SHEW!

In the blink of an eye, Nie Tian flashed into the Heaven Gate.

Dazzling, multicolored light constantly whizzed by him as he felt himself being pulled by an irresistible force, traveling forward at a extremely high speed.

At the same time, many unknown magical symbols flashed past him like shooting stars.

Because of the incredible speed at which he was traveling, Nie Tian couldn’t get a clear look at the magical symbols that flashed by.

However, from what his eyes had captured, he believed that most of them were written in foreign language that he didn’t understand, with only a small portion being the masterpieces of human ancient Qi warriors.

His senses told him that he only soared within that dazzling space tunnel for several dozen seconds.

Shortly thereafter, he was overwhelmed by a squeezing force, without forewarning of any kind.

He suddenly grew dizzy, and was unable to see the things around him. His body seemed to have turned into flowing light that was thrown into an ice-cold mysterious land.

BANG!

He landed heavily on the ground, tumbling head over heels a few times over before he could gradually stop the momentum.

He opened his eyes and looked up. All he could see was a sky full of bright stars.

In his eyes, those stars were incomparably clear. They twinkled while releasing a cold, desolate light.

Some of them seemed extremely far away and only looked as big as grains of sand from where he stood.

Meanwhile, others seemed quite close to him, and were the size of grapes in his eyes.

Within the ice-cold river of stars, there was no sun or moon, only the brilliant stars that adorned the curtain of the night.

“I must be outside the Realm of Flame Heaven...” he muttered. Looking away from the sky, he turned around and measured up his surroundings.

He immediately discovered that the place he landed in was an enormous prismatic rock that was floating within the river of stars.

The rock seemed to be five or six miles long, and extended quite a ways off into the distance.

Further off, there were even more strange, enormous rocks that were floating within the river of stars. From the look of it, they probably had been that way for thousands of years.

The shapes of the enormous rocks were all different. Some of them were connected by slender stone paths and some weren’t.

After looking around for awhile, he discovered that there were thousands of giant stones that were the same size as the one that he was on, but that was only what his eyes could take in. 

Perhaps, there were even more rocks beyond the ones he could see.

“A dimension full of meteors?” he muttered while releasing a wisp of psychic awareness to observe his surroundings even more carefully.

In the area where his psychic awareness could cover, he didn’t sense any auras of life, which meant that... there was no one in the vicinity.

He was surprised. “There’s no one anywhere near me. This seems to be quite different than the trial within the Green Illusion dimension.” 

When he participated in the trial of the Green Illusion dimension, he was already with An Ying and the others from the Spiritual Treasure sect immediately after stepping into the Green Illusion dimension via the secret dimension gate. Therefore, he had been with companions and gained a rough understanding of the territory from An Ying the moment the Green Illusion dimension trial started.

However, now...

When he passed through the Heaven Gate, the mysterious power had separated everyone.

Just like him, the other disciples of the seven sects from the Realm of Flame Heaven had most likely landed on different meteors.

All of a sudden, anxiety regarding the safety of Li Fan, Liu Yan, and An Shiyi rose in his heart.

If they were unluckily sent to the same areas as the Greater Heaven stage experts from the other realms, they could be instantly killed.

WHOOSH!

An surprisingly cold gale blew over from the icy river of stars.

“This is so damn cold!”

When the cold wind blew past, he even felt his flesh turn a bit stiff and his hair and eyebrows form a bit of frost on them.

He hurriedly channeled his spiritual power to resist the coldness.

At that time, he had another startling discovery: there wasn’t the slightest bit of spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth in the air that he could use!

All he could sense in the air was coldness, and not a single bit of spiritual Qi could be pulled into the vortex of spiritual power in his spiritual sea.

This meant that if he wanted to obtain spiritual power within this ice-cold mysterious land, the only option he had was to cultivate with the help of spirit stones.

Without spirit stones, he wouldn’t be able to replenish the spiritual power that he expended.

CRACKLE!

His teeth were chattering as he unceasingly drew out spiritual power to run warm currents up and down his body.

An hour later, the ice-cold wind finally stopped.

However, he found that he had used up 20% of his spiritual power within such a short time.

He stood where he was, dumbstruck.

“Can the gravity here also be insanely strong?”

He was very well aware that an excessive gravity could also be an extremely strong load on his body.

If the gravity in this place was as strong as the mysterious land that the Blood Core had brought him to, he feared that he wouldn’t be able to move about freely, much less temper himself.

With suspicion in mind, he decided to see if he could jump up.

WHOOSH!

He rose ten meters into the air!

“The gravity here is much weaker than the Realm of Flame Heaven!”

After landing, he softly tapped the stone ground and his body flew up again into midair.

Just as he was falling down, a familiar voice suddenly echoed out from afar. “Nie Tian!”

Nie Tian looked in the direction of the sound and saw Zheng Bin from the Mystic Mist sect.

Zheng Bin was also by himself, and he was currently on the side of a brown, protruding piece of rock that was about a thousand meters away from him.

Clearly, Zheng Bin had been deliberately hiding himself behind that piece of rock, as if he feared being discovered by anyone.

Only when Nie Tian jumped into the air did Zheng Bin notice him and couldn’t help but shout out to him.

Zheng Bin saw that Nie Tian also noticed him, and then lowered his voice as he said, waving at him, “Hey! Watch out! Don’t expose yourself!”

Nie Tian, who had just landed, softly tapped the ground, and once again his body became like cotton as he rapidly floated towards Zheng Bin.

He was the only living person that Nie Tian had seen until now.

Since the distance between him and Zheng Bin exceeded the range of his psychic awareness, he didn’t sense his existence earlier. Now that he had seen him, he wanted to communicate with Zheng Bin.

Inwardly, he viewed Zheng Bin differently from Pan Tao, since he wasn’t a friend who had shared trials and tribulations with him.

When they were in the Green Illusion dimension, as well as the Scarlet Flame Mountain Range, Zheng Bin had repeatedly withdrawn himself when they met danger.

However, Nie Tian didn’t hold a grudge against him either.

He and Zheng Bin were like strangers brought together by chance. They weren’t familiar with each other, and he used to act on his own account and cause trouble for others, so Zheng Bin’s unwillingness to undertake the consequences that he had caused had been understandable.

He tried to adapt to the gravitational field that was significantly different from the Realm of Flame Heaven as he floated towards Zheng Bin. Seconds later, he arrived.

After he had arrived, Zheng Bin looked anxious as he lowered his voice to warn Nie Tian, “Man! You should have kept a low profile!

“Do you know that killing is allowed between all those who have stepped into the Heaven Gate, and no punishment shall be implemented? By flying into the sky, you’ve already exposed yourself. If others have spotted you, they’ll definitely come to kill you and loot your belongings! By acting so recklessly, you’re actually putting me in danger too!”

Zheng Bin had already started to regret waving towards Nie Tian, which led Nie Tian to come over.

Nie Tian thought for a moment, and realized that what Zheng Bin said made sense. He said with a smile, “Sorry.”

Zheng Bin said nothing back, but rather concentrated on observing the surroundings silently.

Only after a while later, when he found no traces of anybody coming and believed that no one had discovered them, did he secretly let out a sigh of relief.

Zheng Bin’s expression turned grim and he explained in a low voice, “I didn’t expect this place to be completely devoid of the spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth, which means that we have only our spirit stones to rely on to restore our spiritual power after battles.

“From now on, spirit stones, medicinal pills, and food will become necessities that people will kill for! If you want to stay alive here, you’ll need to obtain large amounts of food, spirit stones, and medicinal pills!

“This will be reason enough for any two people to start a deadly fight the moment they meet!

“Especially between people who don’t know each other!”

Nie Tian nodded. “Yeah, the same idea just occurred to me.”

Zheng Bin waved his hand and crouched his body as he led the way stealthily. “Follow me, I’ll show you something that I just discovered.”  

Excitement could be seen on his face.

Confused and curious, Nie Tian followed him as he wanted to see what had made Zheng Bin so cautious and excited.

I had a couple of beers with Deathblade yesterday, and the topic of my favorite Chinese role playing game came up.

If you're also interested, check out this video. Remember, it's a 1995 computer game, so it might not look very fancy.

However, it's the content and plot that count, and it's regarded by most as the first xianxia computer game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvc4omk2DB8