Two days passed.
The gate didn't open, it wouldn't accept people inside the rift, but thankfully, it didn't let anything out.
Reports circulated like whispers: some cultivators who managed to enter the tower simply vanished. No energy signature. No soul trace. No return.
Rumours had it that three managed to pass.
Marael had changed more than they expected.
Though half the central city remained abandoned, but the remaining central districts had been reborn. Unlike the ancient capitals of Ayon or Vesta, this place leaned into modernity, glass façades, stainless-steel walkways, and hovering lanterns tracing elegant arcs over sky-rails.
Their first stop was the Arcade District, where high-end boutiques offered fashion tuned with minor Qi-threading, robes that shimmered, cloaks that adjusted to temperature, jewellery that read ambient energy. Yan raised an eyebrow at a price tag that would bankrupt smaller clans.
"You buying that?" Kalavan smirked.
"I could wear it to the next realm war," she muttered.
Next came the Weapon Quarter, a structured plaza where armament vendors hawked flame-hardened swords, armour laced with elemental wards, and Qi-reactive spears. Ryu inspected a crimson blade that vibrated faintly in his hand.
"Overpriced," he muttered, setting it down.
"Still better than those twisted beasts we were fighting," Kalavan noted.
Then came the Bazaar.
Here, the modern lines of the city gave way to stalls, covered by awnings of silk and hide, colours from every nation flapping in the breeze. The streets buzzed with sound: haggling, chanting, clinking glass and stone.
Treasure hunters laid out artifacts with exaggerated histories, blunted daggers, cracked talismans, and scrolls yellowed with age. To the untrained eye, it was a trove. To Ryu and his group, it was mostly noise.
But one section of the Bazaar silenced them.
The Alchemist's Row.
The air here was thick with spice, ash, and incense, a fragrant haze of boiling roots and distilled power. Tables stretched down the aisle in uneven lines, each one crowned with glowing vials, bubbling cauldrons, and stacks of ancient texts. Heat shimmered from crucibles where flame met Qi-infused copper, and cauldrons pulsed faintly with restrained energy.
Scribes sat cross-legged on woven mats, charting the properties of herbs, inscribing combinations on parchment with steady hands, murmuring lines of old alchemical poetry. Behind them, practitioners moved in a quiet rhythm, trading within their own community, exchanging bundles of spirit-root, sunleaf, dried blood lotus, and strands of powdered thunder-grass.
Others sold or bartered rare monster parts, severed claws or crystallized organs from Qi-beasts, substances that could enhance elixirs without overtaxing the alchemist's own Qi. Each fragment hummed with faint resonance, evidence that the creature it came from had once lived dangerously.
At one stall, a young alchemist performed a demonstration, carefully blending powdered herbs into a stone bowl. She poured in a drop of dark-green fluid, added a pinch of ground horn, then channelled her Qi in a slow spiral above the rim. The ingredients pulsed and fused into a softly glowing liquid, which shifted from amber to teal before settling into a bright, translucent green.
"Qi restoration draft," she explained to the small crowd. "Low-grade, low risk. Enough to stabilize your veins after light depletion."
Ryu and Yan exchanged a glance.
Lira stepped closer, watching the process intently.
"These aren't mass-produced," she whispered. "This is old-world alchemy."
Nearby, a sign written in delicate calligraphy read:
One in every hundred thousand may walk the path of true alchemy. The rest… may only observe.
"They're real," Elyra murmured. "True alchemists."
Lira stepped forward; her eyes wide. "I thought the art was lost."
"It was," Elyra said. "But some texts survived and here… they're studying them."
Inside a shaded tent at the far end of the row, Ryu and the others sat with an elderly alchemist. His beard was knotted with jade beads, and his voice trembled like silk paper.
"I've studied every waking moment since the seal was lifted," he said, "and I can only produce middle-grade pills in the practitioner's rank. High refinement requires… more. Talent. Qi. Will. Most important, the control of their fire."
Elyra and Lira helped him decode ancient glyphs inked into the parchment beside his mortar.
"It says the Dao of fire is a tool," Lira whispered.
The old man nodded. "They say not even one in every hundred thousand can truly walk the path of alchemy, it's because it's complex and unforgiving."
Kalavan scratched his head. "Glad I stuck to blades."
The man continued with his explanation, delving deeper into the alchemist ways.
Alchemy Pills:
Each pill follows a structured ranking system, tied closely to the cultivation stages. Pills are categorized by both grades, low, medium, or high, and by rank, which aligns with practitioner levels: Practitioner, Elemental, Ascension, and Transcendence.
Their effects vary widely:
Some stimulate Qi circulation or accelerate breakthroughs.Others enhance the body, reinforcing bones, blood, or internal organs.Certain pills focus on spiritual refinement, strengthening the soul or expanding consciousness.And rare variants offer cosmetic or restorative effects, preserving youth or healing injuries that normal techniques cannot mend.
True alchemical pills require not only rare ingredients, but precise control over Qi, heat, and Dao intent, making skilled alchemists as valued as any high-tier cultivator.
That night under a cloudless sky, Ryu stood alone before the Cradle Sect tower.
The red glow from the gate pulsed across the stone streets, casting long shadows that danced like silent spirits. Heat bled from the structure.
Ryu raised his hand, focused, and pulsed space.
Nothing.
The air didn't fold. The world didn't bend.
The space around the tower held firm, as if locked by a seal not meant to yield.
He stepped back, brow furrowed. "This gate was made by someone at the Transcendence Stage… or beyond. Either they mastered space, or their Qi was so vast I can't even interact with it."
He didn't say the rest out loud. The Void Emperor hadn't done this.
By the third morning, the group stood together on the upper overlook above the tower, the light below still beating like a second heart.
"We've seen enough," Yan said, eyes hard.
"It's calling," Ryu replied. "And it's not just a gate. It's a tomb. A vault."
Lira's gaze didn't waver. "This rift is ancient, maybe fifty thousand years old."
Ryu gave the city below one last glance then they moved.
At the tower's threshold, the rift surged.
The ripple of space pressed against Ryu's skin, vibrating through his bones. He was the only one among them with deep understanding of void and spatial principles, yet even he couldn't grasp the seal's construction.
Still, the gate accepted him.
He stepped forward, and the world shifted.
Space warped. Time compressed.
The gate took him.
Yan and Lira followed in his wake, too fast to second-guess, but as Kalavan moved to follow, the gate rejected him.
A pulse struck his chest like a hammer. He stumbled back, coughing.
Elyra reached out instinctively, but her own attempt to step forward met the same result. The rift pushed her away, firm and unwavering.
"What?" Kalavan growled, gathering Qi in frustration. He charged it, shaping an attack.
"Kalavan, no!" Elyra shouted, stepping between him and the gate. "If you strike it, what if you collapse it? They'd be stranded. We might lose them forever."
He lowered his hands, trembling with helpless anger. "Why them? Why not us?"
Elyra looked at the gate, eyes narrowing. "Because it chose them."
Ryu landed hard, boots sinking slightly into sun-blasted sand. The ground shifted with every breath, grains fine as powdered glass, shimmering gold under the weight of the sun.
The desert stretched outward in all directions; a sea of rolling dunes broken only by jagged formations of obsidian-coloured rock that jutted from the ground like shattered bones. Some were needle-thin, others wide and hunched, half-buried beneath centuries of wind, a wind that was no longer present.
The sky above was a vast, cloudless dome of pale white, blue, blinding at the edges, its light unfiltered and absolute. Not a shadow moved. Not a single bird or insect stirred. No hum of life whispered through the air.
The air was thin, crisp, and dry, as though it had never once tasted moisture. Every breath stung the lungs of anyone in the elemental realm. Every motion felt like defiance.
Ryu straightened slowly, his gaze sweeping over the horizon.
He turned.
Yan and Lira had collapsed behind him, dazed and disoriented. Their bodies twitched with the effects of spatial pressure. Ryu rushed to them, pulling them to a small amount of shade beneath a jagged dark red rock nearby.
They blinked up at him, confused.
"Where are we?" Yan asked, voice dry.
Lira looked out across the dunes; eyes narrowed. "This isn't just a gate realm. I've heard of these in old scriptures... A pocket world, not unlike Ryu's spatial pockets, but this is different. This one can hold life. A full ecosystem, the more powerful the master the larger the realm of the pocket world is."
She hesitated, then added, "Only one person in the history of the ten realms that was capable of something like this. The Void Emperor. But this… this wasn't made by him."
Ryu reached inward, calling upon his star flame.
No response. No resonance.
"This place isn't reacting to me," he muttered. "This isn't mine, or the void emperors or relates to the star-flame its someone else's."
He looked to the endless dunes.
"Ladies, we need to move. Now. Whatever this place is, it's giving me a strange feeling."
Together, the three of them trudged across the golden expanse, dunes shifting beneath their feet, heat shimmering at the edge of vision. They moved toward a distant line of shade, a cluster of stone pillars rising from the sand.
The sun climbed higher.