Chapter 6: the best kind of friend
12 seconds, she'd fallen near a half a kilometer, and yet she had yet to reach the bottom.
Each second seemed to stretch so long, she could feel every pump of her heart, as if it were the slow ebb of the evening tide. She kept her mind about her though, twisting her body, so that she was foot first, however, below, only clouds could be seen, and once she entered them, she pushed down with all qi she had barely collected in the past 6 months. The chains didn't completely block qi, only made it so that it moved thousands of times slower than normal, so that you could do a move, and it would slow the injection of qi to the point that it would feel like you weren't doing anything, which you weren't, unless you kept pushing for a long time, which she'd figured out and had barely reached the first level of qi refinement by forcing her qi through her body with everything she had for the last 6 months.
There were 6 realms in cultivation in the mortal world.
First there was qi condensation, the basics, but impossible for a mortal to break into without a cultivation manual, or, close to impossible, for there are always exceptions. After qi condensation, came foundation establishment, this was where more skills came out, where cultivators could finally fly, use spiritual weapons to their full potential and use many qi skills. Next came the golden core, which was often the level that sect masters of small sects had attained, and anyone at this stage was very respected and honored. Even in the demonic cult, many of the leaders were of the golden core stage, with Li Haoli and Zhu Sungwu only a few steps below it and leader Yunseng barely in it. Only the absolute monarchs were still higher, which was the nascent soul realm sect leaders of the largest sects could all be expected to hold the power of the nascent soul, and any one in that realm would be treated as a venerable, there were very few that could reach this realm, so most in it would remain in seclusion cultivating intensely. After the nascent soul, there would be soul formation. The amount of soul formation cultivators could be counted on one hand. 2 of them were actually still alive in the demonic cult, mostly unknown to the world. Two of the top sects each had one, but they almost never showed their faces. And the last one was a wanderer, after having disagreements with his previous sect, a couple hundred years ago. Lastly, after attaining the 6th realm, void refining, as one prepared their body for rebirth leading to a chance at ascending. If you could reach past the sixth stage, you would ascend to the upper world of immortals. However, no one had ascended in at least 14 millenia, so most felt it was unattainable at this point, due to how much qi deficiency the mortal world held at the current time. The world had deteriorated since the ancients.
As for Hui, she wasn't even at the 1st level of qi condensation and couldn't even control her currently gathered qi properly, so it was already with incredible luck, when she landed, that the force she had sent down was just enough to make her land with only minor injuries.
However, when she finally looked up to what was around her, she was greeted with a strange, and nightmarish sight. All around was misty fog, with completely black, leafless trees littering the ground at random. And the fog also was interfering with her qi flow, making it impossible to keep circulating energy. However, beneath her, rather than just dirt, it was piles and piles of lifeless white bones, with old granite mixed throughout. She stood up. scrambling away from the skull that greeted her face, only to step her foot into another one, crushing it inward. She finally just stood to her feet, glancing at all the precious items laying across the bones she saw around her. It seemed Li Haoli hadn't been the only one greedy for the item of the legends. And his predecessor's sacrifices were littered for almost a half a li. She began to pick up all precious metals off the bones, which, to her surprise, were completely preserved, although unconnected by any sinuses and stuffed them into one spacial ring she found on a more recent corpse. She even found a couple random cultivation modules, and things. It seemed only the flesh of the people had disappeared, their clothes and bones remained. Hundreds of stinger shells littered the ground, but the flowers were completely gone, however, the moss was simply withered away.
She took the flower out from behind her hair, sighing as she added that to her new spacial ring, which was inset with a nice agate stone, the color of light cream and black, so that it looked like a swirling galaxy, or clouds of smoke.
However, all while she looted the area, the screams continued, seeming to grow louder and louder as time passed, until she could no longer ignore them, holding her head, to keep her blood from pumping headaches through her skull from the noise. She looked around, trying to find the source, but try as she might, all she could see was the swirling fog that moved at random around her. Only, the clouds that swirled seemed to get closer and closer the longer she looked at them, and then, they began to take shape. Misty forms, with claws that came out within their ethereal bodies, grabbing at her. She dodged to the side. The screeching sound flew past her right ear, and where the claws had almost touched, her flesh began to rot away.
Fear clouded Hui's eyes. The misty form turned to look at her, two black swirls of darkness took the shape of its eyes, and it was staring at her, seeming to draw her into a hypnotic state. But Hui slapped herself, barely coming to her senses, as the misty figure struck at her again. Its screams screeching against her ears. Suddenly, another form appeared, the smog shaping it out of itself, its eyes also two whirling pits of darkness. They had no faces, no mouths or noses or ears, just two black eyes that looked both there and not there, as if they held infinity or nothing within themselves. Their claws were long and sharp and were so different from the misty bodies that they possessed.
Hui ran. It didn't matter if every step, the shackles around her feet would hold her back. It was run or die. her mentality had always been strong. And once again, this willpower saved her. Because right behind her, three more forms took shape. However, now that she had moved, they also began to move. Flowing over the ground, faster than they should be able to, they were steadily gaining on her.