Chapter 1212: A Place Called, The BEYOND and the Mythical Atlantis Realm

"There’s something there," Phei murmured as his Void perception and awareness were kicked off off the moment he scratched the bounday. Of course it was so far that the only reason he was even able to touch its precipice was because being Arnactica amplified his sense, powers and his Void-Ice and in turn his True Void Sense.

But in reality the place was so far like hundreds of thousands kilometers from here.

Eira smiled faintly. "Yes." she lowered her pointing hand. "That is called the BEYOND."

Phei glanced toward her.

"The Beyond?"

"The BEYOND. Very imaginative, I know." Eira gave a tiny shrug. "Ancient people occasionally became tired when naming terrifying things."

Another frozen meteor crossed overhead, briefly illuminating her figure in cold blue radiance before disappearing into the storm.

"The BEYOND is a forbidden zone even among beings who know this place exists. Crossing it is not simply travelling farther across Earth. The laws begin changing. Direction becomes unreliable. Space itself folds incorrectly there. Entire expeditions have entered and never returned, while others returned centuries later insisting only hours had passed while other came back years later while only a few days have passed in reality after returning from the edge of The BEYOND."

Phei’s interest sharpened.

"And if someone actually crosses it?"

Eira looked toward that invisible boundary: "You leave the proper limits of the Earth Realm."

The wind surged between them.

"And beyond it lies a realm that has survived for ages as little more than rumor among most of Earth’s hidden world."

Phei already disliked how interesting this was becoming.

Eira’s glass-like wings gave a faint shimmer behind her: "The Atlantis Realm."

Phei slowly looked back toward the distant wrongness his True Void Sense could barely touch.

"So that’s..."

The world cracked a head of them: Phei stopped speaking before a line of golden fire appeared in the middle of the frozen wasteland.

It began as a single burning fracture across the ice, perhaps twenty meters long, blazing with a color so rich and violent that the entire storm around it seemed suddenly pale. The flames did not melt the ice beneath them. They consumed the cold itself, spreading outward in branching veins until a great circular wound of golden fire opened in the middle of the blizzard— a wound that looked less like a portal and more like the world itself had been forced open against its will.

Eira’s expression changed instantly.

Phei became still.

Consort’s hand left her hip but it did not reach for the katana.

The golden flames rose higher, curving inward until they formed the jaws of a burning gateway. Fire revolved around its edges in vast spirals, while the center deepened into a shimmering darkness filled with molten gold.

Then the portal spat them out: Danton emerged first.

He came through upright, already floating several meters above the frozen ground, his golden coat and hair caught in the violent wind as though the storm had been waiting for someone arrogant enough to arrive without touching the earth.

Eleven other figures followed.

They landed across the ice one after another, some heavily, silent, fast or wrong.

The first struck hard enough to fracture the frozen plain beneath his feet. Another descended with a body wrapped in ancient chains whose runes glowed beneath layers of frost.

A woman landed farther to the left, her long pale garments torn beneath bindings that crossed her shoulders and throat. Others emerged in shapes ranging from almost human to things whose bloodlines had clearly stopped caring about humanity several eras ago— things that carried the weight of chains not merely as restraint, but as the only language left to them after the world had finished speaking.

Eleven Chained.

’Eleven World Transcendents!’

The last of them emerged.

The portal collapsed behind them and the golden flames spiraled inward, shrank to a single brilliant point and disappeared, leaving only a blackened circle upon the ice that began freezing over almost immediately.

For several breaths, the wasteland returned to its storm.

Danton hovered above his prisoners.

His eyes travelled across the frozen horizon.

Phei watched him from less than a kilometer away.

Danton saw nothing.

A faint satisfaction entered Phei’s gaze; a-gainst ordinary concealment, Danton would have found them. His Saint Stage cultivation, monstrous experience and ancient senses made things hiding from him under normal circumstances an excellent way to embarrass oneself immediately before dying.

This was not ordinary concealment.

First, Phei had folded his presence into True Void.

To Danton’s perception, there was no suppressed aura waiting to be discovered because Phei’s position had been surrendered into the hollows underlying the frozen world itself. At his present level, Danton might have been terrifying to nearly anyone else on Earth, but before True Void he was still reaching toward an ocean with a cup and wondering why his hand remained dry.

At least for now with borrowed power he couldn’t see them.

And Eira was worse.

This entire forbidden wasteland was ice.

Her element; her Domain and her home field in every meaningful sense short of ownership!

She had disappeared Phei (since she can’t be seen herself unless she or him allowed it) into the frozen world so completely that searching for what she’s hidden would have required separating one snowflake from an eternal winter while blindfolded.

Phei had two layers on him, himself and Eira’s.

Consort remained hidden as well.

Phei could barely detect her even with True Void Sense now that she had deliberately withdrawn her presence. Danton had no chance.

Far ahead, one of the Chained raised its head.

Danton looked down.

"Move."

One word.

That was all.

The eleven obeyed.

Chains dragged over ice as the strange procession began crossing the wasteland, heading deeper toward the forbidden reaches of Antarctica and whatever path eventually led to the Coffer.

Danton floated behind and above them.

He did not walk.

Naturally.

Ancient Progenitors apparently considered touching the same frozen ground as their slaves a threat to aristocratic standards.

Phei waited.

Five seconds.

Ten.

The distance widened before he moved:

His presence simply disappeared from one hollow in the frozen world and quietly emerged through another farther ahead.

Eira followed without effort and Consort vanished from where she had been standing.

Neither Phei nor Eira bothered checking where she went.

She would follow.

Ahead of them, Danton and his eleven Chained continued marching through the screaming winter, utterly unaware that three figures had begun following their trail from within the blind places of their perception.

Another meteor of ice crossed the dead heavens.

It struck somewhere far beyond them.

The wasteland shook.

Phei watched Danton’s distant back through the storm, and a slow smile touched his face.

"They’re in for a rude awakening."