The moment Nie Tian entered the city, he stood there aghast, eyes filled with disbelief.
In front of his eyes was a vacant, vast city. Contrary to what he had pictured in mind, there weren’t any nicely decorated buildings or pavilions made of jade. There was only seven-colored light that drifted about in the air like colorful ribbons.
Just as he secretly felt disappointed, the light seemed to have sensed his existence and converged on him from every direction.
In a flash, thousands of light rays arrived at his side and turned into a seven-colored light s.h.i.+eld, enveloping him like a giant bubble.
As soon as the colorful light s.h.i.+eld was formed, it flew up, taking him into the air.
Nie Tian was dumbstruck.
He had no idea what was happening. He attempted to resist, using the power of the spiritual s.h.i.+elds, and stop himself from moving.
Only then did he suddenly notice that the remaining spiritual power s.h.i.+elds were already gone.
Enveloped by the light bubble, he flew up towards the starry sky above his head at an unimaginable speed.
While traveling, he looked at his surroundings with rapt attention, and found that Miao Chen was enveloped in another bubble and had also shot up into the sky.
The two of them were several hundred meters away and could clearly see each other. Nie Tian saw unveiled complacence within Miao Chen’s eyes.
It was when he found that Miao Chen was more elated than afraid that he slightly relaxed and tried not to overthink it. He stopped resisting and let the giant bubble take him into the boundless, starry sky.
When he looked down, the numerous gigantic meteors had all shrunk to the size of pieces of grain.
The city that brimmed with seven-colored light had already become hard to find, and soon disappeared from his sight.
However, at the same time, more and more people enveloped in seven-colored bubbles entered his sight one after another.
He saw a tall, burly man surrounded by raging flames shooting into the sky in a seven-colored bubble. Upon a closer look, it was none other than Tang Yang from the Realm of Dark Underworld.
Apparently, Tang Yang had also stepped into the city after him.
He grew a bit nervous since he had absolutely no idea what would happen. He kept glancing around, but all he saw was endless darkness.
He unleashed his psychic awareness into his surroundings, but detected no sign of life. There was only coldness.
Time pa.s.sed by rapidly as the bubble carried Nie Tian upwards.
All of a sudden, he felt the bubble slow down a bit.
Subconsciously, he looked up.
A majestic, enormous palace appeared in the depths of the starry sky above him, like an unwavering mountain.
Beneath the base of the palace, countless light rays of various colors interwove with each other, sending out terrifying energy surges.
SHEW!
The bubble carried him up as it flew into a dazzling, transparent tunnel under the palace, and then shuttled him into the palace.
Seconds later, the seven-colored bubble appeared in an immeasurably wide palace hall.
Wisps of extremely rich spiritual energy entered the floating bubble and blew into Nie Tian’s face.
With merely a sniff of it, he felt enlivened and cleansed of all exhaustion, as if his spiritual sea was also rejuvenated by the puff of spiritual energy.
Amazed, he couldn’t help but start glancing around at the inside of the splendid palace hall while scanning the area with his psychic awareness.
The ceiling of the hall was extremely vast and adorned with s.h.i.+ning dots, which upon a closer look were small stars, making it seem like a river of stars. Even though those tiny stars seemed very far away, he could tell that they were releasing energy fluctuations.
From time to time, gentle starlight would flow out of the star river and pour into the palace hall.
Two rivers of seven-colored light flowed in the palace hall, dividing the enormous hall into three areas.
Miao Chen was in one of them that was separated from the one that Nie Tian was in by a large area.
Numerous complicated, beautiful patterns were imprinted on the palace walls that were far away from where Nie Tian was. Within them seemed to lay the profound truths of many kinds of power.
Nie Tian grew fascinated with only a single glimpse of them. However, after staring at them with rapt attention for a while, he found himself losing his psychic power at a fast speed.
Apparently, it consumed a tremendous amount of psychic power to study the mysterious patterns on the walls.
Without any hesitation, he retracted his focus from them, and continued to observe the vast area that he was in.
WHOOs.h.!.+
Another seven-colored bubble appeared in the area that Nie Tian was in, within which was a white-robed young man.
Face grave and stern, he sat inside of the bubble with a simple, unsophisticated sword on his lap. He gently stroked the sword with hands that were even more slender and beautiful than those of a girl, as he scanned the area with a thoughtful gaze.
“This guy...” At first glance, Nie Tian was sure that he had never seen the man, and that the man had never showed up in the floating city.
After a brief examination, he could tell that the white-robed young man was also in the Lesser Heaven stage, just like him.
“He’s also in the Lesser Heaven stage.” Nie Tian grew intrigued and couldn’t help but start to look him up and down more closely. His expression suddenly flickered.
To his surprise, he saw as many as sixteen Heaven Sparks on the back of the young man’s left hand.
This meant that he might have already taken the lives of sixteen trial takers.
Nie Tian consider himself lucky because by only killing Du Huang and Kan Xingming, he managed to obtain fifteen Heaven Sparks, although the process had been hard and dangerous.
Furthermore, he had taken advantage of others’ help in both kills.
The fact that they were both in the Lesser Heaven stage but the white-robed young man had even more Heaven Sparks than him made Nie Tian secretly astounded.
While Nie Tian looked the white-robed young man up and down, the young man also glanced around and eventually laid his gaze on Nie Tian and the fifteen Heaven Sparks on his hand.
Like Nie Tian, he was also surprised. Then he greeted Nie Tian by briefly nodding towards him.
Nie Tian nodded back.
WHOOs.h.!.+ WHOOs.h.!.+
At the same time, another two seven-colored bubbles appeared not far from Nie Tian.
They held one young man and one young woman, and both had a Lesser Heaven stage cultivation base.
The young man had an angular face and was wearing a black robe. His loose, shoulder-length hair gave him a somewhat wild look.
He had a long saber with no sheath on his back. On the blade were detailed and sophisticated patterns, among which was a closed eye.
It seemed like a mysterious symbol and Nie Tian had the feeling that it could snap open at any time.
It seemed as if, whenever it opened, it would unleash a power so mighty that it would even outs.h.i.+ne the stars in the sky.
Noticing that Nie Tian was staring at him, the black-robed young man gave a casual, handsome grin; not even the slightest hint of fierceness could be seen in his eyes.
At that moment, Nie Tian noticed the Heaven Sparks that were glittering with scarlet light on the back of his hand. “Eighteen Heaven Sparks!”
The white-robed young man had sixteen and the black-robed young man had eighteen, while the two of them only had a Lesser Heaven stage cultivation base.
Nie Tian was taken aback by the amount of Heaven Sparks that they had obtained.
After a brief moment, he s.h.i.+fted his gaze to the only female among them.
The young woman was in a blue robe. Her eyes were so bright and her face was so delicate that she even seemed unreal. Compared to Jiang Lingzhu and An s.h.i.+yi, she was even more unearthly beautiful, and her charm was also something that Nie Tian had never seen.
She had no accessories on her, save a green ring on her finger.
She sat cross-legged within the seven-colored bubble. Eyes closed and silent, she didn’t move a hair, as if she had already merged with the heaven and earth, and was rapidly taking in spiritual energy from her surroundings.
Her hands were flattened out on her knees, with her palms facing up, so Nie Tian couldn’t see how many Heaven Sparks she had.
However, Nie Tian had the feeling that this charming young woman must also be a deadly character, by no means weaker than the other two young men.
She must have felt Nie Tian’s gaze, but she did nothing in response, not even sparing him a glance.
She only took a quick glance at the other two young men before focusing all her attention on the two seven-colored light rivers and people in the other two areas.
HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!
Nie Tian followed her gaze and realized that figures were starting to appear in the other two areas.
Among the figures that rapidly appeared in the area closer to his, most were in the Heaven stage and had about ten Heaven Sparks or less on their hands.
In the area further away from his, Nie Tian saw Miao Chen from the Realm of Black Marsh and Tang Yang from the Realm of Dark Underworld.
Separated by two seven-colored light rivers, Tang Yang stared coldly at him, as if he wanted to cross the rivers to get Nie Tian, but was held back by certain worries and had decided not to act rashly.
Miao Chen stood right next to Tang Yang, chuckling softly because of the situation.
Anger appeared on Tang Yang’s face. However, he didn’t seem interested in talking to Miao Chen, so he didn’t do anything in response to Miao Chen’s sneer.
Separated by the light rivers, Nie Tian could only see them, but couldn’t hear anything.
At that moment, the black-robed young man smiled at Nie Tian and said, “Little bro, you don’t look familiar to me. Which realm of the Domain of the Falling Stars are you from?”
As soon as he talked, the white-robed young man with a cold aura around him also cast his gaze towards Nie Tian.
Only the young woman didn’t move a muscle, as she appeared to be completely indifferent regarding Nie Tian’s origin and status.
“The Realm of Flame Heaven,” Nie Tian answered without giving it too much thought.
“The Realm of Flame Heaven...” the young man in black chuckled and said, “The weakest realm of the nine. You’re lucky that one of the Heaven Gates opened in your realm. I bet the seniors in your sect must have gone to great lengths to get you in here.”
Nie Tian went blank for a moment before he said, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m lucky.”
“Is that so?” The young man in black had a incredulous expression on his face. Eyes narrowed, he looked Nie Tian up and down carefully and asked, “Middle Lesser Heaven stage?”
Nie Tian nodded.
The young man in black shook his head as the expression on his face grew unfathomable.
He said no more, but his gaze was filled with ferocity, as if he had already made Nie Tian his target.
After hearing Nie Tian admitting that he had a middle Lesser Heaven stage cultivation base, the white-robed young man didn’t say a word, but rather stared at him like he was staring at a dead man.
As always, the young woman in blue turned a deaf ear to all that had happened.