Before doing anything else, Ren kissed Murong Zi first.
He didn't warn her. One hand caught her wrist, the other slid to the small of her back, and he pulled her straight into him, stealing her breath with a deep, shameless kiss.
Murong Zi's spear-callused fingers jolted, then reflexively curled into his robe. Her Fire and Wind, which had just been circulating in a steady post-cultivation rhythm, suddenly rioted in her meridians. Heat surged up from her dantian, Wind stirred around her like an invisible vortex, and that proud, straightforward gaze of hers went faintly hazy.
By the time he let her go, the red of sunset wasn't the only color on her face.
"Wh–what are you doing?" Murong Zi demanded, ears red all the way to the tips, trying very hard not to look pleased and failing miserably.
Ren smiled, lazy and warm, that familiar calm curve that made trouble sound like a pleasant walk.
"Kissing someone cute," he said. "You're about to get a big gift from me, Zi. I'm taking payment in advance."
Murong Zi's eyes flickered.
"…Gift?" she muttered, suspicion and expectation tangling together as her heartbeat sped up for a completely different reason. "What are you planning now?"
"You'll see."
He didn't explain. He never did, not right away.
He simply turned.
Bai Jingyun met his gaze head-on, the way a sword met a challenge—clean, unflinching, a hint of aloof cold hidden behind composed eyes.
Her composure lasted until he stepped into her space without the slightest hesitation.
Ren's hand lifted to cradle the side of her neck, thumb brushing the faint pulse there. For a heartbeat he just looked at her, as if tracing the lines of her Martial Heart with his eyes alone.
Then his lips covered hers—slow, deep, unhurried.
Bai Jingyun's back stiffened on instinct; the Sword Intent etched into her bones reacted to the sudden closeness, to the way his aura wrapped around hers. Then, gradually, the tension bled away. Her fingers rose almost unwillingly, clutching at his sleeve.
The Fire lines carved along her meridians flared once, then smoothed under the steady rhythm of his true essence.
When the kiss finally ended, her eyes were bright and faintly wet at the corners, that cool sword-girl façade fractured just enough to show the warmth underneath.
"Ren…" she began, voice unsteady, carrying both reproach and attachment.
He tapped her lightly on the nose.
"Later," he murmured. "Cultivate well. What I'm going to do next is for all of you."
Na Shui made a tiny, almost inaudible sound in the back of her throat.
She'd already taken half a step toward him without realizing it, Water and Fire in her meridians flowing faster, eyes full of that soft, quiet attachment that had nowhere to hide now.
Ren laughed under his breath.
He opened his arms.
Na Shui all but drifted into them, like water returning to its riverbed. He caught her waist with scandalous ease, tilted her chin up with the same carelessness he'd use to tilt a wine cup, and kissed her until she whimpered into his mouth. The Water and Fire fused in her body rolled like a tide pulled by the moon, rhythm syncing to the slow pressure of his lips.
Her fingers twisted into his robe at his back, clinging as if his chest were the only stable thing in the world.
When he finally let her breathe, her cheeks were crimson and her eyes misty, waves still rising and falling in their depths.
"…You're awful," she whispered, words trembling with complaint and sweetness both.
"Mm," he agreed, completely unrepentant. "And you like it."
Na Shui made a soft, strangled sound and buried her face against his chest for a moment, hiding just how hard that hit home.
Na Yi watched all of this with a calm expression… but her fingers had tightened on her sleeve, knuckles faintly pale, betraying her.
Her Martial Heart was like a mountain—steady, carrying responsibilities for her sister, for their future, for the choice she'd made to walk at his side. Mountains did not bend easily.
Ren turned to her.
For a moment, he didn't move.
He just looked—at that quiet firmness, at the way her gaze never fled from reality, at the silent determination that had made her step into a different life without hesitation.
Then he stepped close and simply pulled her in.
Na Yi's body went rigid for a breath; the mountain had been seized.
His lips brushed hers.
This kiss wasn't as wild as Murong Zi's, nor as drawn-out as Bai Jingyun's, nor as teasing as Na Shui's. It was steady. Grounding. His warmth sank into her, his true essence brushed hers like a vast earth-vein running deep beneath the world, telling her:
—I'm here.
Her eyes fluttered shut.
When he drew back, her cheeks carried the faintest flush, like dawn touching snow on high cliffs.
"…You…" she said softly, her usually even voice slightly lower, like a stone shifted in a riverbed.
Ren smiled down at her.
"For you too," he said. "This road I'm opening isn't just for Zi, Jingyun, and Shui. You're mine as well. You don't get left behind."
Na Yi's eyes swayed, something tight and hard in her chest loosening bit by bit.
"…En," she breathed.
Only Qin Xingxuan remained.
She stood very straight, spear in hand, the pulse of her recently stabilized realm still settling through her meridians.
Seeing the others kissed like that had already turned her ears scarlet.
When Ren's shadow fell over her, her fingers tightened around her spear shaft.
He didn't ask.
He took the spear from her hand with casual familiarity, leaning it gently against a nearby stone.
Then his arm slipped around her waist, pulling her close until their bodies touched.
Her breath hitched.
"Ren—"
He cut off her protest with his mouth.
This kiss was different from the ones in the quiet of night. The setting sun painted them both in red-gold light; the wind poured across the terrace; the entire Martial House lay somewhere beyond the training formations and barrier arrays.
He didn't care.
He kissed her with the same depth as before, the same certainty, the same calm, unhurried greed. His hand slid up the line of her spine, fingers pressing lightly between her shoulderblades as if to imprint his presence there.
Qin Xingxuan's spear-heart trembled.
When he finally let her go, she was breathing hard, eyes wide, ears flaming, but her Martial Heart—her spear-Dao—had become even more steady, like a weapon that had just passed a new tempering.
He traced his thumb across her lower lip, amused at the way she shivered.
"You did well," he told her softly. "So I'm going to go do something that makes use of it."
"Something…?" she managed, voice catching. "What are you going to do?"
Ren stepped back just enough to look at all five of them together.
Murong Zi's fighting spirit burned in her eyes, tangled with new, sharp awareness of herself as a woman.
Bai Jingyun's aloof mask lay in clean fragments, clear devotion and pride showing through the gaps.
Na Yi's mountain-calm held a faint spring warmth now, snow beginning to thaw.
Na Shui's watery gaze overflowed with open attachment and a reluctant reluctance to let him go.
Qin Xingxuan's spear-Dao blazed, wrapped tightly around the resolve to stand at his side no matter what realm he stepped into.
Ren's smile deepened.
"There's a road in this world that I haven't walked yet," he said. "If I step onto it properly, it'll sharpen every path you take from here on out."
They stared at him.
Murong Zi narrowed her eyes. "What road?" she demanded.
Ren only lifted his hand and waggled his fingers in a lazy little wave.
"Secret," he said. "Just remember this much: it'll be good for you. For your cultivation. For your future… and for the day you really stand shoulder to shoulder with me."
Na Shui puffed her cheeks, pouting openly. "That's too vague…"
Bai Jingyun's brows drew together, worry cutting through the lingering sweetness. "Is it dangerous?" she asked quietly.
"For others, sure," he said cheerfully. "For me, it's another fun exploration."
Na Yi's lips quirked despite herself, as if she wanted to scold him and couldn't quite manage it.
Qin Xingxuan looked as if she wanted to object, to ask him to stay in the Eastern Great Mountain Range and spar with her until their bones broke.
But she remembered Acacia Peak.
She remembered him standing under a mountain's collapse without flinching, his Dao Heart as unmoved as a stone stele under a storm.
"…You'll come back," she said instead, as if stating a fact rather than asking a question.
Ren grinned.
"Of course," he said. "I still owe each of you a 'day'. I'm not the kind of man who runs away from appointments with beautiful women."
Na Shui turned scarlet.
Murong Zi snorted, trying to bury her smile with disdain and failing.
Bai Jingyun turned her head, hiding a curve at the corner of her mouth that wanted to break free.
Na Yi only shook her head faintly, a helpless softness in her eyes.
Qin Xingxuan's fingers brushed his sleeve once, then clenched and let go.
"Then go," she said softly. "We'll cultivate well."
"Mm." Ren's gaze lifted toward the sky beyond the Martial House's barriers. "You girls keep grinding those bones and meridians. I'll handle the faraway stuff."
He snapped his fingers.
Space around him rippled.
The world unfolded.
…
He rose high above Sky Fortune Kingdom in a single breath, leaving the Martial House, the Seven Profound Valleys, even the seas around the Divine Phoenix domain as small patterns under his feet.
Wind howled around him as clouds thinned and parted.
He stepped into the true upper dome of the Sky Spill World, where the heaven and earth origin energy grew thin and space's own texture could be felt like a taut, nearly invisible membrane under his palm.
Ren closed his eyes.
The Immortal Soul Bone lit up.
Reality… shifted.
Lines appeared in his perception.
Not the thin meridian lines of a human body, nor the fire-veins running beneath mountains, but something vaster—the bones and blood vessels of the world itself.
In his mind's eye, he saw the sphere that an ancient Demon Emperor had once used for a grand experiment: this celestial body hanging in the void, oceans curving away in all directions, continents like dark jade plates plastered to its surface.
Around that sphere, thin silver bands of Law wound like rings—traces left behind by powerhouses whose understanding of Space and Time had carved marks into the planet itself.
Among those marks, one strand burned brightest.
A colossal transmission array lay coiled around the world like a belt. Its anchors were buried in hidden places—above the shattered seas, beneath ancient ruins, and at one particular point that pulsed like a buried heart.
The Demon God Imperial Palace.
Even unactivated, the array's Law pattern wrapped Sky Spill and the Holy Demon Continent in a single logic. It was a road carved into the bones of the world—a continent-spanning bridge that, when opened, could drag armies and destinies across the ocean and fractured spaces between.
Ren's lips curved.
"Found you."
His body flickered.
Space folded.
…
The broken world around the Demon God Imperial Palace smelled of salt and old wounds.
Space cracks laced the sky like black scars. Vast swathes of seawater poured into those tears from every direction, vanishing into unknown depths with a constant, roaring hiss. The ground beneath his feet was a fragment of an ancient continent, a slab of stone and earth floating in an endless void storm.
In the distance, the Demon God Imperial Palace rose.
Black stone. Sinister spires. Ancient arrays crawled across its surface in faint blood-red lines, still pulsing with the brand of the Demon Emperor even after countless years. Deeper still, tucked beneath bedrock and layers of formation, the root of the transmission array glowed like a buried sun, its law-lines spiraling outward through the planet.
Ren stepped onto a lonely outcropping of dark rock far from the main entrance—well away from where Life Destruction Supreme Elders used to prowl, where genius juniors had once marched to their fates. Here, only the shriek of torn space and the hiss of falling seawater broke the silence.
He sank down cross-legged.
His true essence quieted, sinking from his meridians into his dantian, then into something deeper—the rhythm of his Dao Heart.
He let the Immortal Soul Bone wake fully.
…
The world… simplified.
To ordinary eyes, the array beneath the Demon God Imperial Palace might have been a maze of formation lines and incomprehensible inscriptions. To him, complexity folded in on itself. The colossal transmission system resolved into its skeleton: countless layers knotted together—space-locking rings, time-distorting spirals, stabilizing anchors embedded in both Sky Spill and the shattered half-world that housed this palace.
Ren's Dao-sense slid along those patterns.
Space.
Time.
Stability.
Direction.
He let everything else blur.
His own Universal travel art was a patchwork monster stitched together from too many worlds—devils' world-linking seals, Infinity's borderless nature, Great Red's dream-trails through the void, Trihexa's irreversible destruction bound into the rule that roads he closed would never reopen without his consent. It was powerful, but messy—a masterpiece of controlled chaos.
Here, he wanted something different.
Something pure.
He followed the Demon Emperor's thoughts.
This array didn't just jump from point A to point B. It took two continents separated by vast oceans and fractured spaces, then folded all that distance into a single controllable corridor. It smoothed turbulence into streams. It used Time like a lever, stretching or compressing the journey so weaker martial artists wouldn't be torn apart before they arrived.
Ren's consciousness traced each law-line, each node.
Space compressed, then unfolded.
Time slowed, then sped, but always in balance.
Latitude, longitude, and depth in the spatial manifold were all anchored to specific points along the world's shell.
He saw it.
When activated, the array gathered space like cloth, twisting it into a tunnel while Time along that tunnel thickened so the shock of the journey wouldn't destroy those inside. A voyage that should have been weeks of wandering through howling void storms could be survived in a single, harsh breath.
He inhaled slowly and allowed his own Dao to recede.
He suppressed the chaos threads from other universes, the heavy Fate Palaces and their stars, the Dao Fruits of Eight Desolates. For a moment, he became nothing but a lower-realm martial artist sitting before an incomparably profound space-time array, asking two simple questions:
What is Space?
What is Time?
They answered.
Space: the structure that separates all things, the distance between points. An endless, invisible framework that could be stretched, bent, folded. The bowl that held worlds. Cut it, and cracks appeared. Compress it, and distances shrank. Expand it, and even the closest thing felt infinitely far.
Time: the measure of change. The flow that linked cause and effect. It couldn't be seen, but it was etched into every flicker of origin energy, into every wave that rose and fell, into the slow aging of a mortal's bones. Slow it down, and storms became gentle. Speed it up, and a candle's lifetime turned into a spark.
The Demon Emperor had built this array by grabbing those truths with a brutal, straightforward grasp and hammering them into reality.
Ren's Immortal Soul Bone devoured that logic.
His Ancient Ming bloodline filtered it, stripping away demonic imprints and foreign habits, leaving only the pure skeleton of the Laws behind. Impurities were eaten, refinement and order left in their wake.
He sank deeper.
In his Spiritual Sea, faint runes of Space and Time began to form—at first a scattered spray of points, then rotating diagrams like layered star-charts and intricate clockwork, slowly aligning.
The first level of comprehension was something he'd brushed against long ago.
The second had wrapped itself into his travel art without him paying much attention.
The third he'd touched in passing when he had moved battles across worlds.
Now, under the weight of a planet-scale array, under the guidance of the Immortal Soul Bone, his understanding surged.
He saw the world-sphere again, but now through a different filter.
He saw how its curvature bent lines of force; how rivers flowed along great arcs that obeyed the world's shape; how light followed those same curves. He traced the path of a certain ancient transmission tunnel, cutting from this broken realm through countless folds to a land drenched in infernal energy and slaughter—the Holy Demon Continent.
Space twisted.
Time flowed.
His Dao Heart stilled, then opened.
Something… clicked.
A faint invisible shell shattered around his perception. The diagrams in his Spiritual Sea brightened, Space and Time runes rising to a new level of complexity before settling into calm rotation.
The fourth level of Space—the power to disrupt and shatter.
The fourth level of Time—the power to freeze a moment, to thicken the flow until everything inside moved like syrup.
Ren opened his eyes.
For a heartbeat, the world looked different.
The blue of the torn sky turned into layers of depth, each distance a different resonance. The space cracks in the distance no longer seemed like random wounds, but fractures along pre-existing grain, like splintered jade following hidden lines. Even the flow of seawater into those cracks slowed in his gaze; he could see each droplet's path, its tiny, insignificant lifetime of falling.
He lifted his right hand.
He didn't use true essence.
He didn't summon Fire, Thunder, Wind, or Chaos.
He raised a single finger… and gently flicked.
The Law of Space answered.
In the air before him, a thin line appeared—no light, no flame, just an almost imperceptible distortion, like a hairline fracture in glass.
Then—
Crack.
Sound followed a breath later, sharp and ringing like ice splitting on a winter river.
Space in a radius of several dozen feet shattered.
Black cracks spiderwebbed outward, intersecting and multiplying, forming a globe of broken dimensions. Beyond those cracks, the void's turbulent chaos howled, only barely held back by the stability of the ancient fragment-world.
Seawind and stray origin energy surged forward, shredded as they approached the cracks, vanishing into nowhere. Bits of stone at the edge of the effect simply ceased to exist, erased without ash.
Ren flicked his wrist again.
The Law of Space flowed under his will; the cracks folded inward, their sharp edges knitting together like wounds being sutured. In a dozen breaths, the sky was whole again.
He exhaled.
"Not bad," he murmured.
Even the Demon Emperor's residual imprint in the palace trembled faintly, as if something older and more inscrutable had just walked barefoot across the surface of his work.
Inside his soul, someone shuddered.
…
In the depths of the Magic Cube's inner world, a woman in white sat with legs folded beneath her. Snowy robes pooled around her like still moonlight; ice-crystal hairpins glimmered faintly in her dark hair.
Mo Eversnow's eyes snapped open.
For one who had walked the Divine Realm and stood as the saintess of a World King Holy Land, there were very few things left in the lower realms that could truly shake her Martial Heart.
This was one of them.
"Space…" she whispered. "Time…"
Through the Cube's connection, she'd felt it clearly: Ren's comprehension of Space and Time climbing in a single leap, both stepping into a height that, in the Divine Realm, only outstanding Empyrean descendants could touch after years of effort.
Here, in this tiny lower-realm world, from a man whose true essence cultivation still sat at the Xiantian realm.
Her heart trembled. She could no longer suppress it.
In the next instant, her consciousness rose along the Cube's threads, reaching for him.
…
Ren's gaze flicked inward.
A pale silhouette formed in his Spiritual Sea.
Mo Eversnow appeared as if carved from snow and moonlight, robes drifting around her ethereal figure. Her eyes, usually as calm and cold as still water on an icy lake, held something else now—a flicker of genuine shock.
For once, those eyes… were not steady.
"You…" she began, then actually stopped, as if words had failed her.
Ren chuckled softly.
He'd watched her remain composed before ancient inheritances that would have driven other people mad. Seeing her at a loss had its own charm.
"Morning," he said mildly. "First time we're properly meeting. Did I wake you?"
Her gaze sharpened, gathering itself.
"Don't joke," she said.
For anyone else, her tone would've still sounded cool and even. For her, it was almost raised. "You… this comprehension… In the lower realms, how…?"
Ren lifted a hand, palm up, catching her words as if they were something light.
"I got curious," he said. "The Demon Emperor carved a beautiful road here. It would've been rude not to walk it."
Mo Eversnow stared at him.
"Fourth level of Space and Time," she said quietly. "At your current realm. Do you understand what that means?"
Ren tilted his head, that lazy, amused smile returning.
"Judging from that tone," he mused, "it means I've become a more interesting man in your eyes."
Her ears reddened. If one didn't know her, they'd miss it.
"…Ridiculous," she muttered, ice façade trying to reform. Then, more seriously, "With this level of comprehension, even in the Divine Realm, you could stand proudly among the descendants of Empyreans. In Laws alone, you would not lose to them."
She hesitated.
"Ren Ming," she said finally, voice softening by a fraction. "We should talk."
There it was.
He could feel the eagerness she was suppressing—the curiosity, the calculation, the faint, reluctant pull in her own heart. To a woman who had carried clan burdens and ancient hopes on her shoulders, a man whose Dao marched so far ahead of his realm was not something she could ignore.
Ren's smile turned slow.
In his Spiritual Sea, he stepped close. Instead of taking her hand, he reached up and brushed a thumb along the line of her jaw—an intimate, teasing gesture that made her eyes widen a fraction.
"Soon," he said. "I promise."
Her brows drew together.
"You still want to push further?" she guessed.
"Mm." He didn't deny it. "Talking with you isn't something I plan on treating casually. Before we get into the serious part, I want my foundation one step higher. Space and Time are one thread. There's another I need to pull."
Her gaze flickered. "…Where?"
Ren's smile held a hint of sharpness. "A place that'll help all of us, even in the Divine Realm."
He let his hand fall from her phantom cheek.
"Wait for me in the Cube," he added. "When I'm done with this errand, we'll talk properly."
Mo Eversnow held his gaze for a long breath.
"…Very well," she said at last. "I'll wait."
Her figure dissolved back into snowlight.
Ren exhaled, the corners of his mouth still tilted upward.
"All right," he murmured. "Next stop."
He rose to his feet.
The Demon God Imperial Palace's formations watched him, ancient and silent, unable to understand the foreign Dao that had just dissected them and then walked away.
Ren lifted his hand.
A simple gesture tugged at the law-backbone he'd just traced.
Light exploded beneath the Demon God Imperial Palace, racing along hidden formations. The world-sphere shuddered as one of its deepest tunnels opened.
Ren stepped forward.
Space folded.
Time stretched.
The world vanished.
…
The ancient transmission tunnel between Sky Spill and the Holy Demon Continent was a nightmare of broken dimensions.
Space storms howled through the void—razor-edged currents of twisted Law that could slice high-stage Life Destruction martial artists into drifting fragments. Time eddies swirled, pockets where a single breath could last a day, and another where an entire day vanished in a heartbeat.
For most cultivators, walking here was a desperate gamble.
For Ren… it was training.
He stood in the heart of the transmission corridor like a man standing knee-deep in a violent river, hands clasped behind his back, coat fluttering in invisible winds.
In front of him, a jagged black crack in space lunged like a living blade.
He flicked his fingers.
Space Disruption stirred.
The crack's trajectory bent away, its edge sliding past him by the width of a hair. It collided with another crack in the distance; the two annihilated each other with a silent shudder, leaving only ripples in the warped void.
Another stormfront surged in—a tidal wave of twisted space where direction had been lost, every step leading nowhere. Ren stepped sideways. To his senses, the corridor now was lines and planes, currents and eddies of space itself. Where the array had smoothed the tunnel for ordinary travelers, he saw the roughness beneath and used it.
He pressed his palm toward an incoming surge.
Space quivered.
The storm spread thin, its sharpness dulled, redirected along the tunnel walls. The tunnel bucked, but the ancient array grabbed that motion and diverted it, its sturdy design colliding with his law-manipulation and forming a strange harmony.
Time eddies tried to catch him.
In one pocket, everything crawled. A single heartbeat stretched into an incense stick of time. In another, the flow narrowed; a step could cost hours.
Ren simply… walked.
Time Freeze flared as a thin sheen around him.
The worst eddies slowed further, their influence thickening into something visible—misty halos of sluggish time he could simply step around. In other places, he let the rapid streams wash past him, allowing his thoughts to tick dozens of times within a breath, carving details of the corridor into his mind.
He didn't block everything.
When a space storm was manageable, he let it grind against his Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique and his Ancient Ming bloodline. Bones remembered the pressure; blood devoured distortions and spat them back out as refined understanding. Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians stored the impression of every perfection of movement as nascent Dao Fruits in his flesh.
By the time the tunnel's far end appeared—a round gate hanging in the dark, opening onto a blood-red world—Ren's new comprehension had settled completely. No instability remained.
He stepped through.
…
The Holy Demon Continent greeted him with the scent of blood.
Not fresh blood, but ancient and heavy—the smell of a battlefield that had never really ended.
The sky over the Blood Slaughter Steppes was a dull, oppressive crimson. Clouds churned like clotted blood, lightning crawling sluggishly inside them like dark serpents. The land below stretched flat and endless, scarred by ravines and dried rivers. Every inch of soil was soaked in killing intent and infernal energy.
Far in the distance, dark mountain peaks pierced the bloody horizon.
Between them, like black teeth driven into the earth, towers rose—one after another, tall and cold, their silhouettes stabbing into the sky. Twelve Skysplit Towers. Here, duels to the death were entertainment. Here, strength was law, and slaughter was currency.
To the east, one tower drew his gaze.
It speared through the red clouds, banners snapping in a wind that stank of blood and iron.
Polaris Skysplit Tower.
"Mm." Ren's smile deepened. "There you are."
He didn't stride toward it yet.
He stood still.
The infernal energy of the Steppes surged in waves, tangled with the murderous will of countless fallen warriors. This place was a killing paradise, but beneath that, he could sense something else—a faint, chilling thread, like a thin knife pressed to the world's throat.
Annihilation.
He let it brush his skin.
The word itself tasted sharp on his tongue.
Here, in this lower realm, most people spoke of Space and Time as unreachable heights. But on this continent, there was a Concept that stood shoulder to shoulder with them in terms of terror.
The Concept that destroyed all.
Body. Treasure. Aura. True essence. Soul.
Ren's eyes narrowed as he extended his perception.
The Asura aura here was thick enough to chew; the land itself had become an echo of Samsara Road and Yellow Springs, a place where the dead were never properly gone and killing intent never faded. Somewhere in the distance, something like a black-red flame pulsed, a rudimentary, vicious expression of that Concept.
"…Not bad," he murmured. "This world really does have a talent for extremes."
He lifted one foot and stepped.
The blood-red sky remained above him, but the scenery shifted as if the land itself had slid under his feet.
He crossed a stretch of cracked plain where the bones of giant demons jutted from the ground like half-buried mountains, infernal wind whistling through empty eye sockets. He crossed a dried riverbed where the stone was permanently stained dark, as if some ancient battle had poured an ocean of blood over it that had never properly washed away.
Once, a wave of killing intent slammed toward him—no ordinary murderous aura, but a lingering will from some long-dead High Lord that still refused to fade.
Ren didn't bother drawing a weapon.
His Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent stirred around him, a thin, multi-colored strand extending from his heart. The air shivered. That lingering will, once sufficient to crush ordinary Life Destruction experts into trembling, split like rotted cloth and scattered.
He walked until the towers in the distance shifted, one silhouette growing larger, a dark spear thrusting up from the plains.
The closer he came, the more human signs appeared.
War flags. Broken weapons half-buried in the soil. Paths worn by countless feet. The smell of smoke and sweat began to mix with blood and infernal energy.
Soon, the towering outline of Polaris Skysplit Tower dominated the horizon, its body covered in dense demonic runes, its presence like a silent, hungry beast.
Polaris City sprawled at its feet.
…
Ren stood in the shadow of its outer wall, a structure of dark, time-smoothed stone that loomed over the surrounding land. Behind it lay a chaotic city—giant demons, imps, humans, Fey, and other races all moving under the Tower's presence. The air was thick with the stink of sweat, blood, cheap wine, and ambition.
Cries rose and fell. Somewhere, a fight broke out; somewhere else, a slave market's chains clinked. In the distance, the Tower's entrance platforms glowed faintly as warriors entered and exited, some limping, some laughing madly, some being carried like sacks of meat.
Ren gave the chaos a casual once-over.
Then he turned his head, choosing a narrow, half-collapsed alley between two leaning stone buildings where almost no one passed.
He stepped in.
A small twist of true essence sealed the space around him. Sound thinned, as if someone had laid a veil over the alley. Stray spiritual senses that brushed this place slid away as if over smooth glass, failing to catch on anything.