Tushan Shanhe landed nearby with a calm expression. He immediately spread out his spiritual perception and examined their surroundings. Three breaths later, an expression of utter disbelief appeared on his face. He gave Fu Young a complicated look before turning to Xiao Shou.
"We did arrive safely, but this isn’t the Spirit Fox Realm where our clan resides. We’ve arrived in a place called the Mystic Jade Realm."
"The Mystic Jade Realm?" Xiao Shou asked in confusion.
"I’ll tell you about the Mystic Jade Realm later." Tushan Shanhe nodded at Xiao Shou before turning to Fu Young. "For now, let’s find a place to settle the Heaven Origin Realm."
As if on cue, the moment he finished speaking, an extremely loud voice echoed across the entire land of the Heaven Origin Realm.
"Who goes there? How dare you occupy the territory of our Falling Star Gate without permission!"
"Occupy the territory of the Falling Star Gate?" Xiao Shou asked in confusion, releasing his spiritual perception to find out what was happening.
Beside him, Fu Young took her hand, his expression calm and composed.
"After I broke through the realm membrane, I saw that this place was vast and had no villages or settlements inhabited by living beings. It also happened to have enough room for the scattered landmasses of the Heaven Origin Realm, so I controlled the osmanthus tree and brought them down here. It seems this place belongs to the Falling Star Gate, and our arrival has alarmed their cultivators."
"Oh! So that’s what happened. Then we should hurry..." Xiao Shou nodded and was just about to suggest going over to explain the situation to the Falling Star Gate cultivators when he suddenly saw eight black specks falling from the sky.
As the specks descended closer and closer, he finally recognized them. They were the eight palatial treasures belonging to the eight major sects, the very same treasures capable of traveling between realms that had earlier flown into the cyan vortex.
However, they hardly looked like treasures anymore.
Their pavilions had collapsed, crystal tiles lay shattered, and their grand halls had crumbled. Everything was in a terrible state of disrepair. The protective barriers surrounding the palaces were so thin that they seemed as though they would shatter at the slightest touch, and their light flickered on and off.
The cultivators inside the palaces were unable to sense what was happening outside. Meanwhile, those responsible for maintaining the protective barriers had all been left covered in wounds. Their faces were ashen, their cultivation levels had fallen, and they looked utterly exhausted.
They had barely managed to control their palaces and bring them down onto their respective mountain ranges.
Seeing them in such a miserable state, Xiao Shou, despite his kind and softhearted nature, found it impossible to sympathize with them after remembering how they had abandoned all the living beings of the Heaven Origin Realm. Instead, he was simply curious.
"How did they end up in such a sorry state?"
"The passage leading here contains a strange space-time storm, as well as Void Beasts that specialize in devouring foreign objects inside the passage. They struggled to deal with them, which is why they ended up looking so miserable," Fu Young answered casually.
Seeing that his Master was merely curious and showed neither concern nor sympathy, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
It was a good thing his Master hadn’t softened toward those people who had betrayed and abandoned him. Otherwise, if they complained about how he had sabotaged them, his Master might become angry with him. That would be a real headache.
Hearing this, Tushan Shanhe, standing nearby, couldn’t help twitching the corner of his mouth.
Unlike Xiao Shou, who had entered Yao Heng’s internal space and devoted himself entirely to fusing materials and cultivating, Tushan Shanhe had never been in the habit of entrusting his safety to others. Therefore, whenever his cultivation recovered over the past several days, he had immediately checked the situation outside.
He hadn’t expected to witness the osmanthus tree controlled by Fu Young wreaking havoc inside the passage connecting the lower realm to the upper realm.
He had seen it greedily absorb the energy of the space-time storms and devour the Void Beasts. He had also discovered that this passage was eight times wider than the passages they had used when descending to the lower realm in the past.
As Fu Young continued absorbing energy and devouring Void Beasts, the passage kept expanding rapidly. Along with its growing size, the space-time storms grew more violent, and the Void Beasts became increasingly enormous.
Fu Young wasn’t afraid of any of this. In fact, the space-time storms and Void Beasts seemed to avoid the osmanthus tree altogether.
The eight palatial treasures belonging to the major sects, however, had suffered terribly. Even though they were immortal-grade treasures capable of traveling between realms, and precious inheritances passed down through their respective sects, they had struggled miserably against space-time storms and Void Beasts of such overwhelming scale.
The more fiercely Fu Young absorbed the energy of the space-time storms and devoured the Void Beasts, the more violently those storms and beasts, which avoided the osmanthus tree, attacked the eight palaces.
Only after sensing and understanding everything that had happened did Tushan Shanhe feel safe enough to return to his meditative cultivation.
He simply hadn’t expected that the other end of the passage would lead to the Mystic Jade Realm.
Thinking of the Mystic Jade Realm and the voice that had just spoken, Tushan Shanhe immediately came back to his senses. He exchanged a meaningful glance with Fu Young and Xiao Shou, then teleported high into the sky, disappearing among the clouds where no one could see him.
Raising his voice, he called out, "Tushan Shanhe of the Spirit Fox Realm has come to visit. I respectfully invite our fellow Daoists of the Falling Star Gate to show themselves!"
"So, a fellow Daoist from the Spirit Fox Realm has arrived. What brings you to the Falling Star Gate?"
The booming voice sounded again and a burly bearded man carrying an enormous wine gourd on his back came riding on the clouds and landed in front of Tushan Shanhe.