160: The Nether, the Forgotten Prison

At the time Lin Tian was shaking the Universe in the main world, starting his brilliant mythology as the “First of All Time,” and preparing to embark on a new journey to find the bronze gate.

In a remote, desolate corner of the vast and boundless main Universe, unknown to him, where even the starlight appeared incredibly dim.

There existed a Lower Realm, completely sealed and isolated by an ancient, powerful force, almost like a Law of a Heavenly God.

Its name was — the Land of Abandonment.

The Laws here were incomplete.

The Spiritual Qi here was as thin as mist.

The flow of time here was also completely different from the main world, as if an invisible hand had forcibly slowed it down a hundredfold.

It was like a forgotten, long-decayed, giant prison floating in cosmic dust. Inside the prison was despair. Outside the prison was indifference... In the Land of Abandonment, Eastern Barren Region, a dilapidated ancient city built from weathered boulders, “Wangxian City.”

In a shabby private school in the south of the city.

An old teacher with white hair and a face full of gully-like wrinkles was leaning on a cane, using his hoarse voice, as if it had been ground by wind and sand thousands of times, to tell dozens of ragged, sallow, but exceptionally bright-eyed young children below the heavy and despairing history of this land.

“...Children, you must remember.” The old man’s voice carried a deep-seated weariness and helplessness, “Our world, our home, in the eyes of those high and mighty Immortals of the Upper Realm, is merely a prison for exiled criminals.”

“Legend has it that in the incredibly distant ancient times, our ancestors were criminals who committed heinous crimes in a once glorious Immortal Dao Imperial Dynasty. They were stripped of their Immortal roots, had their Dao foundations shattered, and were finally exiled to this Land of Abandonment, where the Laws are incomplete and Spiritual Qi is depleted, never to return.”

“Here, resources are scarce, and the most top-tier Cultivation Techniques are only incomplete rubbings. The highest Realm we can achieve in our entire lives, exhausting all our efforts and resources — ‘Martial Ancestor’ — in the eyes of those Immortals of the Upper Realm, is probably... nothing more than slightly stronger ants.”

His words were filled with endless sorrow and unwillingness.

Inside the private school, there was a deathly silence.

The children’s originally bright eyes gradually became clouded with a gloom called “despair” that was unfitting for their age.

Just then, a little girl of about seven or eight, with pigtails, timidly raised her hand and, with an innocent, clear voice, asked the question everyone wanted to ask but dared not.

“Teacher... then... why don't we leave here and go to the Upper Realm to see? The books say that the Upper Realm has Immortal palaces flying in the sky, endless spirit fruits to eat, and... Immortals who never get sick...”

Upon hearing this, the old man’s wrinkled face instantly lost all color!

For the first time, his cloudy old eyes revealed an extreme, deep-seated... fear! As if the “Upper Realm” in the girl’s mouth was not some Immortal paradise, but a forbidden land even more terrifying than the Nine Hells!

“Leave?”

The old man gave a bitter laugh, a sound more unpleasant than crying.

“Oh, you foolish child... What do you think we are? Are we migratory birds that can move freely?”

He heavily knocked his wooden cane on the ground, his voice hoarse, revealing the cruelest and most despairing truth of this world.

“—We are livestock kept in a cage! How can livestock... leave their own cages?!”

“Every hundred years, the Immortal Sects of the Upper Realm will descend upon our land. They call this ‘grace’ and ‘inspection’ for the descendants of criminals...”

The old man’s voice trembled violently with fear.

“...But for us, that is not ‘grace’ at all! It is... ‘harvest’!”

“They will ruthlessly take away all the most precious minerals and Spirit Medicine that have painstakingly grown on our land over the past century, like harvesting the fattest crops in a field!”

“They will select the children with the best Aptitude from our younger generation, like sifting through livestock, and take them back to the Upper Realm, not to take them as Disciples, but to... refine them into Medicinal Pills, or... turn them into the lowest of servants!”

“And anyone... anyone who dares to resist, or even just shows a hint of dissatisfaction...”

Two lines of cloudy tears, filled with endless grief and indignation, flowed from the old man’s eyes.

“...Will be easily... wiped from this land by them, along with their city. Just like... stepping on a real ant.”

Speaking of this, he seemed to recall some unbearable past event and coughed violently.

He vaguely remembered that during the last “harvest,” he personally saw the city lord of the neighboring city, a powerful Martial Ancestor, merely look up an extra glance at the Immortal’s flying boat, and he, along with the entire city lord’s mansion, was turned to dust by a divine light descending from the sky.

That year, he was still just a child. But that deep-seated fear, stemming from an absolute crushing of life levels, haunted him like a nightmare for his entire life.

Inside the private school, all the children were terrified by this bloody, cruel truth, their faces pale and their bodies trembling.

“Then... those Immortals... where... where do they come from?” a slightly bolder boy asked, trembling.

The old man shook his head, his eyes filled with awe and confusion: “I don’t know... No one knows. We only know that they come from different ‘Immortal Sects.’ Some Immortal Sects have a floating sacred mountain as their symbol; some Immortal Sects have a golden, nine-headed lion as their symbol...”

He paused, as if remembering something, and continued: “And each time of ‘harvest,’ the leader is always the most powerful Immortal Sect, calling itself the ‘Heavenly God Hall.’ Their envoys, each time they descend, ride on a giant Immortal boat like a black sun, covering the sky and obscuring the sun...”

Deathly silence.

Despair.

Like invisible, heavy dark clouds, it enveloped this small private school, and also the sky of the entire “Land of Abandonment.”

After a long while, the old man slowly raised his head and looked at the gray, perpetually overcast sky outside the window, his cloudy old eyes filled with deep, unresolvable worry and... panic.

He muttered, his voice like a final death knell for this world.

“Counting the time...”

“...It has been exactly ninety-nine years since the last ‘harvest.’”

“The next... ‘catastrophe’...”

“...Is coming soon.”