The True Profound Realm.
To an Elementary Profound cultivator, the gap was not a mere step, nor a steep hill. It was a sheer, insurmountable cliff. The cultivation system of all being within the Dao worked the same way , at true profound realm a cultivator created a Profound energy core and perfected the flow of Profound energy.
As the Abyssal Blight-Scale Serpent rose from the lake, it did not even need to strike to draw blood.
Its mere presence did it for him.
An invisible, crushing weight slammed down on the clearing. It was the serpent's innate Aura of Stagnation. Leon's breath seized in his lungs. The meager profound energy circulating in his meridians hit a literal wall, sluggish and freezing as if turning to ice. His knees buckled, driving him waist-deep into the freezing water.
Move.
His mind screamed the command, but his body lagged, fighting the oppressive domain of a beast two major realms above his own.
The serpent did not roar. It did not display mindless fury. Instead, its pale golden eyes tracked Leon with a chilling, intelligent cruelty. It knew it had won. It opened its massive maw, revealing rows of translucent, hooked fangs dripping with a black, viscous fluid.
Then, it struck.
Not with a bite, but with its body.
The immense tail whipped out from beneath the water, faster than something of its size had any right to move.
Leon threw his body backward. He didn't try to use profound energy—it would be too slow. He relied purely on muscle memory and survival instinct, diving backward into the murky water.
BOOM!
The tail slammed into the shallows where Leon had stood a fraction of a second before. Water and mud exploded violently outward in a twenty-foot geyser. The shockwave alone struck Leon's chest like a warhammer, sending him tumbling backward through the water, his short sword slipping in his numb grip.
He breached the surface, gasping for air, his vision swimming.
It's playing with me, Leon realized, spitting out blood and murky water. If it wanted me dead instantly, it would have bitten. It wants to break me first.
A sickening, heavy rasp echoed through the clearing. Grind. Grind. Grind.
The water around Leon began to pull. The serpent was coiling its massive body beneath the surface, vibrating its black scales at a terrifying frequency. A Millstone Vortex was forming. The lake, previously smooth as glass, transformed into a violent, churning whirlpool, dragging everything toward the center. Toward the grinding scales that would turn his bones to dust.
Leon stabbed his short sword directly into the thick, submerged root of a nearby dead tree, anchoring himself against the pull. His muscles screamed as the vortex threatened to tear his arms from their sockets.
He forced his eyes up. The Mystillin Maple Herbs still glowed faintly in the center of the lake, miraculously untouched by the violent currents. The beast was intentionally protecting its bait.
The serpent's massive head breached the water just meters away, looming over Leon. It opened its jaws, but this time, profound energy gathered in its throat. A foul, highly compressed sphere of black, decaying water formed.
Abyssal Rot-Breath was the move and a single touch of it would result in flesh and bones melting .
Leon didn't hesitate. He yanked his short sword free, deliberately surrendering to the violent current. He allowed the vortex to rip him to the left just as the serpent fired.
HISSSS!
The jet of black water obliterated the tree root Leon had just been clinging to. The wood didn't just break; it melted, dissolving into a foul-smelling sludge with a violent sizzle.
Seeing the human survive, the serpent's golden eyes narrowed. A flash of genuine insult rippled through its arrogant gaze. The insect wasn't just avoiding death; it was using the serpent's own vortex to maneuver. Infuriated that a creature so profoundly weak dared to play games with its life, the beast roared, increasing the speed of the whirlpool to drag Leon into its grinding coils.
But the serpent's arrogance had blinded it. It relied so heavily on its absolute superiority that it failed to realize the human wasn't fighting the current to escape.
He was riding it inward.
Taking a sharp breath, Leon planted his foot against a submerged rock. Using the massive kinetic pull of the serpent's own vortex, he slingshotted himself forward, launching straight toward the center of the lake.
Toward the herbs.
Realizing the ant was diving directly for its prized treasure, the serpent's insult morphed into towering, explosive wrath. It broke off the Millstone Vortex, uncoiling its massive body to intercept.
But it was too late. The beast's arrogance had gotten the better of it. The sudden cessation of the whirlpool created a massive backlash wave—a wave Leon had been banking on. The surging water violently propelled him the final distance.
The serpent lunged, jaws unhinged, aiming to swallow Leon and the surrounding water whole. It was fully committed to a linear strike, its massive momentum impossible to halt.
Leon waited until the gaping maw eclipsed his vision, the stench of rot burning his eyes.
Now.
Channeling every last drop of his sluggish profound energy into his legs, Leon stomped down onto the water's surface. A desperate burst of repulsive force exploded beneath his boots. He violently shifted his trajectory, launching himself straight up.
The serpent's jaws snapped shut on empty air beneath him with the force of a thunderclap.
The sheer kinetic shockwave of the closing jaws shattered the air. Leon was directly above the beast's head, falling toward the thick, armored scales of its head . But the serpent was a True Profound beast; its reflexes defied its bulk. Realizing it had been utterly outsmarted by a lesser being, the beast thrashed its head upward in a frenzy of pure, unadulterated rage to swat the boy out of the sky.
There was no time to dodge. There was no ground to push off from.
Leon twisted his body, raising his short sword in a powerful thrust lLeon for the first time went for the offensive --his target clear The eyes .
The edge of the serpent's bladed scales grazed the side of his head ,but at the same time Leon's sword embedded itself into the serpents eyes drawing a defeaning screech and copius amount of blood . But Leon didn't fare better .
The world went white.
A sickening shhhk sound filled Leon's skull. It wasn't a clean cut. The immense friction and jagged edge of the scale tore through the flesh, cartilage, and bone.
His left ear was gone, sheared off in an instant, followed by a spray of crimson.
Agony, absolute and blinding, lanced through his brain. His equilibrium shattered. The world spun out of control as he was sent tumbling wildly through the air from the glancing blow, crashing violently into the shallow water at the dead center of the lake.
Searing pain radiated from his skull, the left side of his face immediately soaked in hot blood. But his right hand shot out through the freezing water.
His fingers closed around the slender, translucent stems of the Mystillin Maple Herbs.
With a brutal yank, he tore them from the silt. The glowing roots snapped free.
Got them.
The entirety of the fight leon had known he stood no chance against the sepant but the serpents arrogance has allowed Leon to play it at his whims and get his prize .
A deafening, earth-shaking shriek rattled the clearing. The serpent, realizing its treasure had been plucked, completely lost its mind. It didn't just strike—it brought its entire, massive body down upon the center of the lake, intent on crushing Leon, the herbs, and the very earth beneath them into nothingness.
A shadow the size of a collapsing building fell over Leon.
He had no profound energy left. His body was a battered , agonizing mess. There was no running back to the treeline. He looked down at the spot where the herbs had just been uprooted.
The silt was gone. Beneath it was the same unnerving phenomenon he had witnessed earlier at the edge of the marsh: the Mirrorwater's true face. It wasn't solid ground. It was a deep, yawning hollow—a rift in the water that defied logic, swirling with a pitch-black, unnatural current.
Leon didn't know what it was. He didn't know where it led.
But looking up at the descending mountain of black scales, he knew what awaited him here.
Clutching the glowing herbs tightly to his chest, Leon did the only thing he could do. He threw himself forward, plunging headfirst into the impossible abyss beneath the lake.
CRASH!
The serpent's body slammed into the surface a fraction of a second later, obliterating the water and shattering the bedrock. But Leon was already gone, swallowed by the freezing dark.
The crushing pressure of the water vanished instantly, replaced by a violent, chaotic sensation of falling. Senses blurring from the blood loss and the agonizing ringing in his severed ear, Leon tumbled through a void of shifting colors and suffocating gravity.
He didn't know if he fell for seconds or hours.
Suddenly, the freefall ended with a bone-jarring impact against solid, dry earth.
Leon coughed up a lungful of blood, his vision swimming violently as he rolled onto his side. He tried to open his eyes, fighting through the sheer shock of his injuries. The heavy, rotting moisture of the Mistveil Marsh was gone. The air here was thin, crisp, and crackling with an incredibly dense Profound energy.
He forced his heavy eyelids open.
There was no fog. There were no twisted trees or murky waters. Instead, beneath a sky the color of bruised purple, towering pillars of jagged, crimson crystals and marbles pierced the earth .
Leon gasped for air, his bloody hand still clamped around the glowing herbs. He had survived the serpent. He had claimed the prize.
But as he looked out over the alien, crystalline ruin, one realization settled over him.
He had most probaly reached the middle region of the wetlands -- The Sunken Expanse .