Chapter 42: Teleportation

The prefect, hot on the trail of the demonic leader, felt his flying sword take a direct hit from the explosion. The blade let out a mournful shriek.

This was no ordinary spiritual energy unleashed by the demonic leader’s self-destruction—it was banesight.

To any normal cultivator, banesight is a form of tainted energy.

As the flying sword bore the brunt of the banesight, it first succumbed to contamination before being battered by the sheer force of the malevolent blast.

Already depleted from unleashing continuous full-power attacks earlier, the prefect now felt a sharp pain in his head as his flying sword took damage.

His body froze momentarily—a fatal hesitation that robbed him of precious time to employ other means of defense.

The wave of banesight sent him reeling through the air. By the time he managed to regain control, he was utterly disheveled.

His once-impressive auction gala attire lay in tatters, while his body bore numerous severe injuries.

With lingering fear in his heart, he gazed at the site of the explosion—the demonic leader’s self-destruction had been truly terrifying.

Li Zhen had stood mere ten meters away from the epicenter of the blast, squarely within its destructive range.

Yet, as the banesight surged towards him, the dragon heart instinctively began to race.

Within the Dragon Heart Space, nine spirit stones shattered instantly, their spiritual energy absorbed by the dragon heart.

The spatial divine runes on the dragon heart lit up. Though he hadn’t yet mastered this spatial divine ability, it automatically activated at his moment of greatest peril.

As the murderous aura’s shockwave approached Li Zhen, he vanished from its path.

The prefect seemed to sense something amiss, but with the self-destruction of the monster leader ahead and the lingering mist’s effects, he couldn’t pinpoint the source of the spatial fluctuations.

Li Zhen felt a sudden disorientation as he entered a bizarre passageway. His body, suspended in a soft tube-like space, continuously tumbled without any sense of direction—up, down, or sideways.

Time lost all meaning for him; it could have been mere seconds or an entire day—he had no way to tell.

Finally emerging from the soft tunnel, he found himself enveloped in emptiness before gravity reclaimed him, sending him plummeting downward.

Fortunately, the fall wasn’t great—only about three feet high—and cushioned by thick grass below, preventing injury.

It took several long moments for his mind to calm and regain composure.

He lay on the grass, gazing up at the sky. It was blue, with two suns hanging in the air.

Wait, two suns? He bolted upright.

When he’d activated the spatial divine rune, he knew he’d been teleported to the world of the Yao Kingdom by a space divine ability.

In middle school, his school had barely touched on knowledge about the Yao Kingdom. What Li Zhen knew came from dealing with monsters multiple times.

The Yao Kingdom and Xian Nation weren’t in the same space but rather separate spaces.

There were some spatial passages between the worlds of the Yao Kingdom and Xian Nation that allowed cultivators to travel to the former while also permitting monster beasts to enter the latter.

However, both the Xian Nation and Yao Kingdom only had one star each.

Yet now there were clearly two stars above him—was this not the Yao Kingdom?

If it wasn’t the Yao Kingdom, then where exactly was he?

Aside from the Yao Kingdom, he didn’t know of any other worlds existing.

Most crucially, why would his space divine ability have sent him to an unknown world?

His mind swelled with countless questions; he needed to find intelligent life to unravel these mysteries.

The Mother Chaos Divine Dragon would never deceive her children. The spatial divine rune she left behind was genuine, its ability to traverse world space barriers without issue.

However, when this barrier-crossing ability wasn’t autonomously activated, it prioritized assessing the spatial characteristics within one’s soul. It used these characteristics to determine the destination realm.

If a young dragon had obtained the spatial divine rune and triggered the barrier-crossing ability, they’d naturally be teleported to the demon country world.

But the problem lay in Li Zhen’s soul. Apart from fusing with his original body’s soul, he still carried the essence of his previous Earthly self.

That Earth might have been too distant—so far that even the spatial divine ability couldn’t locate the specific Earth encoded in Li Zhen’s soul. Thus, this activation of the world space barrier became a random teleportation instead.

Li Zhen drew a deep breath, sensing faint traces of spiritual energy in the air.

This world harbors spiritual energy, he mused, which greatly increases the likelihood of an established cultivation system.

He took stock of his situation: his dantian was completely empty; at some point, all his spiritual energy had been depleted.

Fortunately, his dantian would automatically absorb ambient spiritual energy. Given enough time, his spiritual energy would eventually recover.

However, this process would be extremely slow. To shorten it, he needed to find a spirit vein—a channel through which spiritual energy flowed.

Even the lowest-grade spirit vein could sustain his practice of the ‘Seventeenth Edition Foundation Qi Refining Technique,’ accelerating the recovery of his spiritual energy.

Other than being devoid of spiritual energy, his body wasn’t injured.

He tried operating his identity bracelet again, but his retinal display showed that it couldn’t connect to the database or determine their current location.

Some basic functions on the identity bracelet still worked, but without access to the database, Li Zhen couldn’t retrieve information from the cultivator network.

Li Zhen then focused on his Dragon Heart Space. His greed had gotten the better of him this time, leading to this unfortunate outcome.

“Where did my spirit stones go?” Just as he was about to review the gains from his latest adventure in the Dragon Heart Space, he noticed something missing.

Spirit stones were rare items, and Li Zhen hadn’t used any since acquiring them.

He still highly valued those nine spirit stones. For someone at his low cultivation realm, they were far too advanced; he had planned to consider how to use them only after reaching a higher level.

Connecting this with his recent spatial barrier crossing and the disappearance of his spiritual energy, he arrived at the most likely explanation:

When activating the spatial divine ability, the dragon heart first depleted all of his spiritual energy. Realizing it was insufficient, it then converted the nine spirit stones into spiritual energy, just enough to facilitate this one-time spatial barrier crossing.

“I should’ve realized earlier,” he murmured to himself. “Crossing spatial barriers could never be that easy!”

As he gazed upon the four storage pouches and the multitude of magical artifacts, his lingering attachment to the spirit stones finally dissipated.

These were storage pouches! Even with the Dragon Heart Space, he couldn’t help but covet them greatly.

The Dragon Heart Space must remain hidden, but no matter how precious these storage pouches were, they could be acquired and used openly.

Curious, he carefully removed one of the storage pouches. It felt surprisingly light in his hands, crafted from some unknown spirit beast’s hide.

The storage pouch bore the mark of the Nine Heavens Group on its surface, with faint traces of mysterious patterns visible at the opening.

Having reached the second level of Qi Refining, Li Zhen could now direct his spiritual energy towards a specific magical item—a technique essential for controlling magical artifacts.

He focused his mind on the entrance of the storage pouch, attempting to probe inside with his spirit.

To his surprise, he encountered resistance. A spiritual imprint guarded the opening, preventing him from delving deeper into the pouch.

This doesn’t make sense, Li Zhen muttered softly to himself, his knowledge of storage pouches being limited. Didn’t they say that if the owner dies, the pouch can change hands?

If he couldn’t open the storage pouch, his haul from this expedition would be significantly diminished.

Although there were dozens of other magical items besides the pouch, only two were first-class high-grade artifacts. The rest were mid-to-low grade.

Based on his experience, submitting such a collection to the Dragon Heart Space for assimilation would have a negligible effect on enhancing his innate spiritual talent.

He once again used his spiritual sense on the bag of holding in his hand. This time, he took more time and finally noticed something about the spiritual imprint at the mouth of the bag.

The spiritual imprint was slowly dissipating. Just as he had heard in rumors, after the owner of a bag of holding died, it could be claimed by another person. However, what the rumors didn’t say was that the spiritual imprint gradually faded away. To open a bag of holding whose owner had died would require some time.

Based on the rate at which the spiritual imprint was disappearing from this bag, it would take several months for it to completely vanish.

Li Zhen put this bag back into Dragon Heart Space and then took out another one.

This second bag of holding came from the self-detonated leader of the demonic cult. The reason he took it out now was because while all three other bags bore the mark of the Nine Heavens Group, this one did not.

He sent his spirit into the bag, and this time something miraculous happened: His spirit entered the interior of the bag without any hindrance whatsoever.