"Thank you for your concern, fourth brother, but it's still too early to know what will happen. I only hope we all come out alive."
"A very noble thought."
"Then I'll take my leave, fourth brother." Xue Lingba walked away and joined the other soldier accompanying the older general.
Xue Yanluo watched him go and picked up his conversation with the eunuch. "It seems General Huo has made some progress with his spear intent—every day it feels more concealed, as though it could leap for the enemy's throat at any moment."
"General Huo is a great man who never stops training—a man whose only aim is the top."
Twenty minutes later all the soldiers were in position—hundreds of rows in total, nearly twenty thousand men.
Large flying ships waited at the edge of the square, two of them. Ships built from the wood of the spiritual peach tree, which had to be kept alive with great care throughout the whole process of working it.
From the hull, countless branches bearing large eyes grew outward, covering it entirely in green and white. These eyes and tender branches were the most critical part of working with this wood, as they provided many advantages—defense, ease in forming a protective array, and the collection of spiritual energy through the eyes to be stored within the ship.
Xue Yanluo, his servants, the eunuch, and General Huo boarded the same ship. On the other, the Fifth Prince and Division General Pei.
The journey was extraordinarily dull, and Xue Yanluo did not leave his cabin for the entire trip, sleeping or reading through the days. Four days later they arrived at their destination, announced by the ship slowing to a crawl.
In a vast open plain, tens of thousands of people had already gathered, camped around a great black pillar. It rose hundreds of meters into the sky and spanned several dozen meters across.
Up close, thousands of runes could be seen carved across its entire surface, with countless lines crossing and cutting through each other, and thousands of branches extending from the pillar like the boughs of a tree, spreading across the sky.
"A black one this time…" Xue Yanluo murmured, staring at the great pillar, his brow drawing into a deep frown. "Damn. I knew it wouldn't be simple—but this?"
"Black? How dangerous is that?"
"Getting out alive won't be easy, but it also means greater rewards." Xue Yanluo narrowed his eyes. "Though it can also be fatal for everyone nearby if it isn't cleared."
"How can they be fatal?"
Xue Yanluo turned his head toward Hua Zhenfeng. "How do you know nothing about this? You're a soldier of the empire—you should know."
"I'm sorry, my lord. It's my failing."
"Bao Qingcao—do you know?"
"No. Lone cultivators don't involve themselves much with pillars."
"Fine, listen," he said in a measured tone. "From grade four onward, pillars are named by their color. No one knows why, but if they aren't cleared and the trials within them aren't completed, the world inside the pillar begins to merge with this one, warping the laws of time and space and bringing disaster to the surrounding area."
"And how are we supposed to clear it?" asked Bao Qingcao.
"It depends on the realm and its level. A black pillar is quite high—they usually have three to four cores that need to be sealed."
"That sounds fairly… straightforward," said Hua Zhenfeng, surprised.
"It can be."
"Can you learn anything about its theme before going in?" asked Bao Qingcao, raising a hand to her brow to see the distant pillar better.
"If you don't mind raising the realm's difficulty by one level. Though that wouldn't even be the most dangerous part—you'd most likely be killed the moment you tried to investigate it."
The words stilled the air and left nothing more to be said. The eunuch arrived, and Hua Zhenfeng and Bao Qingcao stepped back to give them privacy.
"What do you have for me, Eunuch Mo?"
"His Majesty wishes you to retrieve an object he believes may be inside this realm."
"I imagine my fifth brother has been given the same task." Xue Yanluo smiled thinly. "Get to the point—what's the reward?"
"An emperor's pass."
Xue Yanluo's head snapped around and his brow furrowed. "What object could be that important?" he pressed. His hands gripped the ship's railing hard, and the corner of his mouth trembled faintly.
"I don't know," the eunuch said, shaking his head. "To find out what the object is, you'll need to open this dragon scroll inside the hidden realm. Upon leaving, the scroll will erase all memory of the object you sought." Eunuch Mo produced a scroll from his pocket and handed it over, then said his goodbyes to Xue Yanluo and left toward General Huo.
Xue Yanluo turned the scroll over in his hand and studied it with interest. It was yellowish and gave off a sharp, acidic smell that his nose had no way of avoiding. Damned enhanced senses… What good is smelling nonsense this well? He cursed inwardly.
The scroll was tied with a red cord, and hanging from it was an emblem bearing a single character—Xue, in purple. What could be so important to Father that he'd take this many precautions? He didn't even tell Eunuch Mo… And turning something this crucial into a competition between brothers… And we're almost certainly not the only ones with this mission. Xue Yanluo tucked the scroll into his storage emblem and sighed, suddenly tired.
The ships descended well away from the pillar, needing space to land safely—and above all, the pillar imposed certain restrictions on flight, creating a dead zone overhead.
Everyone disembarked and moved toward the pillar. They found a good spot to pitch their tents and settled in, with no way of knowing when the hidden realm would open.
With a graded pillar, the opening of the hidden realm could be forced, but before a black pillar, no one had the nerve to bear responsibility if something went wrong and affected everyone gathered there.
"Is the opening always this unpredictable?" asked Bao Qingcao, kicking a stone across the ground.
"Yes — though it appeared about a month ago, it won't be long now before it opens."
That very night, the ground roared, shaking unexpectedly, and great cracks split across its surface. The pillar's branches shuddered, and the sky turned a deep purple, swallowing the moon and taking command of everything above.