Hours passed in the blur of wind and light, with occasional rests where Little Shrubby was allowed to stretch and recharge his lightning-rich body.
During these pauses, Daoist Chu could not help but remark on the beast’s resilience, while Monk Hushu quietly admired the discipline and power inherent in such a bloodline.
ng Bai sparred briefly during one of the breaks, practicing with his spear against the wind to keep his body ward up, while the twin snakes hissed approvingly, enjoying the thrill of the journey.
Lin Mu observed them all in silence, satisfied with the balance of the group.
Each had their role to play, and soon they would step into the dynasty where shadows lingered and secrets waited to be uncovered. For now, the journey itself was the test, a prelude to the mission that lay ahead.
And above them, the sky stretched vast and endless, as Little Shrubby’s lightning surged forward once more.
The journey across the skies lasted exactly as Monk Hushu had estimated.
Five days of rushing wind, streaks of lightning across the horizon, and the steady rhythm of Little Shrubby’s stride had carried them across vast forests, rivers, and plains. Now, as the fifth day waned into its final hours, the horizon revealed a sight so imnse that it seed to dwarf everything they had seen before.
Before them stretched the border of the Darkhan Dynasty.
Lin Mu’s eyes narrowed slightly, his spatial perception extending outward instinctively, tracing the lines of what he saw.
The others were equally taken aback, though they each showed it in their own way.
"Whoa..." ng Bai leaned forward, his youthful curiosity painted across his face.
"Never gets old." Daoist Chu’s brows rose in quiet awe.
The twin snakes flicked their tongues, tasting the light concentration of immortal qi that lingered in the air. Monk Hushu, calm but reverent, pressed his palms together lightly as if offering a silent prayer to the scale of human effort displayed before them.
The border wall of the Darkhan Dynasty stretched farther than sight itself. Its colossal length was not broken even by the rise and fall of the land.
Mountains, valleys, rivers, and forests were all absorbed into its line, the structure climbing, sinking, and bending to follow every contour of the land.
On the plains, it stood at a daunting height of fifty ters, but where the mountains lood, the wall surged upward to more than a hundred ters. Combined with the natural rise of the mountains, the impression was that of an unbroken cliff face forged by both man and earth.
The wall was not a crude construct.
Every block, every carved surface carried the marks of precision and artistry. On the flat plains, the stone appeared polished and uniform, smooth surfaces reflecting faint gleams of sunlight.
Along the forested stretches, the wall had reliefs of ancient battles, engraved guardians, and flowing scripts that seed to whisper faintly with power. High above, embedded in the stone at intervals, were nodes of radiant crystal, glowing softly in rhythm with the qi coursing through the wall’s hidden veins.
Lin Mu felt it imdiately. The arrays.
The wall was more than stone and mortar. Beneath its surface ran a vast network of formations, intricately linked to one another, stretching across the entire span of the dynasty’s border.
His spatial perception traced the overlapping layers: barriers, detection webs, reinforcent formations, and conduits that channeled qi with the fluidity of a river. The wall itself was alive in a sense, breathing with energy, every segnt part of a unified whole.
Its absorption of qi was so high that the ambient concentration of qi in the air itself had reduced by half. This was exactly what the twins had detected.
"It is enormous..." ng Bai muttered under his breath, unable to restrain himself.
His eyes traced the distant ridges where the wall climbed into mountains, each segnt disappearing into clouds before reappearing again on the other side.
Daoist Chu nodded, his tone unusually respectful. "Not rely enormous. It is a display of power, wealth, and endurance. Few forces in the world could ever dream of constructing sothing so vast, let alone maintaining it."
Monk Hushu finally spoke, his voice calm yet filled with gravity. "The Great Wall of the Darkhan Dynasty has stood for nearly one hundred thousand years. It has only faltered twice in that ti, during the Great Wars of the past.
Once, when the Ephera Sect and its allied unorthodox powers struck with all their might. The second, during the ancient war of succession within the dynasty itself. Aside from those two scars in its history, it has never fallen."
ng Bai’s eyes widened further. "A hundred thousand years..."
The weight of that span of ti was difficult to comprehend. His spear training, his studies, even his sect’s traditions suddenly felt like fleeting drops against the backdrop of such enduring history.
Lin Mu said nothing, but his thoughts mirrored the sa respect.
He had seen great formations and defenses, but this wall was on another level entirely. It was not simply defense but declaration. A ssage carved into the land itself that said the Darkhan Dynasty was eternal, immovable, and beyond the reach of ordinary ambition.
As they drew nearer, the full majesty of the wall revealed itself.
The plains they were flying over abruptly ended in a rising incline, where the wall stood like a mountain carved with human hands. From a distance, it had seed like a solid line, but up close, the details ca alive.
At the top, watchtowers dotted the length of the wall, each tower manned and ard.
Flags of deep crimson fluttered in the wind, bearing the dynasty’s crest: a golden dragon coiled around a sphere of fire. The towers’ windows glimred faintly, no doubt reinforced with both steel and arrays, ready to unleash volleys of energy or arrows at any intruder.
The wall was not rely stone but fortress.
And yet it was more still. Lin Mu’s perception confird what Monk Hushu soon explained aloud for the others.
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