Chapter 32: Into the Unknown Realm

WUUUUUUNG—!

The air inside the subterranean grotto folded like crushed paper.

The physical laws of the chamber twisted violently. Gravity bent inward toward the dais, collapsing into a localized singularity. The air thinned into an absolute vacuum, swallowing every trace of sound, light, and heat.

’Sever the connection! Pull back!’ Lucian screamed within his mind, desperately attempting to dissolve Shadow One’s frame and recall the Commander’s core into his Sea of Consciousness.

It was impossible.

The spatial distortion had completely locked down the surrounding dimensions. The physical matter of Shadow One’s armor, the air around him, and even the stone beneath his boots were frozen in place beneath the crushing weight of spatial laws.

At the center of the array, directly beneath the hovering locket, reality began to tear apart.

Krr-chk!

A jagged, pitch-black fissure split open—a spatial vacuum leading into the unfathomable depths of the void.

The gravitational pull was absolute.

The yellowed beast-skin manual resting atop the mound of ash was the first to be dragged into the air. It spun helplessly before vanishing into the dark rift.

Then, in the very next millisecond, the vacuum seized Shadow One.

The two-and-a-half-meter armored behemoth was lifted clean off the ground. The spatial vortex twisted around the Commander’s limbs, warping the heavy metal plates like liquid wax.

FLASH!

A blinding pulse of silver light detonated throughout the chamber.

Space folded in on itself with a hollow pop, and in the span of a heartbeat, the black jade locket, the beast-skin manual, and Shadow One’s towering frame vanished into the abyss.

Thud.

The spatial rift snapped shut.

The deafening hum disappeared.

The blinding light faded.

Darkness returned to the subterranean cavern—cold, dead, and absolute.

All that remained were the smoking, deeply scorched grooves of the ancient array etched across the cracked stone floor. The air carried a faint smell of ozone and burnt rock.

The grotto was empty.

...

Gasp!

Back in the quiet, opulent bedroom of the Sterling Grand Courtyard, Lucian’s upper body violently jackknifed off the meditation mat.

He sucked in a long, ragged breath, his chest heaving as though he’d just crawled out of a deep ocean trench.

A sharp ache throbbed behind his temples. Blood trickled from his left nostril, dripping onto the clean fabric of his training trousers.

The spiritual link that had anchored his consciousness thirty kilometers to the north had been severed with the brutality of an iron cleaver.

Lucian dropped onto his hands and knees, using his trembling arms to steady himself against the polished floorboards.

"Shadow One..." he muttered hoarsely.

Lucian closed his eyes and sank his divine sense deep into his Sea of Consciousness, immediately checking his Martial Soul Space.

The damage was severe.

Of the 1,001 Shadow Soldiers, several dozen had temporarily dissipated under the extreme energy siphon. Their forms had been reduced to faint, slumbering embers that would require days of meditation to restore.

The obsidian Spiritual Seed in his dantian, once spinning with vibrant vitality, had become dim and sluggish, drained of nearly eighty percent of its stored dark essence.

Yet as Lucian probed deeper into his soul core, his eyes suddenly snapped open.

Disbelief flashed through him.

The soul tether connecting him to the Shadow Military Lord hadn’t been severed.

It was still intact!

But what he sensed through it was utterly bizarre.

The connection no longer pointed north toward the Thousand Mountain Forest.

It didn’t point anywhere on Blue Star.

Instead, the tether stretched across an unfathomable metaphysical distance, vibrating with a foreign, ancient spatial frequency that felt completely disconnected from Earth’s reality.

Then, faint sensory feedback traveled through the soul link and reached Lucian’s mind.

Shadow One was alive.

The Commander had survived the spatial collapse.

It was standing on solid ground, beneath a sky of pale crimson. The atmosphere carried none of Earth’s familiar scents and no trace of modern technology.

Instead, an oppressive spiritual pressure permeated the air—dense and suffocating, dozens of times heavier than the atmosphere inside the Sterling Family’s premium cultivation room.

’A secret dimension? An ancient isolated realm... or an entirely different world?’

Lucian wiped the blood from his lip, his heart pounding with a mixture of shock and barely contained anticipation.

He hadn’t lost his Commander.

If anything, his vanguard had just been accidentally hurled into an uncharted, ancient territory where no modern Federation scout had ever set foot.

...

While Lucian quietly assessed the bizarre connection, the northern perimeter of the Thousand Mountain Forest had descended into absolute pandemonium.

Roaring engines tore through the dead brush as dozens of armored off-road vehicles, military hovercraft, and high-speed transport shuttles skidded to a halt around the base of the scorched ridge.

"Spread out! Form a defensive cordon!"

"Anyone who interferes with the Vance Clan’s search will be executed on the spot!"

Eric’s uncle roared the order across the slopes as dozens of elite family retainers leaped from their vehicles.

Armed with enchanted rifles and gleaming battle blades, they sprinted toward the summit.

At the same time, rogue cultivators, mercenary teams, and municipal scouts converged from every direction, their eyes burning with barely restrained greed.

The radiant celestial aurora had vanished only moments ago. According to every ancient record they knew, a divine treasure, heaven-tier medicine, or even an emperor-grade beast egg should have been waiting at the heart of such a phenomenon.

Yet the moment the first wave of cultivators entered the clearing beneath the cliff, everyone stopped dead.

There was no radiant treasure.

No divine light.

No miraculous medicinal fragrance.

Not even the slightest trace of an ancient beast.

What greeted them instead was absolute, suffocating desolation.

The lush ancient trees that had once filled the valley had withered into gray, skeletal husks. Damp moss clinging to the rocks had turned into dry powder, drifting through the air like ash.

Even the surrounding atmosphere had become unnaturally thin.

Almost all the Spiritual Energy had been stripped away.

Several low-tier Martial Warriors among the mercenary teams immediately began gasping for breath, their meridians struggling against the sudden spiritual vacuum.

"What... what is this?"

A veteran mercenary slowly lowered his blade, staring at the devastated valley in disbelief.

"Where’s the spiritual energy?"

His voice trembled.

"Where’s the treasure?!"

"Search the ground! Dig!"

Eric’s uncle roared, his face twisted with rage. "It must be buried! An innate treasure of that magnitude doesn’t just vanish into thin air!"

Dozens of cultivators immediately began tearing into the earth. They smashed through petrified roots and dug up tons of soil with their bare hands, desperate to find even the slightest trace of the treasure.

Minutes later, a municipal scout shouted from a crevice near the cliff face.

"There’s a fissure here! An opening!"

The crowd surged forward like a pack of madmen.

Clan elders and high-tier Martial Masters shoved past one another, squeezing through the narrow crack before racing down the stone corridor. Their minds were already filled with visions of a hidden chamber overflowing with heaven-defying spirit stones.

Instead, they stumbled into a dead, pitch-black grotto.

Their tactical flashlights swept across the darkness, illuminating nothing but an empty stone dais, a small mound of gray ash, and the deeply scorched remains of ancient array runes carved into the floor.

"It’s... it’s a formation."

A knowledgeable array master from the municipal guild knelt beside the smoking trenches, his voice trembling as he examined the remnants.

"A cross-realm displacement array. It was activated less than ten minutes ago."

"Activated?!"

Eric’s uncle grabbed the array master by the collar, his eyes bloodshot.

"Where did the treasure go? Who took it?!"

"There was no treasure, you fool!"

The array master shouted in terror.

"Whatever relic triggered the phenomenon... it absorbed the spiritual veins of the entire mountain to fuel this single jump!"

His face had gone pale.

"It’s gone! Displaced into the void!"

Mass confusion and furious cursing erupted throughout the cavern.

Clan retainers glared at mercenaries. Rogue cultivators accused the military of secretly taking the artifact before they arrived. Weapons were drawn as suspicion and frustration boiled over.

Outside, concealed among the petrified shadows of the ridge, the Pig-Mask Envoy stood motionless.

His small, vicious eyes swept across the empty valley while one hand tightened around a bone talisman that remained completely silent.

"A spatial transfer..." the Envoy rasped, his voice dripping with venom. "Someone claimed the anomaly before the Federation could even blink. We were too slow."

The entire northern border had been thrown into chaos over nothing more than an empty mountain and a scorched stone floor.

...

Thirty kilometers away, inside the Sterling Manor.

Lucian rinsed the dried blood from his face in the bathroom before staring at his reflection in the mirror.

His face was slightly pale, but his eyes were sharper, colder, and more focused than ever.

He could clearly sense the distant, faint heartbeat of Shadow One pulsing across the spatial void.

The Commander was alive and safe, hidden within the mysterious foreign dimension. For now, it quietly guarded the tattered beast-skin manual and the awakened jade locket, waiting until Lucian found a way to bridge the impossible distance between them.

"Let the whole city run around like headless chickens," Lucian whispered, a cold, confident smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

He returned to his private training room, sat cross-legged on the mat, and slowly closed his eyes.

"It’s time to recover my reserves."

A faint glint flashed within his eyes.

"And then... let’s see what that ancient ghost left behind."