The journey away from the Fourth Sect continued in uneasy silence.No one spoke much after what happened.The further they traveled from the corrupted wastelands behind them, the quieter Ren became. His expression remained unreadable, but Kaien could still sense the weight pressing heavily upon him after being forced to kill his own wife.Even the atmosphere surrounding the Fifth Sect territory felt unnaturally oppressive.Unlike the ruined chaos of the previous regions, this place felt empty.The mountains surrounding the territory stretched endlessly beneath dark grey skies while cold wind echoed constantly through the cliffs around them. No signs of life appeared anywhere nearby.Kaien remained alert while following Ren carefully through the rocky mountain paths ahead. Every instinct inside him continued warning that something about the Fifth Sect felt wrong.Moonfang stirred faintly within his consciousness again.“The distortions grow stronger here.”Kaien immediately noticed it

For several moments, nobody moved. Then the sea suddenly rippled. A single disturbance appeared beneath the water. Then another. Then dozens. Then hundreds.The black surface began churning violently as though something enormous was trying to force its way upward from the depths below.Kaien immediately gripped his weapon. Beside him, Ren’s expression hardened. Neither cultivators needed a warning.Whatever was coming was not friendly.The sea exploded.BOOOOOOOOM!Massive black hands erupted from the water surrounding the boat. The sight immediately made Kaien’s blood run cold.The hands did not resemble anything natural. Some possessed far too many fingers. Others appeared partially melted together.Several looked as though multiple human arms had been fused into a single grotesque limb. The hands continued rising from the depths while dark water streamed endlessly from their twisted forms.Then the rest of the creatures emerged and Kaien’s eyes widened.The glowing eyes belonged to

Kaien stood on the collapsing vessel even as it groaned under the chains pulling it forward. His eyes kept scanning the surroundings, looking for any chance to escape or any hidden attack. Ren stayed close beside him, his expression tense in a way Kaien rarely saw, while Chung Yi kept his astral form just above the deck, carefully preparing for whatever was waiting ahead. The further they were dragged, the heavier the qi in the air became, as if the whole city was pressing down on them. Every breath felt harder than the last. Every movement felt slightly restricted. Soon, the chains slowed. The boat was pulled onto a huge stone platform in the center of the ruined city, surrounded by black water and half-sunken temples leaning at strange angles. The moment the boat hit the stone surface, it broke apart, forcing Kaien, Ren, and Chung Yi to jump away before it fully collapsed into pieces. No wind moved across the platform. Only the soft movement of black water around it r

Although they had emerged victorious, none of them felt comfortable celebrating for long.The remaining sect leaders were still waiting. Soul Eater Gai was still gathering strength. And somewhere within this distorted realm, the sixth fragment still awaited them.After several days of travel, the landscape around them began changing once again.At first, the change wasn’t much. The ground beneath their feet became uneven. Massive rocks floated silently in the air and hills hung upside down above distant valleys.The deeper they traveled, the stranger the world became.Eventually, Kaien stopped walking altogether.His eyes widened slightly as he stared ahead.Floating in the sky were entire towns.Buildings drifted among the clouds as though gravity no longer applied to them. Wooden homes, stone pathways, market districts, and towering structures hovered peacefully overhead while other settlements remained anchored to the earth below.The sight was both beautiful and strange.It felt w

Kaien, Ren, and Chung Yi continued moving deeper into the Sixth Sect, their path leading them toward the massive unknown structure looming in the distance.The strange landscape stretched endlessly around them as floating islands drifted across the sky and broken pieces of earth hung suspended in the air under the influence of the Sixth Sect’s unnatural gravity. The structure ahead seemed to grow larger with every passing hour, yet it still felt impossibly far away.For a long time, none of them spoke.The silence was not comfortable.It was the silence of exhaustion.The silence of people who had been fighting for far too long.Kaien felt every injury in his body with each step he took. His muscles ached and his qi felt unstable. Even breathing seemed more difficult than before.Eventually, he broke the silence.“Have either of you actually stopped to think about what happens when we finally reach Soul Eater Gai?” he asked, his voice carrying a level of exhaustion he could no longer