Tian Anping's consciousness appeared amid a brilliant river of stars. Before him and behind him, ancient, mottled stone platforms shuttled back and forth.
Even though they were only fleeting glimpses, Tian Anping still caught tiny bits of information.
Fighting.
There were people fighting on those platforms.
Every star in the brilliant star river moved along some profound trajectory. Everything the eye could see was dense with complex, abundant information.
Certain rules, certain elements. Threaded through the illusory and the real, linking the present world and this place.
An evolving universe of stars, where all things grew... everything that existed eternally or perished into silence.
What a magnificent conception, what an intricate construction!
Interesting. So very interesting.
Far beyond anything those vulgar piles of ornamentation could ever reach. So this is the Ethereal Realm?
No wonder it had once caused such an enormous stir.
Tian Anping lingered, reluctant to leave.
All this time, he had been filled with curiosity about this place.
As one of the top aristocratic families of the State of Qi, the Tian clan of Daze was hardly ignorant of the Ethereal Realm.
In truth, even the top powers of the present world might not know the Ethereal Realm in any detail, but they all certainly knew at least that it existed.
Just as back during the great battle at Qiyang, the Ethereal Realm had been directly veiled—or rather, the Ethereal Realm had deliberately avoided the State of Qi's military operations to keep itself from being targeted. In any case, at that time Jiang Wang had been utterly unable to connect to the Ethereal Realm.
For one thing, the top powers were entirely capable of veiling the Ethereal Realm; for another, a great power like the State of Qi—no force whatsoever could extend its influence into it without the consent of the Qi court. The Ethereal Realm's radius of reach was no exception.
Unless they wanted war.
Slots for the Ethereal Realm opened at random, with no fixed allocation. Of course, the fairness of this "random opening" was surely supervised as well.
Absolute fairness was the prerequisite for the Ethereal Realm to enjoy such broad prospects.
And rather unluckily, Tian Anping was one of those who had never obtained a slot.
To this day the Ethereal Realm opened only to a small circle, and those without a slot for entry made up the vast majority.
Without a slot, without a moon key, there was no way to take part in the Ethereal Realm.
There was really nothing to complain about in that, because it was simply the truth. Besides, most people in this world didn't even know the Ethereal Realm existed.
The ignorant feel not only no fear—the ignorant have nothing at all. Even emotions like envy are water without a source, unable to grow.
But after tonight, the situation changed. The rules were challenged... even overturned.
Tian Anping, by himself alone, had observed the fluctuations of the Ethereal Realm and deciphered the trajectory of the Lunar Star force's movement.
And he had seized the moment when the Seven-Star Tower opened, when the power of the seven stars surged while the Lunar Star force was suppressed, to intercept the mighty star power for his own use—piercing straight through into the existence of the Ethereal Realm and entering it in person!
Roaming through the brilliant star river, Tian Anping wore a delighted smile once more.
The Sword Dueling Platforms were "bridges" spanning the star river, linking every corner of the Ethereal Realm.
But he was crossing the star river on his own strength, paying an enormous toll every moment, and could not sustain it for long.
Yet he looked left and right, utterly at ease, showing not the slightest urgency of limited time.
Calm and unbothered—as if he had returned to his own home rather than intruding upon a strange place.
His gaze swept over countless scenes of dazzling strangeness as he drifted along the brilliant star river, breathing in the aura of this mysterious place, imprinting those hurried, glancing impressions into his heart.
Tian Anping smiled. "See you tomorrow."
His figure then dissolved into motes of light.
The brilliant star river went on surging; the Sword Dueling Platforms still swept shrieking to and fro, as if that abrupt figure in the star river had never appeared at all.
But he, Tian Anping—had, after all, been here.
If a cultivator holding a moon key entering the Ethereal Realm was a visit made after receiving an invitation, then Tian Anping was the one who kicked the door down and barged in.
He could not kick the door down every time, for the Seven-Star Tower did not open every day, nor was there such mighty star power to draw upon every time—and the same method would not necessarily succeed a second time inside the Ethereal Realm.
This "loophole" that was not quite a "loophole" would inevitably be "remedied." That was something the rules themselves permitted, and would certainly carry forward.
But to Tian Anping, so long as he had entered the Ethereal Realm and gleaned more of its operating principles, the so-called moon key would no longer be a problem.
The next time he came in, he would bring his own key and swagger right through.
...
And at that same moment, in a certain mysterious place.
A stern voice asked, "Should we intervene?"
Another voice, lofty and remote, answered, "The slots were randomly generated to begin with. That he managed to get in is his own ability."
The stern voice sounded deeply displeased. "Our house—its master may enter, its guests may enter. But how can thieves and bandits enter?"
"Thief or bandit, master or guest, you or I—before this heaven and earth, who among us is not a passing traveler? Who comes and who goes, heaven and earth have never cared."
The lofty voice admonished, "You must keep reverence for the rules of the Ethereal Realm. We have no right to interfere within it. The moment you conceive the thought of intervening, our danger begins. The moment you act upon it, our ruin is already at hand."
Dong~
A bell beyond the heavens rang out, one long toll.
...
Meanwhile, in the Seven-Star Valley.
The star power so abruptly severed now resumed its surging flow, like a layer of star sand sliding down the surface of the Seven-Star Tower.
Pattering and shimmering, dreamlike and illusory.
The Seven-Star Tower steadied, and its overly illusory outline grew much more solid.
At a certain moment.
The Seven-Star Tower vanished in a flash, and the "jade ladle" embedded in the vault of heaven vanished along with it.
The night sky of this place was then black as ink, without a single starlight to be seen.
Tian Huanzhang's heart finally settled. He even fetched a reclining chair and lay back in it, weary in body and mind.
With the limp exhaustion of a man who had survived death, he gazed up at the place where the Seven-Star Tower had vanished.
Waiting for its return.
...
This was a world of forest, seemingly boundless.
Walking on the thick layer of rotting leaves gave a faint, floating feeling.
Everywhere the eye could see stood giant trees a hundred zhang tall, stretching into the distance like pillars holding up the sky.
Like vast umbrellas spread open, they blotted out the sun and covered the heavens.
Yet daylight still stubbornly filtered down through the gaps in the branches and leaves, keeping this place from sinking wholly into darkness.
The surroundings were dim, but there was light all the same.
During his long trek from the State of Yun to the State of Qi, Jiang Wang had once seen a giant tree reputed to be seven hundred zhang tall, worshipped by the local folk as a god.
In this place, such a thing seemed hardly rare.
As for the Seven-Star Tower mystic realm—upon entering, one did not appear on some floor of some tower, but in some vast world. Jiang Wang had long since learned this from the intelligence.
The information from the Four Seas Merchant Alliance, plus Li Fengyao's additions based on the Marquis of City-Crushing's intelligence, already made for quite a complete dossier.
Only, the worlds of the Seven-Star Tower mystic realm were seldom alike from one opening to the next, and past experience usually could not be applied directly.
Li Fengyao had gone so far as to mark it with the words "for reference only."
Pick what fits and use it. To treat that dossier as dogma was, on the contrary, the road to death.
Even though he had entered this place with a certain grasp of the situation, Jiang Wang's attitude was no different from the first time he had entered the Celestial Residence Secret Realm.
Great care makes for no great error.
Since entering this place, Jiang Wang had not encountered a single other cultivator.
Walking alone through the dim woods, apart from the sound of his feet on withered branches and fallen leaves, there was only the wind crashing through the foliage with a rushing hiss.
It was not romantic or leisurely. In this vast forest sea there was instead a creepy, sinister air.
The word "sinister," after all, was originally coined to describe just this dark feeling deep in a forest.
After about half an incense stick's worth of time, the world of monotonous sound finally changed.
The third sound Jiang Wang heard rang out suddenly from the far distance—a shrill cry of utter strangeness.
Chilling to the bone!
...
...
ps: One million words!
What a relief.
In those sleepless nights at the very beginning, my thought was: no matter what, let me write one million words. Something to show for myself, and for the readers who have always supported me.
Now that goal is complete.