482: Chapter 482 The cleaning lady casually waved her hand, and my quasi-emperor teammate flew thirty feet!

The moment the Ascension Immortal Light exploded, Su Chen's internal organs felt as if they were grabbed by an invisible giant hand and twisted three times.

A sense of weightlessness crashed down upon him.

He felt like he wasn't ascending, but rather being stuffed into a drum washing machine set to the dehydration cycle.

The light dissipated.

A cold and solid sensation came from beneath his feet.

Su Chen was the first to steady himself, his feet stepping onto a patch of ancient bluestone.

Immediately after—

"Thud!"

"Ouch, my waist!"

"Who... who the hell stepped on my butt?!"

A group of people crashed onto the plaza behind him like spilled beans, falling every which way.

Qian Duoduo's two-hundred-plus-pound round body directly smashed out a human-shaped crater; he lay sprawled out, his fat still performing shock-absorbing movements.

The monk Monk Jiese tried to make a standard Vajra Subduing Demon Stance landing.

Instead, he landed head-first, his smooth bald head scraping a trail of sparks across the bluestone.

Only Wang Baobao was different.

She drifted down lightly and landed steadily, without even a wrinkle in her hem.

The first thing she did upon landing wasn't to observe her surroundings.

It was to sniff the air vigorously.

"Boss."

"This place smells so good."

"Even the air is sweet."

Her large, dark eyes were terrifyingly bright, and a trace of undisguised drool hung from the corner of her mouth.

Su Chen had no time to pay attention to her.

He looked up.

When he took his first breath, his entire body froze.

The air here was wrong.

It wasn't thin; it was too thick.

It was so thick that every breath felt like drinking water; Immortal Qi liquefied into visible white mist, flowing slowly across the ground and over his ankles.

The sky was a deep, heavy azure.

Several absurdly massive Immortal Mountains floated above the dome, their bases trailing ten-thousand-zhang-long waterfalls; the water crashed into the sea of clouds, splashing not droplets, but tiny golden fragments of Law.

In the distance, a flock of Immortal Cranes flew in Formation; as their wings flapped, the spiritual light shaking off their feathers exploded in mid-air like fireworks.

It certainly looked like a fairyland.

A standard one.

Textbook-level.

But Su Chen's expression completely darkened three seconds after landing.

He tried to lift his right hand.

Heavy.

It felt as if several mountains were hanging from his arm.

He tried to mobilize the Qi in his body.

The speed at which the Qi moved through his Meridians was more than ten times slower than in the Lower Realm, as viscous as swimming through mud.

He instinctively wanted to fly through the air.

His feet left the ground... by three centimeters.

Then, with a "smack," he fell back down.

The expression on Su Chen's face was truly something to behold.

Like a self-proclaimed veteran driver who confidently sits in the driver's seat only to find the steering wheel is reversed, the gas pedal is the brake, and there's a cliff outside the window.

[...]

[Wait.]

[Where is my Great Saint Realm cultivation?]

[How is it that in this gods-forsaken place, I feel like a tiger with its teeth pulled out?]

[No, at least a tiger still has claws.]

[Right now, I can't even put strength into my claws.]

Qian Duoduo finally managed to crawl out of the crater, his face flushed red, veins bulging on his forehead, and his fat shaking like a sieve.

"Boss..."

His voice was trembling.

"I... I can't move..."

"Wait, what kind of place is this?"

"I'm a Quasi-Emperor, for crying out loud! Why is it even hard to stand up? Is the water in the Immortal Passing Pool poisonous?"

Jian Buping knelt on one knee, one hand gripping the starfall sword tightly to barely keep himself from collapsing.

His face was whiter than paper.

In those eyes that were always cold, true horror appeared for the first time.

Not because the enemy was too strong.

But because he realized he had become weak.

So weak he couldn't even fly.

This feeling was more agonizing than being killed by a single sword strike.

The monk Monk Jiese sat cross-legged on the ground, hands pressed together, chanting under his breath.

But his legs were shaking.

Shaking violently.

The speed of his chanting was also wrong, as fast as a repeater at double speed.

"amitabha, amitabha, amitabha!"

Hua Nongying stood half a step behind Su Chen, her fox-like eyes quickly scanning the surroundings, her pupils constricting sharply.

She didn't cry out or complain.

But she instinctively moved half an inch closer to Su Chen.

As Sect Master of Hehuan Sect, her instinct for sensing danger was sharper than anyone's.

This place was wrong.

Very wrong.

Su Chen didn't speak.

He remained silent for a few seconds, his mind racing.

Absurdly high gravity.

Suppression of Laws.

Obstruction of Qi flow.

His gaze swept over the ancient, weathered stone carvings at the edge of the plaza, and he felt the density and level of the Laws of heaven and earth here.

He reached a conclusion that made his scalp tingle.

"This isn't a curse, nor is it a Formation."

His voice was low and steady.

"It's that the Rank of the rules of this world itself is more than one level higher than the Lower Realm."

"Our cultivation hasn't disappeared; it's just that before Laws of a higher dimension—it's not enough."

After saying this, even he fell silent.

[To put it in layman's terms.]

[We just got into university from our village and rushed to the city to report for duty.]

[Only to find that any random security guard in the university town is a post-doc.]

Just as everyone was still digesting this cruel reality.

A steady sound came from a corner on the west side of the plaza.

"Swish—"

"Swish—"

"Swish—"

It was the sound of a broom sweeping across bluestone.

The rhythm was slow and regular, carrying a mundane, everyday atmosphere that didn't belong on a battlefield.

Everyone looked toward the sound.

Below the stone steps at the edge of the plaza sat an old woman.

Her hair was gray and tied messily behind her head.

She wore a dusty, coarse cloth shirt covered in patches, with the cuffs worn thin.

Her cloth shoes had holes where her toes peeked out.

She held a broken broom that was mostly bald, slowly sweeping a few withered leaves; her movements were mechanical, and her eyes were cloudy, looking just like any ordinary old woman found in a rural market in the Lower Realm.

She had absolutely nothing to do with the word "Immortal."

Qian Duoduo had just caught his breath and was looking around for a place to rest; he moved a few steps and plopped his butt right in the path of the old woman's sweeping.

"Oh, I'm exhausted..."

He wiped his sweat, still muttering.

"This crappy place doesn't even have a chair; it's too inhumane..."

"Move."

The old woman didn't even look up.

Her voice was dry, like chewing sand.

Qian Duoduo was stunned for a moment.

He turned his head, looked at the short, withered old woman, and then looked down at himself.

A dignified First-tier Quasi-Emperor.

The Young Master of Wanbao Pavilion.

Being told he was... in the way by a street sweeper?

Qian Duoduo's mouth twitched.

He might be cowardly, but he had his pride.

The pride that belonged to a wealthy person.

"Auntie, what's with this attitude?!"

Before he could finish.

The old woman flicked her wrist.

That broken, bald broom casually brushed in Qian Duoduo's direction.

She didn't even look at him.

The movement was light, no different from shooing away a fly in the way.

And then...

"Boom!!"

Qian Duoduo's two-hundred-plus-pound frame directly flew.

He wasn't "pushed" out.

He was launched from the ground like a bouncy ball by an invisible force he didn't even have time to perceive the source of.

He tumbled seven or eight times in the air, the waves of fat traveling from his left cheek to his right and back again.

Finally, with a "thud," his back slammed solidly into a stone pillar thirty zhang away.

The stone pillar was fine.

Qian Duoduo slid down and slumped on the ground, seeing stars.

His mouth was hanging open, unable to close for a long time.

It wasn't that he was hurt.

He was dumbfounded.

From beginning to end, he hadn't even touched the edge of that power.

Like a speck of dust being blown away by the wind—does a speck of dust have the right to feel the force of the wind?

The plaza was deathly silent.

Jian Buping's hand had already gripped his sword hilt.

But in the next second, his hand loosened again.

Because he had just instinctively scanned the old woman with his Divine Thought.

Just one glance.

His Sea of Consciousness felt as if it had been targeted by an ancient Vicious Beast; the feedback of Spiritual Pressure almost crushed his Divine Soul directly.

Jian Buping's hand was shaking.

Not from anger, but from fear.

That street-sweeping old woman—is she in the Great Emperor Realm?