantage of it.
Forty-nine days later, the worldly laws concealed themselves once more, and Dong Chifan opened his eyes. His martial manifestation of the World Piercing Mammoth Boar had successfully transformed into a kun fish. To be precise, it should be World Piercing Kun Fish.
Dong Chifan exhaled, and his breath condensed into frost in the upper atmosphere of Sixth Heaven. Although he hadn't fully mastered the Law of Devouring, he was close.
With time on his hand, he looked again at the Vast Void. After deliberating for a moment, he sighed and descended again. Most of his hope of escaping had vanished upon realizing the strange world he was trapped in.
He still harbored hope that the sealed mountain had a portal or exit, but it was slim.
"I didn't expect him to comprehend parts of the Law of Devouring by studying the Law of Space contained in my Spacetime Constellation," Tianyi said as he watched Dong Chifan try to climb the tallest mountain on Sixth Heaven. "Well, it's not like it's going to help him much in this case."
"You sound way too smug while saying that," Daoyi said next to him. "The one who should have gained the most is you, right? After organizing all the energy and laws you comprehended, you should have gained quite a bit. Not to mention you probably stole his comprehension of the Law of Devouring."
Tianyi covered the grin that was threatening to split his space. "I plead the fifth."
"So, did you really forget me in here for nearly a year?" Daoyi asked.
"Urk!" Tianyi straightened his back as he felt the aura of death radiate off of his girlfriend. It was not a metaphor. Daoyi's aura of death was literally condensed from the Law of Death.
"Haha, I kinda got too excited from having an epiphany and explored all of Earth Continent already," Tianyi said while trying to maintain his smile.
Daoyi sighed. "Well, did you find anything?"
"Nope, the Eight Pillar Sect was quite wary of me. I guess they paid quite a bit of attention to the news about me. I guess we should've explored the Earth Continent before making contact with the Buzhou Immortal Sect. Too late now."
"What about the Qiankun Ruler Fragment that you refined into an artifact? Can't you use that to get us back with your increased mastery?" Daoyi asked.
Tianyi shrugged. "No can do. The thing that broke through the dimensional boundaries was the qiankun energy within the divine fragment, not the law contained within. I could probably emulate something similar, but there's no guarantee that we'll make it back to our timeline. We might just land in an even worse situation where we increase the distance between us and our timeline."
Daoyi held her forehead. "Then what can we do. I don't mind staying. Of course, it would be best if we could get back, but you're the one that has fetters."
"Aw, but what if I was still trapped in the timeline while you're trapped here? Does that mean you wouldn't want to go back?" Tianyi teased.
Daoyi turned towards him and caressed Tianyi's cheeks. With a devastating smile, she said, "Of course not. I'd cross mountains and rivers for you. After all, you're my precious boyfriend."
Tianyi's face turned redder than a tomato. He quickly turned around and covered his face. "Goddamit. You can't say that. I'm the man here and the one supposed to make you blush. Not the other way around."
Daoyi hid her giggle behind her sleeve. "Sorry, but you're too easy to tease, you know that?"
"A-anyways, we should probably head back to the Buzhou Immortal Sect. I'm going to sneak into the forbidden grounds to see if there's a method to return," Tianyi said, diverting the topic.
Luckily for him, Daoyi accepted the change in topic and agreed. Both of them returned to the Buzhou Immortal Sect and lived in the Honored Lotus Palace on Rites Peak once more.
Although Tianyi said he was going to sneak into the forbidden ground, he still needed an opportunity. Even with his current mastery of spacetime, the Buzhou Immortal Sect had formations that prevented him from using those techniques he was so proud of. Hell, he'd believe that ten immortal sovereigns wouldn't be able to break into the Buzhou Immortal Sect once it activated all its barriers.
Sect Master Xia had given him almost all the information on the Buzhou Immortal Sect, but that didn't mean much in the Silent Lightning Timeline. He still had to slowly gain control of some formations without anyone knowing.
He doubted that this timeline's Sect Master Xia or the other elders would be happy to allow him, an anomaly, into the forbidden ground or gain control of any of the Buzhou Immortal Sect's formations.
So, Tianyi slowly made progress, careful not to rustle the grass and scare the snakes. Six months later, Sect Master Xia visited him.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Tianyi asked as Daoyi poured tea for the both of them.
Sect Master Xia drank the tea and said, "Good tea. It combines the characteristics of wine and tea and clears my spirit!"
'No, Daoyi just wanted to be able to drink alcohol even when she is drinking tea.' Tianyi thought.
After one sip, Sect Master Xia looked at Tianyi with a serious expression. "Fellow daoist, actually, I've come here for a favor."
"Favor, what sort of favor does the famous Sect Master Xia need of me?"
"You should know of the Three Heavens Connection Meeting, right?"
Tianyi nodded as he gained a nostalgic look in his eyes. Then, he recalled a terrible memory and his expression darkened.
"Actually, we discovered a fragment of the immortal court, and we wanted to send an immortal monarch as the supervisor for our disciples, but unfortunately, none of the immortal monarch elders will have time. I was wondering if you could take on this task," Sect Master Xia asked with a sincere expression.
Tianyi felt the corner of his eyes twitch uncontrollably. 'I never knew Sect Master Xia could be this annoying.'
