Paragon of Sin

"..." Lady Clearwind was stunned into a speechless daze by Wei Wuyin. The rumored Grand Mortal Sovereign Alchemist of mysterious origin exhibited a characteristic that she hadn't expected—recklessness. To enter the Stellar Nest immediately upon hearing about it, how could this not be reckless? Recklessness fueled by greed.

She didn't know what to say, giving Wu Yu a long, astonished stare. Wu Yu felt her gaze, the judgmental nature of it and all. However, he wasn't concerned. Wei Wuyin wasn't an ordinary mortal by any measuring standard, and he had means and tools that baffled Ascended beings such as himself. From his Void Portals, Mystic-graded items, to his unbelievable cultivation foundation, they were all things a mortal shouldn't be expected to have.

Furthermore, and most importantly, Wei Wuyin's intelligence, foresight, and cunning was otherworldly. He experienced his rise from nothing to the leading figure in the Everlore Starfield, sufficient to cause an entire civilization to willingly accept him becoming their defining ruler for the next era. 

If you asked if he was worried about Wei Wuyin's safety, he wouldn't hesitate to answer with: No. 

Bai Lin and Wen Mingna remained quiet, observing the ripples with their own emotions. The former was a little displeased that this Stellar Nest couldn't house beings on her level, making her frustrated that she couldn't join Wei Wuyin. If it wasn't for Wei Wuyin explaining the situation, she might've forced her way in.

Wen Mingna, on the other hand, was outwardly calm as she gazed at the ripples without a tinge of concern, only the slightest frown on her facial expression. The Stellar Nest was a space sealed off from fate, preventing Seers and Oracles from divining any details about it. Unable to glean anything, she could only watch closely in anticipation. She didn't know why but her heart was beating slightly faster than before.

Seeing their reactions, Lady Clearwind was further baffled by it all. She would never allow her talented Mortal Sovereign Alchemist explore a foreign, unknown location without extensive protection, even if she was their Alchemical Knight.

Wu Yu kept his hand embedded into the backdoor, maintaining its stability for Wei Wuyin's eventual return. A sudden burst of an urge emerged in his heart. He turned his head to find Lady Clearwind and asked with a smile, "How about a chat while we wait?" 

-----

Wei Wuyin had experienced all sorts of spatial transportations, from entering World Realms to Chaos Realms, yet when he felt his body enter the Stellar Nest's backdoor, he felt a distinct prickling sensation that caused his flowing blood to roil in turmoil. 

As a cultivator with the bloodline of a True Void Dragon and Draconic Void Astral Soul, the aspects of space were intrinsically linked to his physical and spiritual existence. In a way, he embodied space and time. Despite this, he felt abnormally uncomfortable. 

Kratos was still in slumber after the Paradoxical Correction had taken place, so he was unable to listen to its vague explanation. Without it, he was unable to figure out why his body reacted so strangely. Fortunately, he still had access to Kratos' powers and his Draconic Void Force. With a full circulation of this power, the discomfort vanished instantly. 

"What is this?" Wei Wuyin fully entered the Stellar Nest, yet he discovered himself to be blind. While his eyes were closed due to the Celestial Eyes' spiritual overflow, his spiritual senses were overwhelmed by intense light. It was effectively the same as a perpetual flashbang. 

He hastily inhaled, finding that the Stellar Nest had a heated atmosphere that contained the necessary gases to sustain life. The air particulates, however, were abnormally hot. It felt as if every breath was breathing within a superheated sauna. 

Fortunately, his fleshy body was refined by magma and fire energies to their limits. If it wasn't for that, he might be boiling alive at this very moment. "This is a Stellar Nest? Is it due to the flooding of Solar Essence?" 

Wei Wuyin didn't outright explore while blinded, but decided to feel through the situation first, hopefully adjusting to the abundance of light. Solar Essences were unique in that it often contained several energies such as yang, fire, and light. While the ratio of these energies defined solar essence types, they were all included into the fundamental building blocks of a Solar Star. 

"I can't sense any fluctuations of activity," Wei Wuyin curiously discovered as he floated stood in place. According to Lady Clearwind, there should be a thousand Starlords and the masked figure here to hunt down Stellar Rain and the Zenith Stellar Source. He expected at least some hectic fluctuations, spiritual or otherwise. 

Suddenly, his mind stirred as he dragged his feet slowly. There was solid material beneath him! He bent down to touch the surface, discovering that it was extremely cold and smooth, like tempered glass purposefully chilled.

"What is this?" The chilled glass-like ground was inconsistent with the superheated environment. The surface didn't contain any earthen energies, so it wasn't earth. Shockingly, there was no ice energies either. Whatever was generating this chill wasn't aligned with elemental natures. 

Rising up, he felt his spiritual sense slowly begin to adjust to the intense light. He began to receive some details from the environment from his senses. What he saw startled him. 

Bits of fragmented metal and cloth floated all around him in every direction. Some were as close as a few inches away from his face, others were as far as a mile away. 

These were pieces of armor and clothing in the surroundings. They were all of peak astral-graded quality, and he felt their lack of any energy emissions. It was as if they were drained entirely of their innate nature, without the slightest evidence that there was formations imbued within. 

He didn't move recklessly, keeping his area of movement restricted. While he felt confident in his self-preservation abilities, he wasn't foolish enough to act without forethought. 

The most eerie thing was that these materials were decayed, as of they were here for tens of thousands of years. Yet that wasn't the case. His senses were keen towards temporal fluctuations and he could gove approximations on objects age. These pieces of cloth and armaments had been refined less than several hundred years ago. While the base material existed for long periods of time, some newer and some older, the newly refined state that intermixed them all were relatively new. 

There was no way these things could've undergone natural decay of tens of thousands of years. 

He couldn't determine if these pieces of armor belonged to the thousand Starlords sent here by the United Source True Queen or belonged here from another party. He also couldn't determine if this backdoor sent him to the same location as the others or if it was in perpetual motion. 

When he thought about the possibility of the latter, his mind was enlightened. The prickly sensation he felt was linked with his knowledge of space. "The backdoor must be stationary outside but in perpetual motion inside. But why the fragmented materials? Why the decay?" Unable to determine the cause, he stayed put until his spiritual sense thoroughly adjusted to the over abundance of light that blinded him. 

Without any obstruction, he could now sense the entire environment for tens of thousands of miles with ease. Firstly, he discovered bits of fragmented armor and ripped pieces of clothing scattered throughout the entire world in haphazard quantities. Some areas were filled with pieces while others were more sparse, yet they were all consistent in one detail: they were all decayed for what seemed like tens of thousands of years. 

"..." The abnormality of it all instilled further vigilance in his heart. He discovered that he might not be very reliable in determining these objects age, because as he inspected these objects closer, their temporal aura was stagnate. This meant they were in a temporal stasis, an unchanging state. They could very well be tens of thousands of years old.

But that was wildly inconsistent with their current states. If they were in stasis, decay shouldn't occur. 

He had never felt so wanting for Kratos' vague nonsense at this moment. If only to confirm the safety of the environment. Without hesitation, he circulated his draconic energies to empower his flesh and body, taking a single step forward. 

Thump!

A hollowed sound echoed as he stepped on the chilled glass-like ground. His heart quivered as he looked downwards and tried to inspect it. Unfortunately, his spiritual sense was like a flood meeting a dam, unable to breach it at all. 

"Maybe we should've fixed our eyes before coming here," Ori worriedly commented, its excitement seemingly vanishing without warning. It was a Spirit of Cultivation, so it experienced what Wei Wuyin experienced, saw what Wei Wuyin saw, and it used spiritual sense to inspect the world. If Wei Wuyin couldn't breach it, neither could any of his Astral Souls.

Wei Wuyin wryly smiled, "Maybe." He wasn't in a habit of feeling regret at his decisions. It was best to adapt and handle. But the tense and abnormality of this Stellar Nest did instill some highly vigilant emotions in his heart. He hadn't even explored most of it yet there was a sensation of lingering danger all around. 

"Huuuuuuu!" Wei Wuyin deeply inhaled, visualizing all the fearful uncertainty, hectic thoughts, and unneeded emotions build within his lungs as dark, icky motes of light from throughout his body.

"Haaaaaaaa!" With a heavy exhale, all those things left his body and into the world, abolished by natural law. A calming technique learned from his older brother. It never failed before and it hadn't now.

"Let's go," Wei Wuyin began to walk forward. Each step made a hollowed sound. When he thought about flying, he decided against it. He had this sensation that the sky was abnormal. He stayed grounded with each step, feeling the chill from the ground coursing through his body. 

"Why do I have a feeling that this chill and solar essence are in conflict with each other? And where is this light and heat coming from?" Wei Wuyin had already walked an entire mile, yet he discovered nothing but more fragmented armor and clothes drained of all their energies at the borders of his spiritual sense. Furthermore, there was no direction in which the light or heat originated. There was no Solar Star that was typical amongst World Realms.

That being said, it was strange since most Secret Realms lacked Solar Stars unless they needed to sustain life. However, he hadn't sensed a single aura of life thus far despite it having all the requirements. He hadn't even sensed a wall of any type or atmospheric layer above.

Where the hell was he? 

It had light and heat without origin, breathable air without an atmosphere, and filled with astral-graded materials that floated as if they weren't subjected to gravity. Worst of all, the gravity here was abnormally intense. It pulled one heavily towards the chilled glass-like ground. Something was acting as the Gravitational Central Mass below.

"There's no curvature either, but also no aura of a molten core." This place wasn't a spherical planet or continental flat earth. It wasn't an understatement to say this was a mixture between a World Realm and Secret Realm. 

"There's something ahead," Ori warned. 

Wei Wuyin's senses rushed towards the area ahead, reaching over three hundred miles ahead. His expression changed. The fluctuation of activity! He felt the varied aura of power, in the hundreds! They were all within Mortal Limits. Was this the Starlords sent by the United Source True Queen? Finally!

But his excitement at this discovery changed swiftly as he sensed these auras approaching him at a stupefying speeds. Furthermore, the clarity of their numbers changed from several hundreds to thousands, then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and finally tens of millions!!!

They were clusted together, their auras very similar. Like ants, they traversed the air in an united march. Together, they eclipsed the sky for several miles high and tens of miles wide and covered it in starlight brilliance.

"Stellar Rain!" 

Suddenly, he sensed an indinstinct aura concealed by a strange cloak at the forefront of this swarm. They held a small-sized spherical Solar Star the size of a basketball in their hands. It was exceedingly beautiful, emitting a thousand different colors of light in a gorgeous visual for the eyes. 

They were running on foot, sprinting with all their might! Heading directly towards Wei Wuyin!