The valley of the Razor-Edge Range was now a bustling hive of activity.

  The arrival of the smaller reinforcement teams had turned the devastated area into a secured zone. Cultivators had rushed to the aid of their Thunder King despite the overwhelming odds and were now setting up perimeters and helping to tend to the wounded elders. What could have been a graveyard for these titans of the North was now a place for recovery.

  Li Yu watched them from a rock near the canyon wall. He was now resting and keeping a constant scan of the area for dangers. He saw the way the newly arrived cultivators moved. They were efficient, grim but unbowed.

  Then, the sky rippled. It wasn't another rift opening up, thankfully for those below. It was the arrival of a powerful army.

  An airship descended and was flanked by a dozen high-speed ships. It bore the insignia of Central Command. It was a silver shield over a mountain peak.

  From the deck of the flagship, a figure descended. She didn't fly down; she walked down the air as if descending a staircase.

  ‘Why is she doing that instead of flying down quickly?’ Li Yu thought to himself as he watched.

  She was tall and clad in armor made of white dragon-scale, or something that looked like white dragon-scales. The armor shimmered like a pearl. Her hair was braided intricately with silver wire and her presence felt like the calm eye of a hurricane.

  This was Grand Marshall Thyra. One of the Four Grand Leaders of the Frostbound Dominion. An 9th Stage Soul Formation expert.

  The cultivators in the surrounding area that saw her immediately bowed towards her. Magnar, now supported by Elder Torsten, bowed as deeply as his injuries allowed. It could be seen from his demeanor towards her that she was well respected by him and the people here.

  "Marshall," Magnar rasped.

  Thyra landed softly in the snow. Her eyes, the color of a winter sky, swept over the battlefield. She looked at Magnar’s missing arm. She looked at Vorgnir’s injured body.

  Finally, she looked towards Li Yu. Then she turned to face Magnar.

  "Report," she commanded. Her voice wasn't loud but it carried to every corner of the valley.

  Magnar filled her in. He spoke of the ambush of his group, the initial five ghosts, the arrival of Vorgnar, then Li Yu and then finally the arrival of the seventeen elites. He finished with the inexplicable end of the battle where the beasts simply... stopped living.

  Thyra listened without interrupting. When Magnar finished, she asked where the bodies had gone. The team looked over to Li Yu.

  Li Yu waved his hand. Two of the massive black carcasses appeared from his storage ring, thudding into the snow.

  She walked over to one of the black-furred carcasses. She placed a hand on its chest and sent a pulse of Qi into the dead flesh. She frowned.

  "I have fought on this land for hundreds of years," Thyra said softly. "I have killed demons and hunted beasts all these years. I have never seen this. A creature that looked like this."

  She turned to Li Yu.

  "You killed them?"

  "Yes. It was me that did it." Li Yu said while keeping his expression neutral. "They have strong souls. You should let everyone know that."

  Thyra studied him for a long moment. She tried sensing his soul but she couldn’t see the depths of it. There was a massive wall that she couldn’t push against which terrified her. She didn't press him though. Results mattered more than methods in the North.

  Thyra finally nodded to him. She signaled for her aides to secure the bodies. "This confirms our worst fears. The rifts aren't just more unstable and frequent. They are starting to bridge to realms we have never faced before. If these creatures are a new species, the war could be shifting. We could be facing new enemies from more different places."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She looked at Li Yu again. "You are the leader of the Crab Claws?"

  "I am."

  "Your group has done the Dominion a great service today. You saved people that the North couldn’t afford to lose. I invite you to Central Command in the capital. The Council needs to hear your assessment directly. And... we need to discuss your compensation."

  "I will be there in three days," Li Yu accepted. He knew they wanted to get to know him better since he was a relative unknown. It made sense and would cause less trouble for him to just follow along. "I have some matters to attend to first."

  Thyra nodded in agreement. She turned to Magnar. "Come on the ship, Thunder King. We have a pill for you that will regrow your arm."

  “That’s very kind of Central Command but I have my own pill. I will ask that you protect me while I recover though. Thank you.” Magnar smiled back at her.

  Magnar looked at Li Yu one last time. "Three days, Li Yu. I will buy you that drink when you come. We can discuss what kind of debt we owe you as well."

  "Make it a barrel," Li Yu chuckled. He quite liked Magnar. Even when injured he made sure to get his vengeance for his destroyed sect. ‘If there is an after life or anything like that. I am sure his disciples were cheering him on when he killed two of those creatures.’ Li Yu had thought after the battle concluded.

  Magnar laughed, a weak, wheezing sound and allowed himself to be helped onto the transport.

  Vorgnir finally stood up and was shaking off the medics that were trying to tend to him. He limped over to Li Yu. The giant looked terrible. His chest was now a mess of bandages and his face was pale. However, his eyes were burning.

  "You ruined it! Again!" Vorgnir growled.

  "I saved your life," Li Yu corrected with a cheeky smile. Li Yu could feel that this ‘hatred’ and ‘anger’ wasn’t the same as the first time. There was no real heat behind his words.

  "Same thing," Vorgnir spat. "I had a good death lined up. Seventeen monsters. A blaze of glory. Now I have to go heal up and listen to Magnar brag about how he killed two with a spear."

  "He did kill two though." Li Yu said. Giving credit where it was due.

  Vorgnir’s scowl softened slightly. He then sighed. A heavy sound that seemed to deflate his massive frame.

  "Fine," Vorgnir muttered. "It wasn't... terrible. But next time, boy... if you see me charging a a monster, you stay away!"

  "I'll just watch and capture your last moments," Li Yu promised.

  Vorgnir snorted. He clapped a heavy hand on Li Yu’s shoulder. The force was so immense that it nearly drove him into the snow. "Watch your back, Crab Claw. You're making waves. And big waves attract big sharks."

  With that the Death Seeker surprisingly turned and limped toward the airship. He was muttering about incompetent healers and listening to others nag at him again. This clearly wasn’t the first time he was heading to Central Command. Most likely they were all people he knew over all these years.

  Li Yu didn't take the airship like the others. They had offered to escort him back for safety. He turned them down and preferred to travel alone.

  He waited until the Central Command fleet had departed and vanished into the clouds. Then he slowly set off on foot. He began walking across the frozen peaks of the Razor-Edge Range. Li Yu was using this time to process the battle, the news of possibly more creatures no one had encountered and questions regarding his soul.

  He needed the walk as well. The influx of soul energy from the Whale’s feast was settling in his system. He felt lighter, sharper and saw the world even more clearly. The fatigue of the battle was gone and was now replaced by a hum of power.

  He walked for an hour and was letting the silence of the mountains wash over him. He was crossing a narrow ridge with the wind howling around him when the hair on his arms stood up.

  It wasn't the cold.

  It was the feeling of being watched by something immense. Something that didn't belong in this realm. The sky above him didn't just tear; it shattered.

  A massive jagged and red rift opened above. The rift was ripped open directly. It wasn't a natural rift like the others. It was forced open from the other side by brute strength. Li Yu looked upwards instantly.

  A hand descended from the rift. Then a blooming and distorted voice echoed from the darkness.

  "You have ruined my plans for the last time, you damn brat."

  It wasn't a beast's claw. It was a human hand, or shaped like one, but titanic in scale. It was made of pale, grey skin, covered in glowing runes that pulsed with an unknown power.

  The pressure that descended with it was beyond anything Li Yu had ever felt. He had never been attacked by anyone carrying this kind of power.

  The seventeen ghosts were nothing compared to this. The Thunder King was an ant. This was a power that transcended anything he had ever known.

  The hand didn't move fast. It didn't need to. It simply occupied all the space where Li Yu existed. It seemed like there was no way to escape. It closed around the mountain peak and was crushing the stone into dust.

  Li Yu didn’t hesitate at all. As soon as he saw the hand and before the voice even started talking, he ran.

  He poured every ounce of his Qi and his void mastery into a single technique. He stepped through into the void.

  But this hand... it was reaching into the void as well. The pressure was following him into the first layer of the Void. The runes on the skin seemed to glow even more intensely.