A moving platform? That changed everything!
He had spent enough time wandering through this eerie void of red sand and broken rock, but until now, everything had been eerily still, lifeless. This was the first sign of motion, of something—or someone—actively manipulating the space.
His instincts roared to life, and without hesitation, Liam shot forward.
The weight of the oppressive air around him resisted his every movement, but he forced his way through. His speed, normally unmatched, felt sluggish here as if the very world was trying to keep him contained. Yet, he gritted his teeth and pushed harder.
The floating platform wasn't moving in a straight line. It twisted, angled upward, then sharply veered left, as if following an unseen path. It wasn't just wandering randomly. It had a destination.
Liam poured more strength into his flight, the pulsing red sands below vanishing into a blur. He was gaining on the rock, but just as he closed the distance—
A sudden shockwave burst forth from the platform, slamming into him like an invisible wall. Liam's body tumbled backward, his bones rattling from the sheer force of the blast. He barely managed to steady himself mid-air as the platform took off exploding with speed.
Before he could even understand what was happening, the platform simply disappeared into the distance leaving him behind lost and confused.
Liam frowned. What the hell? He knew he had a limited time in these kinds of special events so he was not happy with wasting so much time trying to figure out what was going on.
Either way the key to whatever was happening here had to do with these flying rocks and there was only one way to find out what where the hell they were heading to.
Liam backtracked his steps to quickly arrive at the other similar rock he had seen a few hundred miles back.
He reached the jagged platform in moments, hovering just above its rough, uneven surface. This one wasn't moving, at least not yet. But the first had only activated after some time… or after something triggered it. Was there a pattern? A hidden mechanism?
Liam landed on the rock, his bare feet pressing against its cool, rough surface. It was eerily smooth in some places, broken and jagged in others as if it had been violently torn from a larger structure. He crouched, running his fingers over its edges, trying to sense anything—a fluctuation in energy, a hidden rune, a disturbance in mana flow.
But that didn't mean there wasn't an answer.
Liam took a slow breath and reached inward, drawing on his dao fields. Maybe it interacted with one of the dao fields? He first unleashed the nether field. Then tried the ice field. Taking a small break, he was about to test out the next dao field when suddenly the rock started vibrating.
Liam immediately crouched down and placed his palm onto the rock, ready and prepared for whatever happened next.
The platform beneath him shuddered as if awakening from a long slumber. A strange pulse of energy rippled across the jagged surface, its intensity growing stronger by the second.
The rock lurched forward, its movement sudden and violent. Liam's body nearly lifted off the surface, but he dug in, his muscles coiling as he stabilized himself. The air around him distorted, space warping unnaturally, the same phenomenon he had witnessed earlier with the first platform.
This was it. It had somehow become activated.
The platform shot forward, accelerating at an impossible speed. The red sands below blurred into streaks of crimson light, and the oppressive black sky above seemed to close in on him. But this time, Liam was ready. He wasn't going to lose it again.
He narrowed his eyes, forcing his senses to adjust to the rapid movement. His nether dao field flickered around him, stabilizing his body against the sheer force of the acceleration.
Unlike before, there was no external shockwave trying to throw him off—this one wasn't rejecting him. It had accepted his presence. Maybe he was just overthinking everything. All he had to do was step on the rock and it was bound to take off?
However, before he could finish his thought, something even more bizarre happened. Or rather he saw something bizarre. He saw the land end. From where he was standing on the flying rock, he actually saw the land abruptly end. Even though everything was blurry he had no doubt about it.
Beyond that border, there was nothing. Wait, the rock was flying towards that nothingness? Would he be able to survive it? What was the environment? Was it void? Wait space? Countless questions ran across his mind.
Liam's heart pounded as he watched the horizon—or rather, the abrupt lack of one—approach at an alarming speed. The red sands, which had stretched endlessly in every direction, now simply… stopped. Beyond that point, there was nothing. No sky, no ground, no stars—just an endless void.
What the hell was this place?
His fingers twitched, gripping the unstable energy of the platform as he recalculated his next move. Could he even survive in that space? The rock didn't slow down, didn't hesitate—it was moving straight toward oblivion, as if the void wasn't something to be feared but rather a destination.
Liam wasn't the type to hesitate, but neither was he reckless. He had survived too much, fought too hard, to simply plunge into the unknown without a plan.
He expanded his nether dao field, sending thin strands of energy outward, testing the very fabric of space ahead. No resistance. No atmosphere. It was pure emptiness.
The rock passed the boundary.
Liam sucked in a breath, his body tensing as the world around him twisted. For the briefest second, he felt a sensation unlike anything before. It wasn't pain. It wasn't suffocation.
As if the moment the platform left the red sands behind, it was no longer bound to anything—no rules, no gravity, no time. Liam's very existence felt… lighter, and unstable, as if he could simply dissolve if he wasn't careful.
Damn. This wasn't just a normal void—it was pure nothingness.
But just when he thought the worst was yet to come and was fully prepared to jump off the freaking platform to nowhere, something clicked.
The rock beneath him stabilized once again, locking him back into reality. A barrier sprang up around the rock, stabilizing the atmosphere. Liam exhaled sharply, his grip tightening as his body adjusted. The pressure of existence settled around him once more and he was able to breathe.