Chapter 26: The Tapestry Torn — A World Away
The Star Dou Great Forest was no longer just a forest. It was a fortress awakening. Ancient trees thickened into living walls, their roots knitting together to form impenetrable palisades. Vines, guided by a silent, collective will, slithered to obscure paths and create deceptive labyrinths. The air hummed with a primal, protective energy—the Silver Dragon King's will, reverberating through every leaf and blade of grass. It was shelter, but it was also a cage of greenery, with Ayush and Wang Dong at its center.
For three days, they moved deeper, guided by the silvery beacon in Ayush's soul. The forest parted for them and closed behind them, hiding their trail. They drank from springs that tasted of liquid vitality and ate fruits that glowed with gentle spirit energy. Yet, the pressure never lifted. It was in the sky—a watchful, burning presence that scorched the clouds. Tang San's Heavenly Eye. It couldn't pierce the Forest's empowered veil completely, but it painted the canopy with streaks of angry, divine light, searching for a weakness.
Wang Dong was silent for most of the journey. The confrontation with the god's projection had shaken him to his core. His light, which had instinctively flared in defiance, now felt like a stranger's power. He'd touch his own wings, looking at them with a mix of awe and horror.
"He hesitated," Wang Dong said on the third night, as they rested in a hollow beneath a giant, luminous mushroom. "The Seagod… when I stood in front of you. He hesitated. Why?"
Ayush fed another branch to their small, heatless spirit-fire. "Because your light isn't just light, Wang Dong. It's inherited. It's divine. And it's tied to him." He'd decided on honesty, at least in this. The lies were too heavy to carry here.
Wang Dong's face paled. "You mean… I'm…?"
"You're not a tool," Ayush said fiercely, cutting him off. "You're his blood. His descendant. Probably the vessel for his daughter's soul. That's the leash he always planned for me—to bind me through you." He saw the devastation dawning in Wang Dong's eyes and pressed on. "But you broke the script. You chose to stand with me against him. That hesitation was his surprise. You are the one thing in his perfect plan that can say 'no.'"
Tears, sparkling like liquid light, traced paths down Wang Dong's cheeks. "All my life… the expectations, the strange power… I was just a gilded cage for someone else?"
"You are Wang Dong," Ayush said, his voice firm. "My friend. My partner on the Golden Road. That's the only identity that matters. The rest is just… bad family history."
The bond between them, strained by fear and revelation, didn't break. It transformed. It shed the last of its scripted innocence and became something harder, truer—a pact between two rebels against their own destinies.
The Black Book pulsed in Ayush's sea. The assimilation of the Forest's vibrant, defensive life-energy and the lingering stress of divine pursuit had pushed its integration of Douluo Prime's laws to a breaking point. It was straining at its own conceptual seams, its hunger for the next realm now a frantic need.
WARNING: LOCAL SPACETIME STABILITY CRITICAL.
FACTORS: 1. NATIVE PRIME AUTHORITY (SILVER DRAGON) AWAKENING. 2. HOSTILE DIVINE WILL (SEAGOD) APPLYING EXTERNAL PRESSURE. 3. BLACK BOOK ASSIMILATION AT REALM-TRANSITION THRESHOLD.
PROBABILITY OF SPONTANEOUS DIMENSIONAL TRANSLOCATION: 87%.
TARGET REALM: [BATTLE THROUGH THE HEAVENS] – HIGHEST RESONANCE.
ADVICE: DO NOT RESIST. TRANSLOCATION MAY BE ONLY PATH TO EVADE IMMINENT DIVINE INTERVENTION.
"We're not going to reach her in time," Ayush said aloud, looking up through the leaves at the sky, which was now perpetually tinged with angry gold. "The Heavenly Eye is concentrating its power. It's going to burn through the Forest's defenses."
"Then we fight," Wang Dong said, his light flickering defiantly.
"Not here," Ayush said, standing. "We need a different battlefield." He opened his spirit to the Black Book, to Gu Yuena's beacon. We need an exit. Now.
As if in response, the silvery beacon in his soul flared. A psychic thread, thin and desperate, connected from the distant Forest heart. "Child… the usurper's focus is here. He seeks to shatter my awakening. The convergence point… is you. The book you carry… let it unfold. It is a door. Step through. Survive. Then… come back."
The Forest around them shuddered. The Heavenly Eye above focused into a single, terrible beam of divine judgment, beginning its descent. It would scorch a continent-sized hole to reach them.
Ayush grabbed Wang Dong's hand. "Trust me! Don't let go!"
He stopped resisting the Black Book. Instead, he poured every ounce of his will, his Dou Qi, his spirit power, and the echoing authority of the Silver Dragon King into a single command: OPEN.
The Black Book erupted from his spiritual sea, not as a phantom, but as a physical object, materializing in the air before them. Its covers flew open. But instead of pages, there was a storm.
A vortex of conflicting laws and stolen energies: the gravity of fallen stars, the frost of Ultimate Ice, the resonance of mechanized soul tools, the unyielding will of the Martial Universe, and now, the vibrant, defiant life-force of the Silver Dragon's domain. It was a chaotic, unstable portal.
The divine judgment beam struck the edges of the vortex. The two colossal powers—a god's focused wrath and the Black Book's chaotic, multiversal hunger—collided.
There was no sound. There was only unmaking.
The space around Ayush and Wang Dong fractured like glass. The Forest, the sky, the heavenly light—all peeled away into swirling fragments of color and concept. They were not flying; they were unraveling.
Wang Dong's grip was iron-tight, his light wrapping around them both in a final, protective shell. Ayush felt his body disintegrate and reform a thousand times a second. He saw flashes of impossible vistas: a desert of endless blue flame, a tomb of bronze giants, a world where cultivators rode flying swords, a bloody planet where saints and demons clashed.
Then, one vision solidified, pulled to the forefront by the Black Book's hungry focus: A vast, rugged continent where the air vibrated with a wild, burning energy called Dou Qi. A world of brilliant alchemical flames, soaring beasts, and empires built on pure, explosive strength. The world of Battle Through the Heavens.
The Black Book, with the last of its guided power, anchored.
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— In Another World —
The arrival was not gentle.
Ayush and Wang Dong crashed through the canopy of a dense, unfamiliar forest, hitting the ground with enough force to crater the earth. The air was thick, hot, and carried the scent of rich soil, exotic blooms, and a pervasive, fiery energy that scraped against their senses.
Wang Dong groaned next to him, his brilliant wings crumpled and dim, flickering weakly. Ayush pushed himself up, his body screaming in protest. His Stellar Bones ached, his Dou Qi vortex was spinning erratically, and his spirit power felt thin, stretched by the translocation. The Black Book was back in his spiritual sea, silent and dormant, its covers firmly shut. It had expended tremendous energy.
But they were alive. And the crushing, omnipresent pressure of Tang San's divine gaze was gone. The silence in his soul, absent that constant, hostile scrutiny, was deafening.
"Where…?" Wang Dong croaked, struggling to sit up. His Light of the Butterfly wings slowly retracted, unable to maintain form. The ambient energy here didn't nourish them; it resisted them.
"Another world," Ayush said, his voice rough. He reached out with his Spirit Eyes, but the sight was different. The river of spirit energy was gone. Instead, he saw a raging, multicolored ocean of Dou Qi, wild and untamed, flowing through the world and every living thing. It was harsher, more volatile than Douluo's spirit energy.
The Black Book stirred weakly, delivering a final, crucial message.
TRANSLOCATION COMPLETE.
PRIMARY WORLD: DOULUO CONTINENT – CONNECTION SEVERED. TEMPORARY SAFETY ACHIEVED.
CURRENT WORLD: DOU QI CONTINENT (BATTLE THROUGH THE HEAVENS UNIVERSE).
LOCAL ENERGY SYSTEM: DOU QI. INCOMPATIBLE WITH PURE SPIRIT POWER.
ADAPTATION PROTOCOL INITIATED:
1. SPIRIT POWER SEALED. Will function as enhanced spiritual force only. Cannot cultivate locally.
2. DOU QI SYSTEM SYNCHRONIZED. Host's existing Dou Qi cultivation (7-Star Dou Disciple) is compatible but weak. Local density is high. Cultivation possible.
3. PHYSICAL BODY (STELLAR BONE, SPATIAL BLOOD): Remains intact but suppressed by world's laws. Requires local energy tempering to fully express.
4. MARTIAL SOULS (SPIRIT EYES, ICE, DRAGON-PHOENIX): Dormant. Cannot manifest without spirit energy.
5. WARNING: Silver Dragon King connection severely attenuated. Gu Yuena's beacon is faint, a distant star.
OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE, ADAPT, GROW IN LOCAL POWER SYSTEM. LEVERAGE [BATTLE THROUGH THE HEAVENS] ASSIMILATED KNOWLEDGE. FIND A WAY TO STRENGTHEN THE CONNECTION BACK TO DOULUO.
Ayush relayed the essentials to Wang Dong, whose face grew grimmer with each point. Their powers—the foundation of their strength—were crippled here. Wang Dong was effectively a mortal with a tough body and exceptional martial skill, his glorious light extinguished. Ayush was left with his suppressed physical might and his weak, 7-Star Dou Disciple energy, which was negligible in this world where Dou Masters were common and Dou Grandmasters weren't rare.
They were refugees, stripped of their glory, in a dangerous, unknown land.
As if to emphasize the point, a low growl echoed through the trees. From the shadows, a beast emerged. It was wolf-like, but sized like a bull, its fur crackling with faint red energy—Fire Attribute Dou Qi. A One-Star Magic Beast, equivalent to a Dou Disciple. In Douluo, it would have been a trivial threat. Now, it was a serious danger.
The beast snarled, sensing easy prey.
Wang Dong stood, shifting into a defensive stance from the Shrek combat curriculum, his eyes hard. Ayush felt the weak Dou Qi in his dantian stir. He couldn't use Gravity Command or Spatial Persuasion here; the laws were different. He had to fight with what this world understood.
He took a breath, falling into the foundational stance of the Furious Lion's Roar, a low-tier Dou Technique from the Black Book's assimilation.
The Magic Beast charged.
The fight was short, brutal, and messy. Ayush's superior technique and body density allowed him to dodge and land a solid blow, channeling his meager Dou Qi to enhance his strike, cracking the beast's ribs. Wang Dong, moving with flawless agility, distracted it, allowing Ayush to finish it with a second strike to the skull.
They stood panting over the carcass, the reality of their situation settling in like a cold weight.
"We're nobodies here," Wang Dong stated, wiping a smear of dirt from his cheek.
"For now," Ayush said, looking at his hands, then at the strange, fiery sky visible through the leaves. "But we have the Book. We have knowledge of this world's power. And we have a way back." He looked at Wang Dong, a fierce, familiar determination rekindling in his eyes. "This isn't an exile. It's a training arc."
A faint, wry smile touched Wang Dong's lips. "A 'training arc' in a world that wants to eat us?"
"The best kind," Ayush said, a ghost of a smirk on his own face. "We learn their rules. We get strong. And then we go back. To finish our road."
The journey home was impossible. The war was on hold. But the reader and the golden light were together, stranded in a world of raging flames and soaring ambition.
Their first task in the world of Battle Through the Heavens was simple: survive the night.
And then, find a way to turn this world's fire into the weapon that would one day burn a god's script to ashes.
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Stranded in the Dou Qi Continent, Ayush and Wang Dong must navigate the brutal basics of survival. They use the Black Book's knowledge to identify basic spirit herbs (here called medicinal plants) and low-level Magic Beasts. Ayush begins actively cultivating Dou Qi, his progress frighteningly fast due to his formidable spiritual foundation and tempered body, quickly breaking through to the Dou Master level. They encounter a small, struggling merchant caravan under attack by bandits (low-level Dou Practitioners). Intervening, they earn passage to the nearest city: Wutan City. There, they hear legends of a young alchemy genius who vanished years ago, and of a powerful strange flame rumored to be in the nearby Magical Beast Mountain Range. The name Xiao Yan is spoken with a mix of awe and caution. Their path to power in this new world begins to take shape.