The journey to the Whispering Weald was a blur of distorted landscapes as Li Yu moved. He was given the directions and coordinates of where it was and was moving accordingly. He folded the distance, folding the space and moving through the void.

  It had never felt so comfortable and the consumption of Qi was even less than before. When he finally arrived at the precipice of the Weald, the first thing that hit him wasn't the sight of the enemy but the oppressive weight of the atmosphere.

  The Whispering Weald was named for the way the wind usually howled through the hollowed trunks of ancient, dead ironwood trees. The wind creates a sound like thousands of ghostly voices. But today, the Weald was silent.

  It was a suffocating and unnatural silence for an area packed with so much life.

  Li Yu stood on a high ridge overlooking the sea of dark green and grey canopy. He could feel the alliance scouts miles away in every direction. They were huddled in their concealment arrays and were so far away the concealment arrays were useless.

  They were all terrified and rightfully so. The teams were watching the edge of the forest and waiting for the dam to break. Watching out for everything and reporting back.

  “If I go directly in, I’ll trigger any alarm the beasts might have before I see anything worthwhile,” Li Yu muttered to himself. “And if I fight my way in openly, those scouts will see too much. I don’t want them to know too much about me or my abilities right now. Not until I know who I can actually trust here.”

  He closed his eyes and was centering his breathing. The spiritual energy in his dantian shifted, not flaring outward but inverting. He reached out with his mind and touched the 1st layer of space that surrounded him. To most cultivators this was simply empty space. To Li Yu, it was a thick layered tapestry.

  He found the seam he was looking for, the First Layer of the Void. With a subtle step, Li Yu didn’t move forward but inward.

  The world shifted instantly. The vibrant colors of the living world desaturated into a monochrome spectrum of greys, pewters and silvers. The sound of the wind vanished. It was replaced by the low resonant hum of the void.

  In this layer Li Yu was a ghost to the outside world. He occupied the same coordinates as the material world but he did not interact with its matter. He could see them but they could not see, touch or sense him.

  He began to walk down the ridge, his steps in the air as if it were solid ground. Li Yu drifted toward the tree line and when he reached the first massive trunk, a tree as wide as a house, he didn’t walk around it. He passed straight through it.

  The sensation was cold and a momentary shiver as his void-form intersected with the physical density of the wood but he emerged on the other side without breaking stride. He was now inside the Whispering Weald to begin his scouting. After walking for a bit, Li Yu then found himself quickly surrounded by all kinds of different beasts.

  The sheer density of the beast tide was staggering. From the outside the forest looked like a normal forest even though everyone knew otherwise. From the inside, it was a writhing ocean of muscle, fur and scales. The ground was nearly invisible and was completely carpeted by resting monsters.

  Li Yu walked among them, his hands clasped behind his back, acting like a lord inspecting his garden. A massive wolf with fur like steel needles lay sleeping near his feet. Its snout was scarred and drool pooled beneath its jaw. The drool was sizzling as it hit the earth. Li Yu leaned in to inspect the creature’s aura.

  “Foundation Establishment realm,” he noted. “And this is just on the periphery. The level of beast tide on this continent is countless times higher than on my own. Or is it only this way because of recent events?”

  As he moved deeper, the quality of the beasts began to shift and Li Yu’s curiosity deepened. He had expected a chaotic gathering, a frenzy of bloodlust. That was the nature of beasts during beast tides, wasn’t it? To roar, to fight for dominance, in general all of those beings involved being loud. Even if there were leaders among them, most of the time the beasts were free to do whatever they wanted until commanded.

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  But this army was dead silent.

  He stopped near a clearing where a group of what looked like commanders were gathered. Very quickly he noticed that these were not normal beasts. They were twisted, mutated things that defied natural biology.

  There was a bear standing on its hind legs but it had four arms, each ending in obsidian claws. Its chest was open, revealing ribs made of black metal and was pulsing with a chaotic purple light. Next to it was a serpent coiled around a massive tree but instead of a snake’s head, it had a cluster of sensory tentacles and a single, unblinking eye that glowed with intelligence. It was a creepy looking beast.

  Li Yu watched them closely and probed lightly. The four-armed bear gestured with a claw, pointing toward the ridge. The serpent didn’t hiss or speak. It simply turned its massive head and nodded. A ripple of energy passed between them. It was invisible to the naked eye but blindingly obvious to Li Yu’s spiritual sense.

  “Telepathy?” Li Yu questioned. “No… it’s more efficient than that. It’s like some kind of hivemind perhaps? Like bees?”

  He thought back to the beasts he had encountered in the Southern Continent, specifically during the tournament in the ancient ruins. Those beasts had been boisterous but extremely smart and pragmatic.

  They had pride, egos and individual personalities. They laughed, they taunted, they negotiated. These beasts here were different.

  Li Yu walked right up to the four-armed bear and was staring into its face. It was a 9th Stage Core Formation beast and looked like it was on the verge of breaking through to Nascent Soul. At this level, a beast should have been able to speak what seems like the universal language.

  He remembered back to the information his beast followers told him. ‘It did seem like it varied quite a bit between beasts. Or did some beasts choose to stay without gaining those abilities for other benefits? Maybe by staying as they are, without more human-like traits, they gain other abilities or strengths?’ He thought.

  However, after looking and studying this creature Li Yu realized it physically couldn’t. It seemed to have traded what would have been human like sentience and perhaps more intelligence for power.

  Li Yu speculated, ‘what it got instead was reinforced muscle to support a stronger bite. Its brain structure wasn’t developed for language or complex philosophy; it was streamlined for tactical processing and combat reflexes perhaps?’

  ‘It looks like it made its choice on what was more important to it,’ Li Yu thought. ‘I don’t know though, these are all purely guesses. However, it makes sense. You can't get anything without trading away something else. Humans had weaker bodies than beasts but they were better able to study and cultivate the dao.’

  ‘Each species had their own advantages and weaknesses. Some will trade certain aspects as they get stronger to be more focused. A human focusing on body refinement and cultivation will have weaker qi than someone who focused on purely qi cultivation. A beast that gained more human-like traits will have a weaker body and strength than a beast that remained as they were.’

  ‘It didn’t mean that a beast is stupid or dumb, a beast without human-like intelligence is plenty smart. Just not as smart perhaps. The guardian beasts can all communicate with me, are incredibly strong and who knows what else they are hiding. They did not once turn to a human form, perhaps they chose not to or perhaps they can’t. It all comes down to decisions and time. No one had infinite time to pursue everything. You have to focus…’ Li Yu thoughts wander about into the mysteries before him.

  It was a fascinating, if horrifying, evolutionary divergence. Some beasts of the emulated humanity to gain the versatility of the Dao. They wanted to understand the heavens, so they became like the humans who studied it. It was a quicker path to the Dao but they must have traded advantages for it.

  But these creatures… they had rejected humanity entirely. They didn’t want to be cultivators. They wanted to be apex predators. They sacrificed the ability to speak, to transform and perhaps even higher emotions, all for raw power and surely destructive might. Thicker armor. Sharper claws. Faster reflexes. A hive-mind connection that eliminated the need for clumsy words.

  “It’s a trade-off,” Li Yu mused to himself. He then walked past the bear and through a dense thicket of thorns. “If you spend five hundred years learning to talk and act like a human, that’s five hundred years you didn’t spend hardening your skin. These things are pure biological weapons.”

  It made them less civilized but in a war? It made them infinitely more dangerous. There was no fear in their eyes, no extra thoughts about what the future might bring, only purpose. There was no confusion, only orders received and executed via the mental link.

  Li Yu continued his drift toward the center of the Weald. The deeper he went, the heavier the pressure became. The air grew hot and distorted by the sheer volume of spiritual energy concentrated in one place.

  He passed beasts that were clearly in the Nascent Soul realm, creatures of nightmare that would require top cultivators to put down. Powerhouses in their own right. Here, they were merely guards, perhaps the main guards of the Sky-Iron Dreadnought. They were standing rigid as statues. They form a perimeter around the epicenter of it all. What laid beyond them was clear.