Rolling her neck twice and wincing at the faint popping noises as the joints rubbed against each other due to prolonged disuse and her horrible reading posture, the girl took one last look at the black book resting on the armchair.
Turning her gaze away, she quickly hugged the black leather book to her chest before striding away.
After a deep breath, An Fei walked towards the unmarked crystalline wall, rapping the crystal surface with her fist three times.
Though she wanted to know more, especially how to cultivate, the girl felt as if her mind was about to burst. She needed time to digest and sort through the information she had just crammed into her mind.
Responding to her three knocks, a circle of golden light burst from the floor, producing a circle with a radius of three meters.
Ensuring that her entire body was standing in a stable position and well within the perimeter of golden light, An Fei braced herself for the incoming jerk.
“…ah!?”
Or she didn’t amply prepare, for the girl was rudely deposited at the base floor of the Archive without any warning. Rubbing her sore body as she watched the pale-blue radiance dissipate into fragments of light, An Fei suppressed the groan of pain and stumbled to her feet, dragging her body out of the grand library.
The platform had graciously transported her onto the first level of the Archive of Time within an instant, saving her the massive amount of time she would have spent climbing the ladder.
However, it had retained the full energy during the impact, causing a tremendous wave of pain to spread across her entire body.
Her body was spared from any damage, but in exchange, An Fei felt as if a storm of searing heat was ravaging her body from the inside.
Her knees buckling and devoid of strength, the girl nearly thought that her physique had regressed to that of the malnourished constitution she encountered upon transmigrating into Great Yong.
Holding her waist and hip in agony, the girl limped through the second corridor to return to the massive throne room, her beautiful countenance displaying a relieved smile upon escaping the seeing the outline of a grand throne.
Without further ado, however, An Fei directly entered the first corridor, not stopping until she had entered the soft boudoir, upon which she crashed into the bed without a single thought.
“I’ll return after a while…” the girl murmured, her eyelids gently fluttering in pain and fatigue.
“I want some time to think…”
The soft and warm blankets quickly lulled An Fei into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.
As the girl’s mind sank into darkness, the mirror supported by the bedside released a brilliant scarlet light that covered the sleeping figure of a young girl, and her appearance gradually became indistinct before finally disappearing…
–
The Shattered Star Continent was under the absolute reign of three empires; Great Yan, Great Yong, and Bei Tang.
Great Yong ruled the territories in the north and western regions of the continent; Great Yan ruled the south and the eastern third of the continent; Bei Tang oversaw the land from the north to the east.
These three empires controlled the vast majority of the Shattered Star Continent, with only a few thousand kilometers remaining uncharted due to the absurd dangers within those regions of land.
However they wished to expand and conquer the sliver of land left unclaimed within the continent, they dared not to for even cultivators of the Nascent Soul Realm faced grave danger.
With the Nascent Soul Realm being the peak attainment of cultivation amongst the royal empires, it was not a mystery that the empires would instead withdraw their territories, drawing a wide berth from the region of death.
The central plains of the Shattered Star Continent produced the inhabitants’ major source of grain and crops; the south contained rich deposits of precious metals; the north possessed unfathomable reservoirs of crystals imbued with spiritual energy; and the east and west was home to the demonic beasts of the continent.
The clear divide of resources forced the three empires to sincerely cooperate in trade without thoughts of harboring war or greed, for the grain, precious metals, crystals and stones imbued with spiritual energy, and demonic beasts, all were necessary to an empire’s development and survival.
If they dared skimp on grain, the people would starve; the lack of precious metals would severely inhibit infrastructure development and the expansion of cities; and crystals and demonic beasts were vital to a cultivator’s progression regardless of their cultivation method.
The central plains were not underneath a singular empire, but each possessed an equal share of territory that attempted to outperformance the rest.
Once such example was the Feng Bi Prefecture. Underneath the authority of Great Yong, but the prefecture housed an equal distribution of nationalities. Prefectures like the Feng Bi Prefecture, especially in the central plains, served as the center of international commerce within the Shattered Star Continent.
Feng Bi Prefecture spanned no more than a three hundred square kilometers; the territory was completely covered by arable land, a plateau of fertility and life.
The majority of spiritual herbs, medicines, and ordinary grain supplementing and sustaining the lives of the empire’s population were grown in Feng Bi Prefecture and its neighboring territories.
If hovering above the territory, one could only see villages submerged in massive plots of land sectioned for farming, with towering granaries dotting the plateau, several cities dotting the center of the prefecture in a ring-formed cluster.
A few farmers toiled at the farms as they cleared away the excess snow from the plots of land housing specific spiritual herbs to prevent them from a rapid death.
The entirety of Feng Bi Prefecture had entered a few months of tranquil leisure as they waited for the arrival of mid-spring, the streets and shops in the cities devoid of people.
However, the source of the first wave of great turmoil was destined to strike the fringes of the Feng Bi Prefecture on this lazy morning. However, it was not from a geothermal disruption or a disaster of locusts, but from the sky.
Within the greyed skies of winter above the Shattered Star Continent, three stars shone brightly, their radiance piercing through the thick clouds to shadow themselves on the ground.
Blazing scarlet, a dull azure, and teal effused with a strain of vitality.
The three rays of light landed on different areas of the central plains, each headed for a different empire’s territory.
The teal star’s radiance shone on the corner of Feng Bi Prefecture, a charted plot of land growing Green Spirit Grass, a stable commodity of cultivators among the continent.
The land had already been cleared of the majority of the snow that had accumulated during the beginning of winter, thus many of the original laborers had stopped paying much attention until the temperatures began to rise.
The teal radiance shone onto the soil for an incense stick’s of time, before suddenly vanishing.
Other than an aged farmer who soon successfully convinced himself of experiencing a hallucination, not a single person within the prefecture had noticed the abnormal phenomenon.
If they had explored this area of land, perhaps by chance or by routine diligence, they would have discovered a youth laying facedown amidst the chilling snow. A few moments later, the youth suddenly swung his arms and legs, springing his body into midair.
Instead of falling down, the youth’s body hovered a few meters above the ground, his feet suspended by an unknown force. The eyelids twitched several times, before flashing open to reveal a pair of hazel eyes that flashed with cunning and violence.
If anyone had obtained a glimpse of his appearance, they would only label the youth with one word: devil.
The youth appeared as a handsome, young master with fair-skin and beautiful features, a green dot the size of a meng bean decorating his forehead. Combined with the bewitching but dangerous aura emanating from his body, the youth could indeed be labeled as a fatal attraction.
Raising his arm and realizing that the fair-skinned limb was exceedingly delicate and devoid of strength compared to his memories, the youth’s mouth twitched into a scowl. However, his expression soon morphed into one of amusement, and the youth’s body began to fall onto the ground.
Two feet clad in thick-soled boots landed onto the ground, a pulse of green light emanating from the impact. Everything that touched the green light quickly fell into decay, the life and earth nearby not spared from the same, brusque treatment.
As nearby life perished in droves, thin streams of vitality converged with the youth at the center, causing his countenance to become ruddy as his body fiercely absorbed the life force.
By the time the pulse had expanded to a radius of three kilometers, the youth frowned and raised his hand, causing the ripple to disintegrate and disperse into the atmosphere. The pair of eyes revealed a glint of cruelty and laughter, and Bai Xing took his step into the mortal world.
“How interesting. To think that a mortal world under the jurisdiction of a mere precinct would possess so many restrictive mechanisms against the inhabitants of the Realm.”
