Rumble—
The moment Chu Feng and the others stepped through the stone gate, they vanished completely—as if stone dropped into the ocean—disappearing into the barrier of the gate without a single person appearing on the competition stage.
Yet the competition stage was far from calm.
That enormous platform had begun to rumble with a deafening roar.
The violent tremors shook not only the earth but the very sky above.
At the same time, the runes inscribed upon the stage began to emit radiant light—and more than that, they started to rotate.
It was clearly a grand formation.
As the formation activated, the stage underwent a dramatic transformation. Massive trees emerged, extending outward from within the formation.
The stage continued to change—mountains rose from the ground, waterfalls cascaded down cliffs, and raging rivers carved through the landscape.
At first, the stage had been nothing more than a platform of bluestone—empty and barren, with nothing on it but the runes carved into its surface.
But now, the stage held deserts, oases, mountain ranges, rivers, and even several stretches of ocean.
And within the stage, patches of floating clouds had appeared as well.
An independent world had unmistakably formed within the competition stage.
Of course, everything inside that world was minuscule compared to reality.
The towering trees on the stage, for instance, appeared no larger than ants in the eyes of the spectators.
But none of the onlookers were particularly astonished—they had all seen enough of the world to know better.
They understood that the world within the stage was a self-contained space. If Chu Feng and the other young cultivators stepped inside, they too would become tiny.
In short, it wasn't that the world within the stage was truly small—it was simply an enclosed space, and unless one was actually inside it, its vastness could not be felt.
The transformation within the stage proceeded rapidly, and in the blink of an eye, it had largely taken shape.
Only the center was still shifting and changing.
It was a vast plain.
At that moment, across the boundless heavens, billions of gazes converged upon that plain.
They wanted to see what the plain would become.
BOOM—
Finally, the plain began to move. It rose from the ground with astonishing speed, piercing through the clouds in an instant.
It had formed into an immensely majestic mountain peak.
And beneath the plain, the soil shifted and transformed into two enormous dragons, coiled around the summit of the peak.
The world within the stage held countless marvels, but compared to that sky-reaching mountain peak with two great dragons coiled around it, everything else paled into insignificance.
"That must be the true Storm Dragon Arena," someone murmured.
The crowd gazed at the peak wreathed by the two dragons, and they all realized that this was likely the true destination where the young cultivators from every faction would converge.
In other words, that place—was the battlefield where Chu Feng and the others would decide the victor.
"Why is it changing again?"
But soon, the crowd noticed that the clouds over the competition stage were growing denser by the moment. Before long, they had completely obscured the spectators' view.
Now, apart from the sky-reaching mountain peak at the very center of the stage—where the two dragons were coiled—nothing else could be seen.
Everything else within the world had been swallowed by that thick blanket of fog.
"What's going on? They're not letting us watch?"
"Could it be that back when the Storm Berserk Clan existed, after the Storm Dragon Arena opened, they couldn't see inside either and could only wait for the final result?"
The crowd erupted into discussion over the changes on the stage. They were genuinely frustrated.
Originally, a complete world had unfolded before their eyes. They had assumed that Chu Feng and the other young cultivators would eventually appear within it—and when that happened, everything that transpired inside would be laid bare before them.
They would bear witness to it all from the perspective of gods. Just the thought of it had been thrilling.
But now, the competition stage had been shrouded in fog. And perhaps it was because the stage was protected by a barrier, but none of their methods worked—they simply could not see through that dense mist.
Whatever happened within the stage, they would have no way of knowing.
This development was, naturally, a bitter disappointment.
…
Meanwhile, although Chu Feng and the others had stepped through the stone gate, what they had entered was a pitch-black void.
Within this space, they could not move a muscle—as if they had been cast into a desolate, empty world and trapped there.
But Chu Feng did not panic. He immediately began searching for a way to escape.
Before long, he discovered the trick.
Within that pitch-black void, there was in fact an object—a crystal.
Though the crystal was also black, its shape was identical to the one on the stone gate.
Chu Feng knew that this crystal had to be the key to leaving this place.
And after some study, Chu Feng found that the crystal was in fact an independent space—and within that space was another stone gate.
Opening that gate would undoubtedly allow him to leave.
However, entering the crystal's independent space was no simple matter.
A barrier surrounded the outside of the crystal—much like the barrier that blocked martial cultivators before they could break through to a new realm.
Breaking through it required a cultivator's comprehension and insight.
But anything related to comprehension was rarely something that could stump Chu Feng.
Chu Feng closed his eyes and focused his mind. In but a single instant, he shattered the barrier.