The wind howled past Mo Shan's ears, a cacophony of rushing air that tore at his crimson robes as he soared through the canopy. He had left the clearing where his two nephews stood guard over the unconscious boy, his mind already miles away, racing towards the extraction point.
His heart pounded not with exertion, but with the thrill of a gambler who had just won the entire pot with a single die roll. The prize he had left behind—Ling Xiao—was not merely a human; he was a key. A key that could unlock the heavy, iron-bound doors of the Demon High Council.
"The Pure Bloodline," Mo Shan murmured to himself, his voice lost in the wind. A cruel, ambitious smile twisted his pale features. "With him, the Elders will no longer look down on me. I will not just be a mid-tier enforcer. I will be a King."
He flew with the speed of a falling meteor, tearing through the dense foliage of the Core Region. The trees here were ancient giants, their roots twisted like petrified serpents, their canopies blocking out the moonlight.
Mo Shan calculated his trajectory. At this speed, he would reach the border of the Demon Shelter in less than an hour. Once there, he would summon his personal guard, return for the boy, and vanish before the human experts could even sense that their Prince was missing.
It was a perfect plan. A flawless victory.
He pushed his Qi to the limit, accelerating further. The jungle blurred into a streak of dark green and black.
However, after flying for what felt like the time it takes to burn half a stick of incense, a flicker of irritation crossed Mo Shan's face.
A massive, twisted Iron-Wood tree passed on his left. It was a unique specimen, ugly and malformed, with a distinctive white scar running down its trunk that looked like a lightning bolt.
Mo Shan ignored it initially, assuming it was just a similar-looking tree. The jungle was vast, and nature often repeated its patterns. He pressed on, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
Ten breaths later.
The air shimmered slightly. The same twisted Iron-Wood tree passed on his left. The same white scar. The same angle of the broken branch near the top.
Mo Shan slowed down, his brow furrowing. "Did I circle back?" he muttered. "Impossible. My sense of direction is absolute."
He shook his head, dismissing the thought. He was a Heaven Realm cultivator; he did not get lost. He corrected his course slightly to the right and accelerated again, his black aura trailing behind him like the tail of a comet.
Another ten breaths passed.
The Iron-Wood tree appeared again.
This time, Mo Shan stopped abruptly in mid-air. The sudden halt created a shockwave that stripped the leaves from the nearby branches. He hovered there, staring at the tree with a mixture of confusion and dawning dread.
"What is this?" He looked around. The jungle looked the same. The moss on the rocks, the damp smell of rotting vegetation, the dim light filtering through the leaves—it was all identical to the path he had just traversed. But the feeling... the feeling was wrong.
It was too still.
The Core Region of the jungle was never silent. It was a place of constant, violent life. Beasts roared, insects chirped, wind rustled the leaves. But here, the silence was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating silence, as if the world itself was holding its breath. The moon above seemed fixed in place, its light cold and unmoving.
"An illusion array?" Mo Shan sneered, though his heart rate spiked. "Who dares play tricks on me?"
He closed his eyes and expanded his perception. His Divine Sense, a wave of invisible psychic energy, rolled out from his body in all directions. He intended to crush whatever formation was trapping him, to find the edges of the illusion and shatter them with brute force.
But his Divine Sense found nothing.
There was no barrier. There were no runestones hiding in the bushes. There was no edge.
When he pushed his senses to the limit, trying to reach beyond the jungle, he felt a sickening sensation of vertigo. It was as if space itself looped back on itself. If he looked far enough forward, he saw the back of his own head.
The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water. The region hadn't just been trapped; it had been excised. Cut out from the fabric of the Xuan Planet and placed... somewhere else. A pocket dimension. A closed loop of reality.
"I have been here before," Mo Shan whispered, the memory of the flight layering over itself. "I am flying in a circle, but the circle has no curve."
A primal fear began to rise in his gut. This was not the work of a beast. No beast, not even a Tier-4 Calamity, possessed the finesse to manipulate space like this. This was the work of a cultivator. A powerful one.
"Is anyone there?!" Mo Shan shouted, channeling his Qi into his voice. The sound exploded outward, a sonic boom that shattered the trunks of the nearby trees and turned boulders into dust.
"Show yourself!" he roared again, spinning in the air, his eyes darting frantically. "Reveal yourself! Are you a ghost or a man? Come out!"
His voice echoed, bouncing off invisible walls, mocking him. Show yourself... yourself... yourself...
For a long, agonizing moment, only the echo answered him. Mo Shan panted, his fists clenched, black fire dancing around his knuckles. He was ready to burn the entire forest down if he had to.
Then, a voice drifted through the air.
"You create so much noise for someone who relies on stealth."
The voice did not come from the left or the right. It didn't come from above or below. It resonated directly inside Mo Shan's skull, yet it sounded as if it were spoken from across a vast ocean. It was a calm voice. Terrifyingly calm. It held no anger, no killing intent, no malice. It was the voice of a mountain speaking to the wind. It was the tone of an ancient bell tolling in a forgotten temple—serene, yet possessing a weight that threatened to crush the soul.
"Who?" Mo Shan spun around, his veins bulging on his forehead. "Who are you?"
Above him, the fabric of space rippled. It looked like a stone dropped into a calm pond, spreading concentric circles through the air.
From the center of the ripples, a figure descended. He didn't fall. He walked. He took steps on invisible stairs, descending slowly, casually, as if he were strolling through his own garden.
As the figure came into view, Mo Shan felt the air in his lungs turn to lead.
It was a man wearing an azure-white robe, simple in design but radiating a faint, ethereal luminescence. The robe was spotless, untouched by the grime and blood of the jungle. His long, silver hair floated behind him, defying gravity, moving like water in a slow current.
His face was handsome, possessing the sharp, noble features of a scholar, but his eyes... his eyes were the most terrifying thing Mo Shan had ever seen. They were not angry or cruel. They were profound. Deep pools of stillness that reflected everything but held onto nothing. Looking into them was like looking into the abyss of the night sky—endless, indifferent, and ancient.
It was Tian Xian.
"You..." Mo Shan gritted his teeth, forcing his trembling legs to remain straight in the air. The pressure radiating from this man was not a sharp killing intent. It was a heavy, omnipresent atmosphere. It felt as if gravity had increased a hundredfold, solely focused on Mo Shan.
Mo Shan recognized the description. Though he had never met the man personally, every high-ranking Demon knew of the entity that stood behind the Human Emperor.
"The Royal Teacher," Mo Shan hissed, his voice straining against the pressure. "Tian Xian."
Tian Xian stopped his descent about ten meters away, hovering at eye level with Mo Shan. He clasped his hands behind his back, his expression unreadable.
"You recognize me," Tian Xian said softly. "That saves us the tedium of introductions."