The fire column lasted only an instant, but its destructive power was horrifying.
In the area directly struck by the fire column, every building and living creature vanished without a trace, leaving behind only a charred, blackened wasteland.
After the fire column disappeared, tiny flames began to appear sporadically around the outer edge of the scorched earth. But these flames could not be extinguished no matter what. Any ordinary human who touched them would be incinerated instantly.
It was three o’clock on a workday afternoon, so there weren’t many people on the streets. Still, many humans were caught in the disaster. Ye Yang couldn’t save them all; he could only watch helplessly as they disappeared in the flames and extreme heat.
The crimson flames were silent, leaving only the panicked cries and screams of humans.
At the edge of the fire column, many people were still frozen in shock from the sudden catastrophe, or injured by exploding cars. Ye Yang rushed over and pulled them to safety.
In the process of rescuing them, he inevitably came into contact with the flames. Ye Yang hadn’t expected that even he, a member of the aquatic race, could barely withstand them. Before long, his body was covered with severe burns.
After he had saved only a few people, YCG personnel suddenly emerged from all over the underground. Director Tu was among them. She hadn’t even ridden her electric scooter—she had flown directly there and began directing rescue operations the moment she landed.
There was no time to worry about hiding their identities anymore. They used whatever means they had. Many exhausted office workers, suddenly caught in a bizarre inferno, then saw all sorts of strangely shaped humans and demons flying through the air. By the time they were transported to safety facilities several kilometers away, they still hadn’t processed what had happened, thinking they must be dreaming.
But before they could figure it out, the Crisis Management Department staff arrived as well.
After evacuating everyone nearby, the personnel on-site joined forces to weave a massive net that could block extreme heat, hoping to prevent the residual energy from the fire column from spreading further.
Ye Yang assessed the temperature inside and outside the net and was skeptical. “Will this even work?”
Director Tu wiped away sweat, pulled her soaked collar, and fanned herself. “Better than nothing.”
Though she said that, her expression clearly read: Of course it’s useless. What are we supposed to do?? How do we put out this fire??
Ye Yang looked around, singled out a few aquatic race members, and together they unleashed a water-based attack spell, attempting to extinguish the fire with a water column even thicker than the fire column itself.
The water column was spectacular. The ground it drenched cooled down considerably. But once the water dried up, everyone saw that the small flames had been completely unaffected. Not only had they not been extinguished, but they continued to spread outward.
Even the spiritual power net they had just woven was easily burned to ash.
The acrid smell of scorched earth grew even stronger.
“This is going to be the death of us…” Director Tu was somewhat despairing. Though she still didn’t know exactly what had happened, she was basically certain this was the Vermilion Bird’s divine fire.
Aside from the Vermilion Bird, what other fire in the world could be this powerful?
She knew the Vermilion Bird’s divine fire was formidable, but she hadn’t expected it to be this formidable!
Ye Yang touched the scale mark on his chest. “I need to find Shen Ming.” In this world, the only one who could extinguish the Vermilion Bird’s fire should be the Black Tortoise.
No sooner had he spoken than the sky was suddenly overshadowed by a massive silhouette. Director Tu’s eyes lit up. “It’s the Black Tortoise!”
Torrential rain began to fall. The Vermilion Bird flames flickered and writhed but eventually went out silently. When the rain stopped, the air and the ground had been washed clean. The smell of burning had completely dissipated. The wounds that everyone had suffered from the flames also healed considerably, the pain almost gone.
Ye Yang quietly exhaled, unable to keep the corners of his mouth from lifting slightly. He and Teacher Shen really were in sync. The moment he thought of him, he appeared.
But soon, he couldn’t smile anymore.
After the rain ceased, Shen Ming landed beside Ye Yang. Ye Yang looked up at him, the words he had been about to say suddenly catching in his throat. Shen Ming’s expression was indescribable—something Ye Yang had never seen on his face before. Something unimaginable had happened.
Shen Ming swallowed before speaking, as if he himself couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “…The upper realm has opened.”
Ye Yang’s mind went blank.
·
At the boundary between the upper and lower realms, Elder Li and Yan Yungui had already been standing there for a long time.
Yan Yungui was growing impatient. “Are you going in or not?”
But the person standing next to him didn’t hear a word.
Elder Li was completely dazed—an expression that had never appeared on his face before. But he had no time to concern himself with that.
He was standing at a place where one more step upward would take him into the upper realm.
He had thought he would spend his entire life searching for something he would never find. He had thought his whole life would ultimately be a long, futile effort. But now, so suddenly, the passage into the upper realm had appeared before him.
Completely unprepared. Yet within arm’s reach.
Has this old tree spirit truly turned into a block of wood? Yan Yungui was starting to curse inwardly.
He could probably understand what Elder Li was feeling, but he couldn’t truly empathize. The upper realm had little to do with him. His entire cultivation system was different from this world’s.
Fortunately, before his patience ran out completely, Shen Ming finally returned—with Ye Yang.
The moment Yan Yungui saw Ye Yang, he grinned. “Kid, you didn’t want to be department director, but here you are working more every day than the actual director.” At a time like this, only he was still in the mood for jokes.
Ye Yang smiled awkwardly, then looked urgently ahead—toward the churning white mist, the newly torn-open entrance to the upper realm.
Just moments ago, Shen Ming had told him that the Vermilion Bird’s divine power had somehow latched onto some subterranean creature, triggering the creature’s self-destruction. Shen Ming had sensed it immediately, rushed over, and forcibly contained the explosion within an extremely small area.
But the Vermilion Bird’s power was simply too formidable. Even after shrinking the blast radius, the force of the explosion was only suppressed by half. The direction of the blast had also been altered—straight upward, forming the fire column that Ye Yang had just witnessed.
This should have been the best possible course of action. Who wouldn’t know that the upper realm is hard to affect? Otherwise, over all these years, countless beings trying to break into the upper realm would have stormed their way in long ago.
But no one had expected the explosion to be this powerful. The barrier between the upper and lower realms—once unbreakable, impenetrable even by gods—had suddenly shattered.
Elder Li and Yan Yungui had come to investigate immediately and discovered that the once-insurmountable barrier had long since worn thin as a sheet of paper, ready to burst at the lightest touch!
Yan Yungui was cautious about this. Elder Li, however, stood at the edge, hesitant and indecisive, pacing back and forth until Shen Ming and Ye Yang finally arrived.
Yan Yungui said, “It’s time to go in. Stop wasting time.”
Ye Yang suddenly felt his hand being gripped tightly. He looked up and saw Shen Ming staring at the entrance, his emotions churning.
Ye Yang squeezed Shen Ming’s hand firmly and took a step forward, pulling him along.
Their figures vanished one after another into the white mist.
Behind them, Elder Li took a deep breath and followed.
Yan Yungui shook his head. “At his age, still so impatient. Oh well, I’ll stay here and guard the door. Don’t want any accidents…”
·
The passage opened by the fire column had no barriers, yet the three who entered the upper realm all stopped in their tracks involuntarily.
Ye Yang hadn’t thought much about it before coming in, but he had once had some vague imaginings of the upper realm—especially after hearing Shen Ming occasionally mention past events. He had formed a fuzzy picture in his mind. The upper realm shouldn’t be, or at least shouldn’t look like this.
Ruins. An expanse of white emptiness. And utter dead silence.
He had known the divine war was fierce, but he hadn’t imagined it to this degree. The entire space seemed to have been fractured into countless fragments, with nothing but void between them.
All the ruins had been smashed to dust, leaving no trace of their original forms. There was nothing beneath their feet that could be called a path. The debris floating in midair was frozen in place—stones that had been halfway through falling simply stopped there, as if time had been stolen.
But the most terrifying thing was the silence.
It was even more profound than the silence of the underworld.
The underworld was quiet, but you could still see spirits passing by and little demons patrolling. The silence of the upper realm was silence taken to the extreme—a silence utterly devoid of life.
Yet paradoxically, the moment Ye Yang stepped into the upper realm, the spiritual energy was so dense that he almost got “drunk” on it. The stark contrast made it all the more eerie.
Shen Ming seemed to have noticed something. Suddenly, he strode forward, faster and faster, until he broke into a run.
Ye Yang hurried after him. He had only taken two steps when he ran into Shen Ming’s back.
Shen Ming had stopped abruptly. His shoulders trembled slightly, followed by a barely audible sigh.
Ye Yang peeked out from behind him and stopped breathing.
“Hssss—!” Elder Li, who had been right behind them, sucked in a sharp breath. “Th-this…”
They stood at the edge of a ruin. Not far below and across a stretch of void lay another ruin. And on that ruin were half of a massive dragon’s corpse, along with the body of a Vermilion Bird—mostly decayed but still retaining some identifiable features.
This was the Azure Dragon and the Vermilion Bird.
Aside from being severed at the waist, the dragon’s corpse appeared largely undamaged. Its enormous head lay on its side, eyes closed as if asleep.
The Vermilion Bird’s body was harder to recognize, perhaps because she had abandoned her physical form early on, her spiritual body escaping to the lower realm just before the upper realm was sealed.
Further in the distance, corpses lay everywhere, along with the second half of the Azure Dragon’s body, pinned beneath the remains of various gods in all shapes.
Ye Yang stole a glance at Shen Ming’s expression but found him calm. Now that he had truly seen this sight, the anxiety and doubt in his heart had finally settled.
The dust had settled.
Everyone was dead. There was no longer any need to dwell on what had happened back then.
“Thud, thud, thud—” Heavy footsteps sounded from behind. Ye Yang jolted in fright and turned around.
It was Xing Tian.
Ye Yang felt a wave of dizziness. Right—Xing Tian was also a divine corpse. So these corpses…
“Don’t overthink it. These are just dead bodies. No spirits, no ability to absorb spiritual energy.” Xing Tian patted Ye Yang on the shoulder. He didn’t even need to look to know what the kid was thinking.
Meanwhile, Shen Ming had already swept the area with his divine sense. “All of them died at the same instant. Possibly their spirits were extracted simultaneously. This definitely happened after I left.”
“There’s something here!” Elder Li’s voice came from behind a ruin.
Several stones were carved with regular, complex patterns that could be pieced together. They looked like writing, but no one recognized it—except Shen Ming.
He scanned it and realized this was a diary carved with his own soul by a nameless god who had remained in the upper realm after it was sealed.
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