Cade shot past the central formation, stopping in front of the palace’s massive double gate. He was beginning to vaguely sense the same sanctified aura he remembered from the vision. It made his skin tingle—barely perceptible—and his voracious heart released a rapid, impatient beat.

  Just like in the vision, the enormous wings of golden metal were sealed shut. Back then, his consciousness had passed through them as if they were air. Now, he pushed against them with all his strength, going so far as to ignite all the blood qi in his body—yet to no avail. Seeing that this approach wouldn’t work, he chose brute force.

  The Asura unleashed punch after punch into the immense gate, each one landing with a muffled buzz as a qi barrier repelled the strike. Every blow sent buffeting winds swirling around him, raising clouds of dust from the bone-dry ground. His entire body vibrated as the rebounding force traveled back through his limbs.

  Alas, none of his efforts could force the golden gate to budge, and it stood completely untouched by his relentless onslaught. Cade rubbed his knuckles, then sat down on a nearby boulder, scratching his chin.

  Let’s see if this does anything.

  He brought out Legion, filling the sword with as much blood qi as it could hold in its current state. The blade lit up like a crimson pyre, casting a powerful red glow.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Of course, Master. Though I have to say, I don’t think we can break through this barrier,” the spirit answered, his metallic voice tinged with doubt.

  “I agree,” Cade said, “but it won’t hurt to try.”

  With a vicious downward arc, the Asura smashed the blazing weapon into the barrier. Legion imbued the strike with his understanding of spiritual energy, allowing the easy formation of basic qi-severing law threads. A bright flash followed, accompanied by a piercing, high-pitched shriek that made Cade grit his teeth. The barrier rejected the blow outright, its force tearing at the ground and hurling him ten steps back.

  His entire body trembled as ignited blood qi repaired the damage from the powerful rebound. Fortunately, it was nothing serious—no doubt thanks to reinforcing himself with devil king hydra blood.

  Looks like I’ll need to find another way inside.

  He shot into the air and circled the palace several times, attempting to break through a few windows. Each time, he was stopped short—the invisible barrier covered every inch of the structure, leaving no openings at all.

  No wonder it stood here for so long. If even Death Dao couldn’t breach it, brute force is likely a waste of time.

  Cade returned to the boulder in front of the main gate and sat there, pondering. His knowledge of defensive formations was limited, but he did have a basic understanding of how they functioned. Generally speaking, there were two types of such barriers.

  The most basic protective formations created a uniform, standard barrier—simple, straightforward, and relatively easy to break, like his portable disc. But with a massive formation like this one, the defense had to be intelligent and reactive. Otherwise, it would require a ridiculous amount of energy to sustain.

  Such barriers could detect incoming attacks and shift the bulk of their defensive power to the point of impact, reinforcing it tremendously. This was why a single person would have an extremely difficult time breaking a large defensive formation—unless they possessed overwhelming strength or enough time to completely exhaust its power source.

  That didn’t mean the barrier was impenetrable.

  According to most formation treatises Cade had read, when magnified to a sufficient degree, a barrier’s surface resembled a web of interconnected particles. Between them were minuscule empty spaces—just large enough for air to pass through.

  Air particles were incredibly small, able to squeeze through these gaps. Cade was far from an expert on airborne poisons, but as far as he knew, one of the reasons such formations were so effective was that poison particles were more complex—and therefore too large—to penetrate the barrier.

  If air can enter… what about my crimson mist?

  The Asura frowned, then released a small amount from his hand. The mist was composed of prismatic dust and blood qi—both pure energy—but with one crucial distinction. The dust allowed the blood qi to take form, letting it shift between material and immaterial states at his will. How it accomplished this, Cade had no idea; he had long since accepted the miracle for what it was.

  The stronger his blood qi became, the more dust he could compress into the same volume of mist. He estimated that once he reached the late stage of Flesh Fortification, he would be able to make the mist mostly—if not fully—corporeal without igniting his blood qi at all.

  He sent a faint red tendril toward the barrier, keeping the prismatic dust in its default, fully immaterial state. The thin, translucent wisp touched the barrier and began pressing against it.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Cade leapt off the boulder and leaned in, bringing his face right up to the barrier. His pupils narrowed, magnifying his vision until he could make out a web of blurry dots forming the barrier’s structure. It was the absolute limit of his eyesight, and the strain was intense. Bloody tears trickled down his cheeks.

  Then a huge grin split his face, and he jumped back with a triumphant yell.

  “It passed through!”

  Laughing in excitement, he promptly unleashed a sea of mist, forcing it through the barrier and into the tiny cracks between the gate and the surrounding stone.

  Master always said no defense is truly impenetrable. It’s just a matter of finding the right tool.

  The Mist Resonance Art was originally a Death Dao technique, perfected over thousands of years. It allowed undead cultivators to replicate the laws that composed their bodies, recreating parts of themselves through the black smoke they produced. Castien’s Master had once used this smoke to project a massive hand, dragging his disciple into a spatial tunnel and saving his life.

  The art could also convert and transfer energy, replicating physical attacks at a distance—like when Cade had swatted the Tyrant out of the air. The transfer rate wasn’t perfect; some force was inevitably lost. Still, it was close enough.

  The reason Cade laughed was simple: thanks to this inverted death art, he could replicate any part of his body through the mist. He could even create an exact copy of himself—though that trick had limited usefulness, since his consciousness couldn’t occupy two physical locations at once.

  His eyes, however, were another matter.

  Wherever the mist could reach, it was as though Cade himself could reach it. He had tested this a few times out of curiosity, and the sensation was deeply strange—like existing outside his own body.

  Cade closed his eyes, forming a single mist eye on the other side of the gate.

  If I can find the formation’s core inside the palace, I might be able to disable it.

  The palace halls were surprisingly empty, coated in a thick layer of dust. It didn’t take long for Cade to realize why: while the building materials themselves were incredibly durable—capable of resisting deterioration for hundreds of thousands of years—the furnishings were far less resilient. Over time, they had simply crumbled away.

  If there’s nothing else worth taking, I can always pry up the floor tiles.

  Chuckling to himself, Cade spread the mist throughout the palace, manifesting eyes in countless locations. He rapidly swapped between different viewpoints until his head began to spin. The palace was enormous, with hundreds of chambers, but eventually he located the heart of the barrier’s formation.

  It was housed in a heavily protected room sealed by a thick golden door. Fortunately, that posed no obstacle to the mist. Cade’s crimson eye slipped inside, revealing a chamber roughly the size of a large bedroom. Most of the floor was occupied by an intricate formation diagram, its glowing runes washing the walls and ceiling in soft blue light.

  The moment he saw it, Cade recognized the problem.

  The stone the formation was carved into was far beyond anything his mist could physically destroy—and there was no visible power source.

  Which meant only one thing.

  It’s drawing power from somewhere else. Possibly the core of the Realm.

  Every Divine Realm required a power source, typically self-sustaining, not unlike a star. Given that the barrier had remained active for so long—withstanding who knew how many Death Dao assaults—there was no chance it was being powered by spirit crystals.

  That realization only made Cade more excited. Whatever was hidden within this chapel—or underground hall—had to be precious beyond words.

  After several hours of studying the formation, he identified a section of the inscription that connected it to the Realm’s core. His understanding of formation runes was rudimentary at best—there were dozens of millions of them, and linking them together was a form of art in its own right. A language of the universe, refined and simplified over countless generations of artificers and scholars.

  Thankfully, his studies of spiritual qi laws through the Law Severing Art allowed him to recognize the primary runes responsible for energy distribution and transfer. From there, it was simply a matter of locating the section that linked the palace’s barrier to its power source.

  Cade sighed and checked his timekeeper, which he had allowed to run since entering the Divine Realm. Nearly three full days had passed. He couldn’t afford to spend any more time on this problem.

  Which meant it was time for brute force again.

  The idea he settled on was likely the only one that could work anyway.

  Cade released every wisp of crimson mist his body could produce, pushing the spherules to generate vast amounts of prismatic dust—something they handled with surprising ease. He then compressed all of it into a sphere no larger than an inch in diameter and embedded it directly into the formation, covering a single, crucial rune.

  The density of energy packed into that tiny crimson orb was staggering. Its glow completely overwhelmed the formation’s soft blue light, bathing the chamber in red radiance.

  Even with the mist in its incorporeal state, forcing the sphere into place was immensely difficult. The runes resisted stubbornly. After another hour of effort, Cade finally succeeded—though the strain left his mind reeling. The sphere wasn’t perfectly aligned, but it would have to suffice.

  Normally, igniting his blood qi would never cause an explosion. But igniting something this dense—this saturated with qi and prismatic dust—should disrupt the flow of spiritual energy through the rune, and quite possibly shut the barrier down entirely.

  Cade was painfully aware of the risks. Manipulating qi at this density could easily result in catastrophic failure. The sphere might explode in his face—or, in a less dramatic outcome, the barrier could simply repair itself.

  He left a thin tendril of mist connected to the condensed sphere, withdrew his active consciousness back into his body, and retreated toward the center of the courtyard. There, he took cover behind a large chunk of broken wall.

  Better safe than sorry.

  Cade took several deep breaths, wiping his sweaty palms on his robe. His voracious heart hammered like a drum, mirroring his allowably rising anxiety. It wasn’t often that he felt like this.

  The heart’s reservoir was nearly empty—a clear indication of just how much mist he had expended. He estimated that the amount compressed into that tiny sphere could have blanketed several square miles.

  Pulling out a jug of blood essence, he drained it in a few long gulps, a blissful expression crossing his face.

  Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t produce any more mist right now—which was unfortunate, since condensing Life Armor would have been ideal.

  This is probably going to hurt.