His vision flipped, and the scenery before him shifted. By the time Yang Kai collected himself, he found himself standing in an entirely different world.
He cast his gaze outward and couldn't help furrowing his brow.
This was undoubtedly another continent — presumably the Blood Flame Continent, which neighbored Cloud Shadow. However, the landscape was quite different from what he had imagined. The entire world radiated an aura of deathly stillness, utterly devoid of any trace of vitality.
Everywhere his eyes could reach lay desolation. Not only were there no signs of living creatures, but not even a single plant existed.
The ground was blanketed in yellow sand, and fierce winds howled ceaselessly, whipping up tornadoes of dust that tore across the land with terrifying force. Within his field of vision alone, over a hundred dust tornadoes stretched from earth to sky, raging madly and destroying everything in their path.
Was the Blood Flame Continent's environment really this hostile?
Yang Kai knew that each continent in the Demon Realm had its own distinct conditions, but by and large, most of them were habitable and pleasant enough. If the Blood Flame Continent looked like this everywhere, then the demons here would have no hope of survival.
The Dharma Body clearly noticed the same thing. The two exchanged a glance, both wearing expressions of doubt and unease, unsure whether the Blood Flame Continent had always been like this or whether some change had occurred.
But since they were already here, they naturally needed to investigate thoroughly.
He recalled Guixu, settling the creature on his shoulder, then galloped forward alongside the Dharma Body. Though the tornadoes along the way were fearsome, they posed little threat to the two of them.
Before long, a massive ruin loomed ahead, spanning roughly a thousand li in circumference. From a distance it resembled the outline of a city, but when they drew closer, Yang Kai saw that the city had long been abandoned — the entire place was buried beneath yellow sand, and not a single living soul remained within its vast walls.
Sweeping the area with his spiritual sense, Yang Kai frowned, flickered to a specific spot, and reached down with a wave of his hand. The sand surged, and he extracted an object from beneath the surface.
It was a demon's corpse. He couldn't tell which race it belonged to, but it appeared to be female. The state of death was ghastly — though there were no external wounds, it was clear she had suffered immense agony before dying. Every last shred of her vital essence had been drained away, leaving nothing but a desiccated husk. It was the same manner of death as Lie Kuang's. She had been preserved in the sand for years, which kept the body relatively intact, but the moment the wind touched it, the entire thing crumbled to dust — bones and all.
On the other side, the Dharma Body had likewise excavated several corpses from underground, all identical in appearance to the female demon: shriveled, hollowed-out husks, their life essence devoured by some unknown force.
No further investigation was needed. The entire population of this city had died in precisely this manner.
Moreover, the fact that a city had existed here in the first place proved that the environment hadn't always been this hostile. Otherwise, how could the demons have survived here? The sand and the tornadoes must have appeared later.
Had someone among the demons cultivated a technique similar to the Heavenly Devouring Battle Art? Yang Kai's brow creased. Without such an explanation, the state of this place was impossible to make sense of — and yet that still didn't account for the environmental transformation.
For the moment, he couldn't piece it together. All he could do was continue onward with the Dharma Body, exploring along the way.
For an entire day, the scenery before him remained virtually unchanged. They did discover several more city ruins, both large and small, but without exception, every one presented the same picture: all the demons were dead, and every corpse had been reduced to a desiccated husk.
Yang Kai was beginning to feel that something was seriously wrong. Even if a demon had cultivated a technique resembling the Heavenly Devouring Battle Art, they couldn't have accomplished something on this scale. Before the final World Gate of the Blood Flame Continent vanished, all the Demon Kings had already withdrawn in advance. The strongest beings left behind were at most Demon Commanders — how could they have the power to annihilate entire cities?
To pull off something like this would require at least a High-Order Demon King, but no High-Order Demon King would have remained behind.
While he was lost in thought, the Dharma Body's sharp voice cut through: "Watch out!"
Yang Kai snapped back to awareness and looked up. His pupils contracted sharply. The void ahead had been severed — a colossal spatial chasm stretched across their path, its depths seething with cataclysmic waves of energy. Beyond the chasm, a hundred li away, the faint silhouette of another landmass flickered in and out of view.
Had he and the Dharma Body reached the edge of the Blood Flame Continent?
But that couldn't be right. The Blood Flame Continent was no small territory — there was no way it was only this large. He and the Dharma Body had been traveling for just one day, with several stops along the way. How could they possibly have reached its border already?
He looked again at the continent beyond the chasm. It seemed to belong to the same body of land as the one he stood on.
Realization struck Yang Kai like a bolt of lightning. "The Blood Flame Continent has shattered!"
The landmass ahead was clearly another fragment of the Blood Flame Continent — identical to the fragment beneath his feet. But what force could have been powerful enough to shatter an entire continent into countless pieces?
Then again, considering that the entire Demon Realm was in a similar state, it wasn't entirely surprising.
In relative terms, the Blood Flame Continent's current condition was simply a microcosm of the whole Demon Realm — only here, there was no life at all. Could it be because the disappearance of the final World Gate had severed the Blood Flame Continent from the Demon Realm's territory?
That was entirely plausible. If that were truly the reason, it would explain the continent's hostile environment.
If one compared the Demon Realm to a human body, then each continent would be one of its organs. The Blood Flame Continent, having been cut off from the Demon Realm's domain by the disappearance of all its World Gates, had collapsed in on itself, devolving into the nightmarish landscape before him. When a person's hand is severed, that hand withers and dies — and that was the most fitting description of the Blood Flame Continent today.