Pain.

  That was the first thing Li Yu registered. It wasn't the sharp stinging pain of a cut or the dull throb of a bruise. It was a bone-deep ache. It was as if his entire body had been put inside a jar and shaken by a giant for three days straight.

  He groaned as he woke up. The sound scraped against a throat that felt like it had swallowed sandpaper.

  He tried to open his eyes. The light was wrong. It wasn't the bright, clean yellow that he knew. Nor was it the sickly purple of the Battered Coast. It was a heavy, oppressive crimson, like the glow of a dying ember.

  Li Yu forced his eyelids apart.

  He was lying on a slab of rock. The stone was black and veined with streaks of metallic gold that pulsed faintly. It was as if the mountain itself had a heartbeat.

  He sat up and his joints popped loudly.

  "I'm alive?" Li Yu whispered to himself. His voice sounded small in the vast silence.

  He looked down at his hands. They were covered in dust and dried blood. Mostly demon blood from the battle at the fortress but they were whole. He checked his legs. Whole. He checked his chest. No gaping holes.

  He scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly as vertigo washed over him. He looked around.

  He was standing on a precipice. A jagged outcropping of rock halfway up a massive mountain. Below him stretched a landscape that differed greatly from what he expected.

  It wasn't a barren wasteland of fire and brimstone as he expected of a demonic realm. It was a jungle, lush and terrifying.

  Trees as tall as skyscrapers pierced the red sky. Their bark was the color of iron and their leaves were a vibrant and shocking violet. Massive vines, thick as pythons, coiled around the trunks, pulsating with a bioluminescent blue light.

  In the distance were floating islands that drifted lazily through the air. They were tethered to the ground by massive chains of root and rock. Waterfalls cascaded from these islands but the water wasn't clear; it was a shimmering, silvery liquid.

  The sky was a bruised canvas of magenta and charcoal. There was no sun. Instead, a massive fractured ring of light dominated the horizon. It was casting the world in a perpetual twilight glow.

  "Where..." Li Yu rubbed his temples.

  Memory crashed into him. The Rift. The battle. The Guardian Beasts winning. And then... Balor.

  'He grabbed me,' Li Yu thought with a cold shiver running down his spine. 'He dragged me into the tunnel. He said he was going to make me scream.'

  He remembered the red isolation cube. He remembered the feeling of absolute helplessness. He remembered preparing to scream his last defiance.

  And then... nothing.

  Li Yu checked his body again. There were no restraints. No red cube. And, most importantly, no giant Demon Lord trying to flay him.

  'Did he die?' Li Yu wondered. 'He was already heavily wounded when he grabbed me. Maybe the turbulence of the tunnel finished him off? Maybe his injuries caught up to him and he lost his grip?'

  It was the only logical explanation. Balor had been broken by the Guardians. The spatial tunnel was chaotic. If Balor had succumbed to his wounds mid-transit, his concentration would have broken, the cube would have shattered and Li Yu would have been ejected.

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  'I got lucky,' Li Yu breathed out. A hysterical laugh bubbling in his chest. 'I got incredibly, impossibly lucky.'

  He sat back down on the rock and took a moment to stabilize his breathing. He was alive. He was free. But he was definitely not in the Frostbound Dominion anymore.

  He closed his eyes and attempted to cycle his Qi. The moment he opened his pores to the ambient energy of this world, he gasped.

  It was heavy.

  If the Qi of his home world was like clean mountain air, the Qi here was like inhaling spicy soup. It was thick, chaotic and aggressive.

  'A lot of violent Qi,' Li Yu analyzed. 'This is the atmosphere of a Demonic Realm. It’s dense... incredibly dense.'

  For a human cultivator from his world, this place would be a nightmare. To cultivate here, they would have to painstakingly filter every breath. Separating the useful spiritual energy from the chaotic and corrosive elements. It would take ten times the effort for half the result. Absorbing this raw mix would lead to Qi deviation or madness.

  They would need different types of cultivation techniques that could utilize more of the energy here. Whether or not those types of cultivation techniques would have disadvantages, advantages or perhaps a mixture of both, Li Yu didn’t know.

  But Li Yu had his own solution to this problem. The greatest advantage he’s had since his cultivation journey started. He activated his cultivation technique, the Myriad Rivers Returning to the Sea.

  His Koi martial spirit acted immediately.

  The Koi didn't reject the violent energy. It opened its mouth. It swallowed the chaotic stream whole. Inside the divine furnace of Li Yu’s martial spirit, the aggression, the bloodlust and the impurity were stripped away, digested and converted.

  What came out the other side was opalescent Qi just as before. He was able to use the Qi here just as he could back in his world. With it being denser though, he would be able to cultivate even faster. Since his body was constantly drawing in Qi naturally as well, it would all add up.

  Li Yu exhaled a plume of grey smoke.

  'It works,' Li Yu thought. A grin spreading across his face. He wasn't just safe here; he could thrive. The density of the energy in this realm was easily three times that of his home.

  'First things first,' Li Yu thought as his expression sobered. 'Vespera.'

  He closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into his Spirit Sea. The Spirit Sea was calm, the waves gently lapping against the shores of the isolated island that the demons were on. But the island itself was a scene of devastation.

  The black marble villa Vespera had constructed was a ruin. The roof had collapsed, the phantom rose garden was trampled and the walls were cracked.

  Li Yu’s avatar manifested on the beach. He walked quickly toward the remains of the main hall.

  Inside, Vespera's subjects were gathered in a tight circle. They looked exhausted. Their own spiritual forms flickering and dim. They were channeling their own essence into the center of the circle.

  There, lying on a bed was Vespera.

  Li Yu winced.

  She looked terrible. Her spiritual body was translucent. It looked like it was fading in and out of existence. Her left arm and left leg were gone. A jagged, ugly scar ran diagonally across her torso.

  A blue skinned Charm Demon looked up as Li Yu entered. She had sharp, angular features and eyes like chips of ice.

  "Master," the blue Charm Demon whispered. She bowed her head slightly without stopping her energy transfer.

  "Is she okay?" Li Yu said softly while kneeling beside Vespera.

  "Her source is stabilized," the blue Charm Demon said. Her voice was raspy with fatigue. "The leviathan... it breathed life into her. It stopped the rotting energy from consuming her soul. But the damage is severe. She is in a deep coma."

  Li Yu looked at Vespera’s pale face. She looked peaceful but painfully fragile.

  'She jumped in front of that attack for me,' Li Yu thought back. 'She lied to a Demon Lord.'

  He felt a heavy weight in his chest. Gratitude. Guilt. Responsibility.

  "What is your name?" Li Yu asked the blue Charm Demon.

  "I am Vayla," she replied.

  "Vayla," Li Yu nodded. "You and your sisters have done well. Rest now. I will take over."

  He waved his hand. From his Koi Sanctuary he summoned a mountain of Demonic Cores.

  Hundreds of them at first and then thousands started stacking all around. He brought all of them from his Koi Sanctuary to here. These were the cores he had been trading for since arriving to the Northern Continent. He had plenty to draw upon.