Six figures stood amid the white mist.
None of them spoke.
Yet the silence after their arrival was no longer the same as before.
Earlier, the void around the Cosmic Ark had been still as the surface of a lake. Now, it felt like a small room into which six strangers had suddenly stepped. Even though they had done nothing yet, the space itself seemed to have grown cramped.
Hao Nhien stared without blinking.
Part of him wanted to step back.
Another part could not look away.
So cultivators really can exist.
The thought had barely surfaced when the Ark Spirit's voice sounded softly in his mind.
"Master, from this moment on, only observe. Do not alert them."
Hao Nhien did not answer.
He simply watched the six figures in the white mist, then looked farther beyond them, where faint distortions were continuing to appear at the edge of the space.
A strange feeling rose within him.
The door he had quietly waited three years for during meditation—
perhaps it had truly opened.
But beyond that door was not the peaceful light of enlightenment he had once imagined.
It was an unfamiliar universe.
Cold.
Vast.
And more dangerous than anything humanity had ever dreamed of.
He suddenly remembered the question that still had no answer.
Why me?
This time, even the Ark Spirit said nothing.
Hao Nhien knew he was not truly "standing" here with a physical body.
Yet the chill running along his spine felt entirely real.
It was different from the winter cold of Columbus.
This cold did not come from flesh.
It came from a realization buried much deeper:
the people before him did not belong to his world.
They floated in the void.
No wings.
No ropes.
Nothing beneath their feet.
Their long robes did not stir in any wind. Their hair remained perfectly still.
Everything about them was unnaturally stable, as though there were solid ground beneath their feet that Hao Nhien alone could not see.
Of the six, a young man stood near the center, half a step behind a middle-aged man in a dark gray robe.
The remaining four stood farther back, spread apart at just the right distance to protect him without overstepping their status.
The Ark Spirit did not need to explain.
Hao Nhien could understand the arrangement well enough.
The young man was the master.
The middle-aged man was his protector.
The four behind them were guards.
It would have looked familiar enough in a historical drama or a cultivation novel.
But seeing it in reality was entirely different.
Hao Nhien did not feel the excitement he would have felt while reading.
He only felt small.
So small that the knowledge he had once taken pride in—physics, biology, meditation, philosophy, all those long arguments with friends about consciousness and the universe—suddenly seemed like a thin handful of sand resting in his palm.
The Ark Spirit's voice sounded in his mind.
"They are here in their true bodies."
Hao Nhien paused.
"True bodies?"
"Yes. They entered this spatial layer directly. That means their cultivation is not low, or they possess a spiritual treasure capable of guiding them here."
Hao Nhien looked at the six figures again.
He did not ask further.
Some answers only made a person more uneasy after hearing them.
The six outsiders were all looking in the same direction.
Hao Nhien followed their gaze.
But all he saw was white mist.
No planet.
No stars.
Nothing familiar.
"What are they looking at?" he asked.
"Your world."
Those two words tightened something in Hao Nhien's chest.
Earth.
Until now, Earth had always felt impossibly vast to him.
Vast enough that a person could spend an entire lifetime traveling and still never see more than a fraction of it.
It had oceans.
Mountains.
Deserts.
Forests.
Cities.
Winter roads.
End-of-year kitchens filled with warmth.
Lives being born and quietly ending every day.
But to the people before him, that entire world seemed to be nothing more than some tiny point beyond the mist.
The middle-aged man in gray spoke.
The sound did not travel through Hao Nhien's ears, yet the Cosmic Ark seemed to transmit its meaning directly into his consciousness.
He understood every word.
"The spiritual qi is extremely thin. Even the world boundary is nearly gone."
The young man beside him gave a slight nod.
"Royal Father was right. This truly is a world in the process of collapse."
Hao Nhien frowned.
A collapsing world.
He knew the human world was not perfect.
He knew it contained war, disease, pollution, poverty, loneliness, greed, and countless problems that humanity had yet to solve.
But hearing a stranger stand outside that world and calmly call it "collapsing" still pricked something inside him.
Not sharply.
But enough to make him uncomfortable.
Because the voice was too cold.
The Ark Spirit stood at the bow in silence, one hand resting on the wooden staff.
His gaze pierced the mist.
Hao Nhien recognized that expression.
Caution.
Extreme caution.
After a moment, the old man said in a low voice,
"More are coming."
Two streaks of light tore through the white mist.
They were completely different from the six that had appeared earlier.
Those six had arrived like precisely guided arrows—fast, straight, controlled.
These two were more like red-black wounds dragged across the void, warped and violent, as though whatever was approaching had no intention of passing through space.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
It wanted to bite space apart and force its own way through.
Hao Nhien had not even seen the figures inside clearly when his entire being tensed.
It was a strange reaction.
He knew he was not standing here in his real body.
He knew the sensation of his "whole body tightening" might only be his consciousness recreating a physical response.
Yet the warning was unmistakable.
So clear that he instinctively wanted to retreat one step.
The Ark Spirit spoke quietly.
"Do not move."
Hao Nhien froze.
"They can see us?"
"Not yet. But fear is also a vibration."
That single sentence made Hao Nhien force himself completely still.
Two figures emerged in the void.
Or rather—
two creatures with vaguely humanoid shapes.
The one on the left was tall and thin, with deathly pale skin and a pair of enormous white wings on his back.
Yet the white held nothing sacred.
Fine crimson lines ran through every layer of feathers like dried blood vessels, brightening and dimming as though something still flowed within them.
His eyes were a deep red.
No pupils.
Only two cold depths that regarded everything before him the way a predator regarded food.
The creature on the right was shorter and broader, his skin gray as ash.
The black wings behind him were heavy and slick-looking.
Whenever they trembled, the surrounding mist seemed to darken slightly, as though covered by a thin layer of night.
Hao Nhien had seen countless frightening things in movies.
Monsters.
Demons.
Aliens rendered with convincing visual effects.
Only now did he understand that grotesque appearance was not what truly frightened people.
In a movie, no matter how terrifying the monster looked, some part of the viewer always knew they were sitting safely outside the screen.
Here, there was no screen.
No safe distance.
No keyboard to shut everything down.
No phone to throw aside.
Those two beings genuinely existed.
And if the Cosmic Ark's concealment weakened even slightly, those blood-red eyes might turn toward him.
"What are they?" Hao Nhien asked.
His voice was barely more than a whisper inside his own mind.
"The Blood Bat " the Ark Spirit answered. "A species that wanders between worlds. They plunder, drain life-force, and survive through speed and predatory instinct."
Drain life-force.
Hao Nhien repeated the phrase inwardly.
In the distance, the middle-aged man in gray spoke in a low voice.
"Blood Bats. Were you following us?"
The white-winged Blood Bat smiled.
"You could say that."
He raised one hand.
His fingernails were long and sharp, blackened at their tips as though dipped in old blood.
"Leave your storage rings behind. You may go."
One of the guards behind the young man immediately stepped forward.
"Arrogant!"
The instant the word rang out, Hao Nhien knew something was wrong.
If this were a movie, that shout might excite the audience.
If it were a novel, it might signal the beginning of a battle.
But looking into the deep-red eyes of the white-winged Blood Bat, Hao Nhien felt that shout was nothing more than a tiny flame thrown into the mouth of an abyss.
The four guards drew their sabers.
Blade-light flashed across the mist, sharp enough that Hao Nhien felt as though space itself had been sliced into thin lines.
Two rushed toward the white-winged Blood Bat.
The other two moved to intercept the black-winged one.
Everything happened too quickly.
So quickly that Hao Nhien could not understand their tactics.
Could not distinguish their techniques.
Could not even decide who he wanted to win.
He only saw two arcs of blade-light descending.
The white-winged Blood Bat stood perfectly still for an instant, the faint smile never leaving his lips.
Then he disappeared.
Not moved.
Not dodged.
Disappeared.
Hao Nhien's eyes widened.
One heartbeat later, the creature was standing behind the two guards.
For a brief instant, Hao Nhien wanted to shout for them to turn around.
No sound came.
Two thin hands reached down.
There was no scream.
Only a tiny sound, like breath being pulled from a chest.
The two bodies that had been alive a moment earlier shriveled in an instant.
Their flesh dried.
Their eyes went dark.
Their fingers still held the position of gripping their sabers, yet the life within them had already been drawn clean.
No blood sprayed.
No bones shattered.
There was no violent spectacle that gave the human mind time to recognize death.
Only a moment.
And two people were gone.
Their clothes fell empty.
One gray robe.
One dark-red robe.
Two sabers remained suspended in the void, trembling faintly with the remaining momentum of their unfinished strikes.
Two small storage rings glowed weakly nearby, like belongings left behind after their owners no longer existed.
Hao Nhien stared at the empty robes.
Strangely, what chilled him most was not the sight of their bodies drying away.
It was what remained afterward.
The emptiness.
Just moments ago, people had been wearing those clothes.
Inside those robes had been bones.
Blood.
Breath.
Thoughts.
Fear.
Perhaps memories.
Perhaps things they had still meant to do.
Now there was only cloth.
The cloth fell.
Lightly.
Silently.
As though a human life had never weighed more than a layer of fabric.
Hao Nhien's stomach tightened.
He had seen death through screens.
News reports about accidents.
War movies.
Videos passed from person to person, followed by quick comments.
Terrifying.
Poor thing.
That's horrible.
Then people scrolled on.
But the death before him gave him no chance to scroll past.
It remained in his vision.
Forced him to look.
Forced him to understand that in this place, a life could be erased so quickly that even grief arrived too late.
The white-winged Blood Bat casually collected the two storage rings, as though picking up coins dropped on the road.
He sneered.
"And they dared stand in my way?"
Hao Nhien suddenly realized that those guards had probably not been weak.
At least compared to him, they were unimaginably powerful.
They could stand in the void.
They could swing sabers hard enough to tear at space.
They could enter a layer of existence ordinary humans did not even know existed.
Yet before the white-winged Blood Bat, they had still died like that.
Then what about him?
If those eyes saw him—
if one of those thin hands came down upon his head—
Hao Nhien stopped himself from thinking further.
On the other side, the black-winged Blood Bat collided with the remaining guards.
He did not disappear like his companion, but his strength was far more brutal.
One clawed hand caught the saber of the male guard.
The other fist drove straight into his chest.
A heavy impact thundered through the void.
The guard's body shot backward, blood spraying in a thin red line through the white mist.
Blood.
This time, Hao Nhien saw blood.
A very real red.
The same red as blood anywhere in the human world.
There was nothing mystical in that instant.
No cultivation realm.
No race.
No Great Dao.
Only blood being violently forced from a living body.
The remaining female guard twisted around and slashed downward.
The black-winged Blood Bat tilted his head aside.
His right wing swept horizontally.
With that single motion, the woman was sent tumbling through the void like a flower petal caught in a storm.
Hao Nhien unconsciously clenched his hands.
At first, he had not known whose side to take.
The group of six had been strangers.
Cold strangers.
But watching them die, he still could not remain indifferent.
Death did not require its victim to be a good person before becoming frightening.
Before life and death, unfamiliar titles fell away.
All that remained was one living being being crushed by another.
"Late-stage Tribulation Transformation?"
The middle-aged man in gray spoke.
His voice trembled for only the briefest moment before becoming steady again.
Clearly, even he had not expected the white-winged Blood Bat to be this powerful.
"But you have touched people you should not have touched. You should—"
Before he could finish, the white-winged Blood Bat waved a hand, the faint smile still on his lips.
"Heizi. Finish collecting things quickly. I'll take these two."
The white wings behind him trembled.
At the same moment, the middle-aged man in gray shoved the richly dressed young man behind him.
"Your Highness, quickly summon His Majesty."
As soon as he spoke, he stepped half a pace diagonally forward.
His right hand swept outward.
A horsetail whisk had appeared in his grasp at some point.
With a single light motion—
tens of thousands of white threads burst from its head.
They spread across a hundred zhang of space, transforming into an enormous heavenly net that covered everything before him.
The white-winged Blood Bat, whose body had already vanished, was instantly dragged back into view.
He had not been completely stopped.
But every time those white wings beat, it was as though thousands of invisible cords pulled against him, cancelling most of his explosive acceleration.
The Blood Bat gave a cold snort.
Blood-red light erupted across his wings.
Rip!
Large sections of the white-thread net tore apart.
He shot through the opening and appeared directly in front of the middle-aged man.
His right claw drove toward the man's chest.
The whisk swept sideways.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Claws and white threads collided again and again, producing shrill metallic sounds.
Sparks scattered through the void.
The surrounding space warped into thin black scars, like cloth scored by sharpened nails.
The white-winged Blood Bat growled low in his throat.
His left wing swept sideways like a giant blade aimed at the middle-aged man's neck.
The man tilted his body aside by half an inch.
The whisk spun in his hand.
Thousands of white threads instantly became a vortex that wrapped around the Blood Bat's left wing, tightening until the huge white wing trembled violently.
The two sides locked against one another for an instant.
One fought through terrifying speed and raw physical power.
Every beat of the Blood Bat's wings created dozens of afterimages before the middle-aged man.
Claws seized, tore, and ripped.
Every strike carried enough force to fracture space.
The other relied on a horsetail whisk and exquisitely controlled techniques.
Each movement of the gray-robed man's hand transformed the white threads into sealing nets, force-draining vortices, or needle-thin lashes that struck precisely at the points where his opponent's power erupted.
Hao Nhien watched from inside the Cosmic Ark, nearly forgetting to breathe.
He did not understand their cultivation realms.
He could not follow every technique.
He understood only one thing.
This battle had surpassed everything he had ever imagined the word combat could mean.
Every collision sent shockwaves tearing through the white mist below.
Natural arcs of lightning were drawn into the clash, only to be sliced apart by the whisk or devoured by blood-red light.
But the balance did not last.
At some point, the black-winged Blood Bat had already dealt with the remaining man and woman.
He did not rush directly into close combat.
Perhaps even he understood that the gap between himself and the gray-robed middle-aged man was not small.
Instead, his black wings trembled.
Thin crescent-shaped blades of black wind began firing continuously from the left.
None were individually enough to become a fatal threat.
But every time one approached, the man in gray had to sweep his whisk aside to neutralize it.
And every moment of distraction allowed the white-winged Blood Bat to tear farther through the thread-net and close another half-step.
Rip!
A pale claw scraped across the middle-aged man's shoulder.
His gray robe tore apart.
Fresh blood sprayed outward.
Yet almost at the same instant, his whisk reversed upward.
Thousands of white threads wrapped around one of the white wings and tightened violently.
The Blood Bat hissed.
A long tear opened across the wing.
Dark-red blood sprayed like rain.
Both sides were wounded.
But the gray-robed man was clearly losing ground.
Blood had begun to leak from the corner of his mouth.
His robe was torn in several places.
Even so, his eyes remained steady.
The whisk in his hand did not fall into disorder.
He stood like the final wall before the richly dressed young man.
Behind him, the young man had already taken out a transparent object, thin as crystal.
At first glance, Hao Nhien thought it resembled an ancient abacus.
But it had no wooden beads and no rods.
Instead, its surface held small square cells glowing faintly, like fragments of stars embedded in ice.
The young man ran a finger rapidly across it.
He selected a small square near the upper-right corner, pulled out a thin veil of light, then moved his lips slightly.
The sound was almost inaudible.
Yet the Cosmic Ark transmitted its meaning clearly into Hao Nhien's mind.
"Royal Father, please descend."
In an instant, silver-white luminous smoke rose from the strange abacus and slowly rotated like a tiny cyclone.
The mist grew denser.
At its center, a point of light compressed itself like a miniature star.
Then it opened.
The point trembled and gradually widened into a hole.
Its glowing edges quivered as though stretched by an invisible force.
The surrounding space suddenly became heavy.
Thick.
Dense enough that even Hao Nhien, hidden inside the Cosmic Ark, found it difficult to breathe.
The Ark Spirit immediately raised his staff and placed another layer of concealment before him.
"Do not stare for too long."
Hao Nhien still could not stop himself from looking.
A figure slowly stepped through the opening.
Unlike the six who had arrived earlier.
They had entered with their true bodies.
This newcomer felt different the instant he appeared.
His form was clear.
The pressure he radiated was suffocatingly real.
Yet something about him felt incomplete.
Like a mountain reflected in a deep lake—still enough to inspire fear, but not the mountain itself.
The Ark Spirit spoke softly.
"A descending soul-fragment."
Hao Nhien's fingers tightened.
"Only a fragment of his soul?"
"Yes. A portion of the soul, descending here through a spiritual treasure."
Hao Nhien stared at the black-robed man stepping out from the circle of light.
Only a fragment.
A mere fragment of a soul was enough to push back the white mist on its own.
Enough to make space grow heavy.
Enough to make even the killers who had erased human lives in an instant stop cold.
If his true body were to descend here—
what would that look like?