As the bronze chariot pierced the final layer of clouds, Shen Xian’s eyes narrowed.

Beneath a leaden sky, a massive ring-shaped valley scarred the wasteland, looking as if a god had cleaved the earth with a single strike. In the valley’s center, a bronze gate towered a hundred zhang high. Coiling dragons etched into its surface pulsed with cold, ghostly blue light as the doors groaned open.

Even more unsettling were the spiderweb cracks fracturing the air around the gate.

“Is that… a spatial rift?” Shen Xian asked softly.

Wei Zhaoli nodded, her expression grave. “The Godfiend Battlefield opens once every five hundred years. Its dimensional frequency resonates with the ruins’ entrance, tearing the local space.”

She pointed to the valley floor. “Look.”

Shen Xian followed her gaze. Dozens of factions had already gathered. Besides the Divine Wood and Li Fire Sects, the three other major immortal sects, the ten great clans, and countless rogue cultivators were swarming like ants.

Since the ruins rejected anyone at the Nascent Soul level or above, the fate of these expeditions rested entirely on the younger generation.

“Prepare to enter!”

Shen Xing’s voice rang out, gentle yet commanding. Although the sect hadn’t appointed an official leader, seventy disciples straightened their backs in unison. The authority of the future Immortal Venerable was absolute.

Wei Zhaoli slipped a cyan jade token into Shen Xian’s hand. “Contact me immediately after landing.”

The token was warm, carved with intricate runes that hummed with a trace of her frost-snow sword energy.

Inside the ruins, teleportation was random. Most disciples relied on these tokens to regroup quickly.

Shen Xian accepted it with a nod, but mentally, he had already shelved it. He was here for treasure, and the best loot came with risks he couldn’t expose to others. Babysitting was not on his agenda.

Boom—

The bronze gates swung fully open, silencing the world.

Shen Xian stared into the churning, chaotic mist beyond the threshold. It shifted from blue to gray, forming silent, screaming faces before scattering into dust.

“Remember,” Shen Xing said, his voice calm but heavy. “You have three months. If you are not out by then, you will be trapped until you die.”

The disciples surged forward.

Shen Xian took a deep breath and stepped into the mist.

The world spun violently.

It felt like being thrown into a celestial washing machine. Invisible forces tore at his limbs, and a high-pitched screeching drilled into his skull. fragmented images flashed—broken pillars, blood-stained banners, distorted rifts—before darkness took him.

A cool sensation rose from his dantian, jolting him awake.

Shen Xian opened his eyes to find the ground rushing up to meet him.

He circulated his spiritual energy, stabilizing himself in mid-air just ten feet above the surface before landing lightly on a rock.

“Cough…” He spat out a mouthful of hot, gritty dust.

He stood in a desert as red as dried blood. The parched earth was veined with strange black patterns that looked uncomfortably like cursed runes. The sky was a sickly, bruised purple, hung with open spatial wounds.

Worse, the spiritual energy here was violent. A single breath of it felt like swallowing razor blades.

Shen Xian immediately sealed his pores, switching to internal circulation.

“Red Flame Wasteland…” he murmured.

He pulled out Wei Zhaoli’s token. It was flickering, trying to establish a connection.

After a moment’s hesitation, Shen Xian dropped it into a lead-lined isolation box.

Sorry, wife. I have work to do.

The Godfiend Battlefield wouldn’t open for another month. That gave him plenty of time to scavenge the outer perimeter.

He reached for his spirit beast pouch, but paused. A faint ripple in space tickled his senses.

Shen Xian didn’t turn. He didn’t even flinch. He just let a wisp of sword energy gather at his fingertip.

“Young Master Shen. All alone in a place like this?”

A sinister chuckle drifted from the air. Three figures in crimson robes materialized from the void, surrounding him in a triangle.

The leader, a red-haired youth, juggled a ball of Heart-Burning Fire. His eyes were cruel.

Li Fire Sect.

“Senior Brother Yang Lie, why talk to the dead?” a stout cultivator on the left sneered, summoning a flaming blade. “Let’s take his head. Senior Sister Su promised a spirit treasure for it.”

Su Mei’s bounty. Kill or cripple Shen Xian, win a Golden Core-tier artifact.

Shen Xian ignored them completely, taking a step forward.

“Seeking death!” Yang Lie’s face darkened. He hurled the fire in his hand.

The purple flame swelled, transforming into a hissing serpent that lunged for Shen Xian’s unprotected back.

Just as the fangs were about to sink in—

Zheng!

A sword cry, clear as a bell, rang across the desert.

No one saw Shen Xian move. They only saw a flash of snow-white light, brief as a startled swan.

The fire serpent split cleanly in two.

“What?!” Yang Lie’s eyes bulged.

Before his brain could process the failure, the sword light continued its trajectory, piercing the space between his eyebrows.

Thud.

Blood and brain matter sprayed the sand. Yang Lie collapsed, his face frozen in disbelief.

“Senior Brother Yang!”

The other two disciples screamed, panic overriding greed. One unleashed a storm of fire rain; the other swung his blade in a desperate arc.

Shen Xian finally stopped walking. He turned slowly.

His eyes were dead calm. In his hand, the Traceless Sword—thin as a cicada’s wing—hummed.

“Too slow.”

Swipe. Swipe.

Two soft sounds. Two heads spun into the air.

Blood sprayed like fountains, painting the red sand a darker shade of crimson. Shen Xian sheathed his sword without looking at the bodies.

Shhh—shhh—shhh—

A dry rustling sound rose from the ground.

Shen Xian watched as the black patterns on the desert floor writhed to life. Like thousands of tiny black snakes, they swarmed the corpses. In seconds, flesh, bone, and clothes vanished, devoured whole.

“Interesting,” Shen Xian whispered.

He tapped his spirit beast pouch. A cyan light flashed, and a millstone-sized Mystic Turtle landed heavily on the sand.

The Eight Trigrams on its shell glowed with soft golden light.

“Alright, big guy,” Shen Xian said, tossing it a spirit fruit. “Time to work.”