One final round of hurried hugs and tearful farewells echoed across the plaza. Jia Lie Ao locked eyes with Yoriichi from across the crowd, offering a single, subtle nod—a silent reaffirmation of their midnight pact—before turning to his own clan.
Under Ruo Lin's strict surveillance, the youths began climbing the thick rope ladders hanging from the massive leather saddles strapped to the beasts' backs. The senior students efficiently distributed themselves among the three Rank 4 Griffins, while Ruo Lin personally escorted the seven new recruits toward the massive Rank 5 beast.
"Teacher, I should sit near the front to properly guide my brother!" Xiao Yu smoothly volunteered, using her seniority to immediately claim the seats right behind the beast tamer's bulkhead.
Ruo Lin chuckled, waving her through. Yoriichi easily vaulted up the side of the massive griffin, skipping the ladder entirely, and extended a hand to pull his sister up into the spacious, open-air carriage secured to the beast's armored back.
Once Xiao Mei, Xun'er, and the three rival youths were securely strapped into their heavy leather seats, Teacher Ruo Lin boarded last.
"Hold on tightly!" Ruo Lin commanded. She gave the signal to the lead tamer.
The Rank 5 Griffin let out a deafening, piercing screech. Its four massive wings slammed downward, generating a localized hurricane. The G-force was instantaneous and brutal. The beast shot directly up into the sky, leaving Wu Tan City shrinking rapidly into a tiny, insignificant speck of grey stone amidst an ocean of green forests.
Yoriichi sat comfortably near the edge of the carriage, resting his arm on the leather railing. He looked down, waving his hand in a slow, respectful goodbye to the tiny dots representing his grandfather and the Patriarch, until they were completely swallowed by the clouds.
As the griffin leveled out above the cloud layer, the true physical toll of magical beast flight became apparent.
The air at this altitude was incredibly thin, freezing cold, and the ambient Dou Qi was chaotic. Furthermore, the sheer speed of the Rank 5 beast created a dizzying vertigo.
Almost immediately, the five regular recruits—Xiao Mei, the two Jia Lie boys, and the Ao Ba youth—turned a sickly shade of pale green. They clutched their stomachs, squeezing their eyes shut as nausea and altitude sickness violently assaulted their unrefined meridians.
Teacher Ruo Lin walked down the aisle of the carriage, her body enveloped in a stabilizing layer of blue Dou Qi. She handed out small, mint-scented pills to the suffering youths.
"Chew these slowly. It will stabilize your inner ear and warm your blood," Ruo Lin instructed, patting Xiao Mei's back as the girl gagged. "Do not worry, this is entirely normal for first-time flyers. Your bodies will adapt in a few days."
As Ruo Lin turned around, her professional smile faltered, her elegant eyebrows twitching in sheer disbelief.
Sitting a few rows back, Xun'er was the picture of perfect, unbothered serenity. She was seated in a lotus position, her eyes closed, calmly meditating as if she were in her own private garden, completely immune to the freezing wind and the vertigo.
'As Expected from S-Rank potential,' Ruo Lin thought, shaking her head. 'At 6-star Dou Zhe in this age is really terrifying'
But then Ruo Lin looked at the seat across the aisle.
Yoriichi was leaning casually against the railing, his dark hair whipping wildly in the wind. He wasn't meditating, nor was he using a single drop of Dou Qi to shield himself. He was simply gazing out at the endless horizon, admiring the breathtaking beauty of the world from above, his breathing slow, rhythmic, and incredibly deep.
'He is a one-star Dou Zhe,' Ruo Lin calculated, utterly baffled. 'Without Dou Qi shielding, his lungs should be burning from the thin air, and his equilibrium should be shattered by the speed. Yet his physical foundation is so flawlessly terrifying that his mortal body is treating a Rank 5 flight like a gentle carriage ride.'
Ruo Lin let out a soft sigh, returning to her seat at the front. 'These two... they are absolute, logic-defying anomalies.'
Slowly, the minutes turned into hours, and the hours bled into days.
The journey to the Jia Nan Academy was vast. The winged beasts flew tirelessly, only stopping twice a day at designated, fortified mountaintop outposts to rest their wings and allow the riders to eat hot meals.
It was a grueling, monotonous process. Over the next week, the five regular recruits finally adapted to the altitude. The vomiting ceased, replaced by long hours of silent meditation and cultivation as they tried to absorb the pure, untainted worldly energy found above the clouds. Occasionally, the youths would chat to pass the time, the shared hardship of the journey slowly eroding the lingering clan rivalries.
In the blink of an eye, twelve days passed.
On the afternoon of the twelfth day, the temperature in the air began to shift drastically. The crisp, clean mountain winds were replaced by a heavy, humid, and oppressively hot draft.
Yoriichi, who had been resting his eyes, slowly opened them. He leaned over the railing, looking down past the breaking cloud cover.
The vibrant, endless green forests and sparkling blue rivers of the Jia Ma Empire had vanished. In their place lay an endless, terrifying expanse of dark, jagged plains, deep, shadowed canyons, and soil that looked as though it had been dyed a permanent, dried blood-red.
They were crossing the final visage of the civilized world. They were entering the heart of the Black-Corner Region.
Yoriichi's brow furrowed slightly. He did not just see the harsh terrain; he felt it.
His Transparent World vision passively filtered the ambient spiritual energy rising from the plains below. It was absolutely rancid. It was chaotic, thick with the stench of fresh blood, unbridled malice, and raw, unfiltered killing intent. He could sense faint flashes of Dou Qi erupting in the canyons below—ambushes, murders, and desperate fights for survival happening in real-time.
It felt chillingly similar to the oppressive aura that hung over the domains of High-Rank Demons in his past life.
Teacher Ruo Lin noticed Yoriichi's intense, darkening contemplation. She stood up from her seat and walked over, resting her hands on the railing beside him, looking down at the lawless hellscape.
"You can sense it, can't you, Xiao Ning?" Ruo Lin asked quietly, her gentle demeanor replaced by the grim reality of a veteran survivor.
Yoriichi nodded slowly. "It is a place devoid of order. The air itself is saturated with violence."
"Welcome to the Black-Corner Region," Ruo Lin said, her voice dropping to a serious, cautionary whisper meant to prepare him for the brutal reality of his new home. "The Jia Nan Academy sits at the very center of this chaos like an immovable fortress. But the outer plains... they are a meat grinder."
She turned her head, looking at the stoic youth.
"Do not let the academy's prestige fool you. If you ever step outside the academy's immediate borders to train or complete a mission," Ruo Lin warned, her eyes filled with absolute sincerity, "the rules of the Jia Ma Empire no longer apply. Out there, mercy is a fatal disease. If you want to survive here, you need to rely on absolute ruthlessness to kill, and pure cunning to escape."
Yoriichi looked down at the blood-red plains, his hand instinctively resting on the hilt of his Katana. He felt the familiar, heavy burden of a world that needed cleansing.
"I understand, Teacher," Yoriichi replied, his crimson eyes perfectly calm. "I have survived hells before. This one will be no different."