Yet even as the idea crossed Jared’s racing mind, forced himself to dismiss it. The scene before bore no resemblance to the Ethereal Realm remembered.
He rose unsteadily to his feet and found himself standing inside a colossal canyon, its shadowed maw stretching farther than his eyes could track.
Both walls of that ravine were riddled with countless mine shafts, tiny, gaping wounds that climbed the cliffs like infected pores. Down on the canyon floor, innumerable silhouettes moved in grim, mechanical rhythm.
When Jared’s vision sharpened, his pupils contracted hard enough to hurt. Human cultivators and beast race cultivators alike toiled there, their clothes little more than tatters, their skin crosshatched with scars, many missing fingers, limbs, or hope.
Armed with nothing but crude chisels and blunt hammers, they hacked at rock that looked hard enough to bleed sparks.
The sun blazed overhead, flooding the canyon with unbearable heat, yet not one laborer was granted a moment’s rest.
Exhaustion and despair were written across every face. Sweat, mingled with blood, slid from their chins onto the searing stone and vanished in angry bursts of steam.
“Move! Faster! Move, you worthless slugs!” A Demonic Cultivator overseer in black armor cracked a whip across the back of a frail, gray-haired human, the lash loud as lightning in the heat-thick air.
The old man’s howl tore through the canyon as crumpled, gravel biting into his knees. Terrified to linger, scrambled up at once and swung his pick anew, every breath a plea for mercy knew would never come.
“Lazy old geezer! You dare slack off?” the overseer sneered and lashed him again, each stripe blooming crimson through his ragged shirt.
Blood soaked the cloth in seconds, but the victim merely clenched his jaw and endured in silence. He would rather swallow pain than invite a punishment even crueler.
Not far away, a young beast-race miner slowed, his strength spent and his strokes feeble. Another overseer charged over and kicked the youth onto the dust-caked ground.
“Useless cur! Can’t even dig a handful of ore, why keep you alive?!” He raised a spiked club, its iron studs already black with old blood, ready to crush bone and hope in a single swing.
“No… Please, don’t kill him!” A human woman threw herself over the fallen beast race youth, using own body as a frail shield.
“Oh? You want to protect that badly? Then die together!” the Demonic Cultivator snarled, lips curling into a savage grin.
Rage, hot and sudden, surged through Jared’s chest like wildfire seeking air. He had never imagined that in this world such brutal, soulless slavery could still exist.
These Demonic Cultivators were nothing short of monstrous.
“You miserable beasts!”
Ice flashed behind Jared’s eyes. In that instant, the canyon air felt sharpened, like every stray breath might slice a throat.
Ahead, where the canyon narrowed to a ragged throat, a row of impossibly tall structures clawed at the sky.
Each tower rose hundreds of yards high, forged in the likeness of an alchemist’s cauldron yet swollen to titanic scale. Their bronze-black walls pulsed crimson from within, exhaling heat that shimmered across the valley floor.
Conveyor platforms rumbled ceaselessly. Pale spiritual stones poured in by the thousands, vanishing beneath glowing lids. Moments later they emerged, transmuted into flawless celestial gems that dazzled like newborn stars.
“What…” Jared’s voice caught in his throat. “They’re refining spiritual stones into celestial gems?”
Realization hammered home.
So this world lacks celestial energy, yet these Demonic Cultivators have forged a way to create it…
Where in all realms have I landed?
How did the chaotic void currents fling me into a place this twisted?
Unease seeped beneath the anger, coiling tight around his ribs.
Down below, a Demonic Cultivator, muscles roped, wolf-tooth club glinting, stalked toward a wounded beast race cultivator and the human woman shielding him.
“Time to die!” snarled, hefting the spiked club overhead, eager to paint the ravine red.”
“Enough!” The single word cracked like thunder, ricocheting from wall to wall until even the furnaces seemed to flinch.
Every hand froze mid-strike. Faces turned. There, amid drifting ash, stood a young man in a white robe, gaze colder than mountain ice, Jared, immovable, commanding.
