In an instant, the mist before him seemed to be swept away by gusts of violent wind, and from Jiang Chen's ears came the sounds of clashing iron and charging cavalry — the din of battle.
For a moment, it was as though he had been transported to an ancient battlefield. The brutal sounds of slaughter rang out as though they were right before his very eyes.
Jiang Chen crested the hill and gazed into the distance. Below, in the valley, countless warriors were locked in close-quarters combat, carnage everywhere — men and horses tumbling, limbs flying in every direction.
The two warring sides were comprised of human cultivators on one end and demonic cultivators on the other.
The human cultivators fought in formation, watching each other's backs, while the demonic cultivators charged with savage ferocity, employing the most primal methods of slaughter in relentless waves of attack.
In terms of numbers, the human cultivators held a three-to-four-fold advantage. Individually, the demonic cultivators held the edge in raw combat power, though the humans were no slouches either.
And yet, on the battlefield, it was always the human cultivators who fell. For every four or five humans cut down, they managed to take down only one or two demons.
Even with the aid of their formations, the human cultivators were barely holding on — it felt as though their line could collapse at any moment.
Jiang Chen blinked. He almost wondered whether his eyes were deceiving him. Inside the Six Heritage Palaces, how could there possibly be a battle between humans and demons?
The instant he closed his eyes and opened them again, the scene of carnage before him abruptly shifted. The thousands of warriors that had been clashing moments ago vanished without a trace, replaced by an entirely different group locked in combat.
This group was pitifully small — fifteen at most.
On one side stood four or five figures: demon race powerhouses.
On the other stood human powerhouses of comparable stature.
The two sides fought to a desperate stalemate. Every combatant possessed formidable cultivation, each at minimum at the mid-stage of the Divine Path.
The strongest among them had even pushed close to the high-stage of the Divine Path.
At this level of combat power, heaven and earth themselves seemed to spin, the sun and moon dimmed. Every exchange left Jiang Chen's heart racing and his spirit swept away. Battles of this caliber were something he had only witnessed in the Primordial World in his previous life.
Perhaps these cultivators would not have been considered the absolute apex even in the Primordial World, but this degree of brutal, savage warfare was exceedingly rare even there.
Jiang Chen stared intently, afraid to miss a single detail. He clearly could not participate in a battle of this magnitude.
And yet, he had a strong intuition that everything he was seeing — every detail — was there for a reason. These scenes were giving him hints, showing him something he was meant to learn.
He engraved every last detail deep into his heart.
The visions shifted one after another, constantly changing, scene after scene of battle unfolding before Jiang Chen's eyes.
He did not know how much time had passed before the void in his line of sight suddenly reflected like a transparent mirror — and then, with a shattering crash, as though every mirror had been broken, the surrounding scenery transformed in an instant.
A blinding light struck Jiang Chen's eyes, forcing him to shut them tight.
By the time his vision slowly recovered, the scene before him had changed entirely. This time, Jiang Chen found himself standing inside a palace.
A magnificent palace, resplendent with gold and jade, radiating both opulence and solemn grandeur.
Along the palace walls stood row upon row of statues, each one unique, so lifelike they seemed ready to leap down from their pedestots at any moment.