Gu Hai was feeling dizzy. Before long, he finally regained his senses. He found himself inside a dark dungeon, a prison cell, with iron cage bars isolating him from a dimly lit corridor.
"Hm," Gu Hai noticed his attire had been changed from his original royal costume to an unfamiliar orange uniform. On his chest was a number plate labeled "7".
His arms and legs were chained with thick white iron to the stone wall at the back of the prison cell. The chains were surprisingly light despite their thickness, and they were long enough for him to move freely inside the cell.
Most importantly, his cultivation had been sealed—he could not sense his own spiritual qi or divine sense, and even his strong body felt unusually weak.
"Get me out of here!!!!" The old man's scream rang from the corridor.
Gu Hai dragged his weak body to the iron bars. When he reached them, he tried to observe the corridor through them. He found many prison cells like his along the corridor on both sides.
"Lord Gu!" The servant shouted.
Gu Hai turned to where his servant's voice came from, he soon located the servant's prison cell not too far from his cell, close enough to see each other.
"How long have we been here?" Gu Hai asked, trying to gather information from his servant, but he didn't get anything.
The servant said he had also just regained consciousness and did not know how long they had been there or where they were.
The sound of footsteps came from the end of the corridor.
Gu Hai looked at the human figure walking through the corridor, who stopped before his cell.
"Prisoner No. 7, I heard you are the leader of these prisoners," the young cultivator with red hair said.
Gu Hai's eyes narrowed, and he did not reply. Since the other side called him by number, he knew what it meant—if he replied, it would mean he accepted that he was "Prisoner No. 7."
"Not answering, huh?" The young cultivator's lips curled slightly before he used the authority given to him by Hengsheng as the prison warden.
The white iron chains that bound Gu Hai turned glowing red—
"AHHHHHHH!!" Gu Hai screamed from the bottom of his lungs. Every inch of his body felt an unimaginable amount of pain piercing through every layer of his being. He howled like never before in his life, writhing in agony on the prison cell's floor.
The chains slowly returned to their original white color, and the pain faded, leaving the sweating Gu Hai curled and twitching on the ground.
The young cultivator smiled sinisterly at the pathetic sight of the once-proud cultivator and said, "From now on, if I ask, you will answer."
Hengsheng read the report he got from Lan Ruochen—the Endless Wealth Peak's Prison warden, whom he had personally appointed since this guy was quite vicious among the peaceful Lan Clan members and suited the role of a sinister warden very well.
The report said this group of cultivators came from a realm called the Nine Heaven Realm.
He opened the Astral Map in the World Hopping Interface to see if he could find this realm in detail…
"Oh…" Hengsheng exclaimed when he found the realm was on the World Hopping Options.
He quickly gathered a lot of information from it and combined it with the report, gaining insight into the realm.
"This realm is perfect for settling…" Hengsheng was quite interested in this realm.
The Nine Heaven Realm was a typical cultivation world where human cultivators fought for supremacy and ownership over resources, competing with demons and other races within the realm.
Although it was called the Nine Heaven Realm, it wasn't a lonely massive flat land drifting through the infinite void within the Heavenly Dao World's territory like his Five Pillar Realm. In fact, his old realm was quite unusual compared to other realms, being small and lacking many cosmic elements for a Tier 10 realm.
On the other hand, the Nine Heaven Realm was a typical Tier 10 realm with some special mechanics.
The Nine Heaven Realm is a realm cluster. It consists of nine flat realms, each comparable in size to his old realm, within a single space-time.
These nine realms are referred to by their cultivators as the First to the Ninth Heaven, each separated by vast distances of endless space filled with countless stars like a miniature universe.
At the heart of the Nine Heaven Realm's space lies a colossal white hole, a Realm Core, endlessly releasing the Qi of Heaven and Earth.
Orbiting this Heaven and Earth's Qi source are 9 massive flat realms, arranged in three layers—5 forming the outer rim, 3 in the middle layer, and 1 closest to the white hole, the closer to this Qi source, the better cultivation environment.
The Nine Heaven Realm had a special mechanic that helped small cultivators and factions rise higher to challenge the old and strong one more easily, as it limited interference from stronger powers to a certain extent—something that suited Hengsheng’s situation.
The First to the Fifth Heavens were the lower realms, where cultivators who reached the True Body Realm would be forced to ascend to the middle realm within a certain period.
If one did not ascend in this period, Heavenly Punishment would descend upon them daily, each time exponentially stronger than the last, never stopping until they ascended.
If cultivators with a cultivation realm higher than the heavens' limit descend into the lower realms, they will also face the same treatment or even more if they attempt to assault the low rank cultivators.
The middle realm, consisting of the Sixth to Eighth Heavens, had the same mechanics as the lower realm, triggering when cultivators reached the Dao Threshold Realm.
The Ninth Heaven was the only higher realm within this Realm Cluster. It was the largest heaven, larger than all other heavens combined.
The entire realm's environment was similar to the Golden Pillar Continent's Metal Flow Plains—Heaven and Earth's Qi was dense enough to liquefy in some places.
Due to the lack of extremely high-concentration cultivation environments and resource areas like the Golden Pillar, there were no overlord-level factions like in his old realm; instead, it had multiple first-rate factions.
The group of cultivators, now locked up inside his prison, all came from the Seventh Heaven, a middle realm.
This heaven comprised three continents—one entirely ruled by human factions, one governed by human, demon, and many other race factions, and the last dominated by a single demonic faction.
Within this heaven, most areas were populated and ruled by humans, with other races as minorities.
However, despite human rule, the situation for humans was not very good, since human cultivators were constantly at war with the formidable enemy, the strongest faction in the Seventh Heaven.
This faction was a demonic sect that single-handedly ruled over an entire third continent, stronger than half of the seventh heaven's factions combined—The Blood Fiend Palace.
"Let's mark this one for a settlement option…" Hengsheng murmured.
What truly became the deciding factor for Hengsheng to consider this realm as one of the candidates for long-term settlement was…
There was no sign of the Wu God or the Heavenless Dao Cult in this realm. Those guys were far too dangerous; this demonic sect, which was supposed to be terrifying, was a pale comparison.
In fact, they look kinda cute in his thought.
Hengsheng put the topic of the Nine Heaven Realm aside, as he had another important matter to deal with.
He observed the shattered sky above his head—its cracks were much wider than before and on the verge of collapsing at any moment.
It shouldn't have become if Yunsu had not exerted her power to subdue those otherworldly cultivators a moment ago.
This realm was meant to last another nine years, but Yunsu’s power was simply beyond what the realm could withstand, accelerating its decay rate.
However, he did not blame her. Even if she hadn’t done this, he would have been the one to cause it anyway—her actions merely accelerated his plan from tomorrow to today.
There were two reasons for him to choose to stay within this desolate and shattered realm for a year, instead of immediately finding a better place to settle.
First, he wanted to cultivate peacefully until he broke through to the True Body Realm, a milestone that marked one as a mid-rank cultivator. This purpose had already been fulfilled this morning.
The other reason was that he wanted to absorb the Dimensional Essence of this shattered realm to enhance his System World's dimensional structure.
Even though this realm was a false dimensional world that could not generate its own Dimensional Essence to sustain itself, it didn’t mean it did not have any Dimensional Essence.
The false dimensional world had Dimensional Essence at the moment it was created. He could not absorb it directly since this realm was under Heavenly Dao's protection. If he did that, he would be considered a plunderer of Heaven, which would surely invoke Heavenly Punishment.
He was confident that he could tolerate a few lightning strikes, but he didn’t want to, as there was no way he would come out unscathed.
Heaven is Heaven—never taking it lightly is the wisest thing one could do.
He planned to destroy the realm first to remove it of its connection from Heavenly Dao before he plundered its Dimensional Essence.