"I doubt that's it. A person at that higher realm may not necessarily need an approach so… indirect". Bao Qingcao said, taking out some snacks for Xue Yanluo.
"I think the same, but what else could it be? You can see that lady is a bit… unpredictable, we can say"
The tent fell into a deep silence, with only the weakened breaths making small waves that finally ceased his attempt to disrupt the mean silence.
Xue Yanluo stood up to approach his bed and lay down. The other two, seeing this, decided to leave the tent when a lazy voice flowed to them. "Wake me up if something interesting happens," he said with his eyes almost closed.
The two nodded and then left the place. Xue Yanluo opened his eyes, still lying in his bed, looking at the ceiling. Some time later, he closed his eyes and slept.
Many hours later, the sky broke in half, and the light from the sky turned greenish, with all the mountains under it collapsing immediately. This woke up Xue Yanluo, who left the tent immediately to see the chaos that emerged in seconds.
But, contrary to Xue Yanluo's thought, the Five Eternal Seals disciples were still extremely calm, all of them raising their heads and looking at the sky breaking apart.
Xue Yanluo raised his head too, seeing the eternal darkness beyond the broken parts of the sky. In this darkness, a wave-like red thing seemed to be diving into it and had begun trying to enter through the broken parts, making the sky fracture further, enormous fissures forming.
The pillars nearby began to glow yellow-white, with numerous rings appearing from the base to the top. All the rings ascended toward the sky, stacking in the same place, and began to expand.
They didn't stop until they had filled the fractured sky, with the area most affected by the wave-like red energy at the center of the rings.
The rings began rotating left, right, up, down, and diagonally, spinning hundreds of times in seconds.
Xue Yanluo frowned, not quite knowing how to react to what was happening—of course, how was he supposed to know? Hua Zhenfeng and Bao Qingcao, one on each side of him, also wore grave expressions, unable to settle on the right one.
In the sky, the red mass shook wildly, roaring with greater fury to break the sky apart entirely. From the rings, a colossal skull formed, all of it golden. It opened its mouth, and a vortex formed within it, with the ambition of swallowing the sky whole.
Xue Yanluo looked around in alarm, trying to find someone reacting—but everyone was watching the sky with perfect calm. The only ones troubled were the people Xue Yanluo had brought with him to this place.
The sky twisted visibly as the space compressed to the boiling point of the water particles in the air. The red mass felt itself being drawn in and tore away from the affected parts; with that, it managed to flee from the skull and sink into the dark sea beyond the sky.
The skull finished drawing in the parts left behind by the red thing and closed its mouth. From its eyes, red flames crackled, trying to escape, bursting in every direction so that at least one might get free.
It was an enormous torrent of flames, all of them fighting so that at least some part of them might fly out, escape their fate, indifferent to whether it was themselves or not.
Golden flames appeared behind the red ones, burning with greater fury as they drew closer, wrapping them in a last embrace before they dissolved inside the golden ones—and then the golden flames too faded, having no further purpose to exist.
Xue Yanluo closed his trembling hands and watched the final moments of the red flames. Through all of it his mind remained blank, lacking any ability to know what to feel—though that blankness felt somehow fitting for what he was witnessing.
Hua Zhenfeng at his side kept his eyes fixed on the sky, intent on capturing every second in his mind, while his body tried to flee, his legs tensing to bolt at any moment.
Bao Qingcao, on the other side, had greater control over her body—like a tree planted in the ground, firm and solid, unmoved and composed. The only things that gave her away were her trembling teeth, knocking together continuously in her mouth, and her lips, which had lost their reddish color and were now tinged an unhealthy purple.
The skull opened its mouth one last time—opened it to its limits, pulling both jaws apart almost to the point of tearing from their connections. The skull finally cracked all over as loose pieces fell into the rings.
The rings danced in the air at the skull's doing and rose to circle with it in their midst. The cracking slowed and then filled with a whitish light, and the skull vanished into the air.
The rings made a few last turns before returning to the pillars, completing their purpose.
The cracks in the sky closed slowly, from the smallest and most distant parts inward to the largest ones at the center.
As the sky healed, from the fissures and broken parts, what remained of the red mass that had tried to hide within the cracks was purged—having thought it might pass unseen, betting naively on the idea.
It was impossible for anyone to look away from the sky until the very last part of it was repaired, and only then did people begin to lower their eyes.
Though the Five Eternal Seals disciples had accepted it with calm, when they lowered their heads and looked at each other, not one of them said a word—each still digesting what they had just witnessed.
Xue Yanluo also lowered his head, looking at his two attendants at his sides. They looked back at him, equally unable to settle on how to react, with only a murmur from Bao Qingcao escaping her lips. "Amazing…"
Hua Zhenfeng nodded at hearing the murmur and wanted to offer his thoughts, but his mind couldn't gather the words to express the chaos inside him—so he only nodded again, and his gaze drifted back up to the sky.