Otherworldly Desert Dust

...

Black "snow" drifted towards the lifeless earth, presenting a scene of endless winter. Yet the white snow of winter brings a glimmer of hope and daylight's brilliance. This black ashen snow, however, buries the living in a tomb of malevolence, leaving nothing but suffocation.

Mo Chuan sat atop an abandoned flag tower, tears in her eyes, wiping away the black ash covering the flag bit by bit. Yet, however much ash she removed when she left, she found only more upon her return.

Has this last city of humanity lost all hopeful souls? Must they succumb to radiation, mutation, and disease, ruling over what was once a warm homeland?

Having barely advanced to a Super Tenth Rank Life, she thought she might save the barely-breathing Divine Realm, but the higher she stood, the more despair she saw.

The ground was littered with those who had eternally slept; they gave up struggling and chose a painless death. They too had once been full of fighting spirit, hoping to change this increasingly deteriorating world, but in the end, they collapsed, cried, and went hysterical like children who had lost their loved ones and homes.

No one stood with her anymore, and Mo Chuan did not know where the meaning in her struggle laid. The sobs from the Divine Realm seemed to convey its last bit of kindness to her.

Leave, child.

Go find life elsewhere, do not consort with maggots in a grave.

The more she thought about it, the angrier Mo Chuan became. She couldn't figure out at which point humanity had erred in their decisions—why they hadn't found their true home, or at what point in traversing through the otherworldly region their Divine Realm was cursed by the Evil God, eroded by disease, contaminated by Evil Spirits… That led the once vibrant homeland to sprout such black snow, where ashes stretched as far as the eye could see!

She sobbed quietly until her body was utterly exhausted.

Wrapping her clean flag around herself, she allowed the black snow to cover her, no longer shaking it off.

The ashes, seemingly scorching, actually stole the body's warmth and energy. Buried for a while, one would die as if sinking into a deep sleep. When Mo Chuan felt no pain burying herself, she suddenly understood why others had chosen this way—to rather live in a false dream than struggle in the cruel reality of the universe.

"Shasha~~~~~~"

After an unknown time, she opened her eyes in a blur.

She saw a clean, snow-white painted ceiling.

There was a bright flame in the room, likely lit by someone for light and warmth.

The surroundings were also very clean, filling Mo Chuan's heart suddenly with joy. She realized she might have just had a very long nightmare and was now finally waking up in a clean and comfortable bed.

She got up and saw a face both strange and familiar to her; he was staring at her with interest and curiosity.

"It's you! Wu Tian!" Mo Chuan, like an open-hearted young girl, displayed both joy and sorrow in her eyes and voice.

"I finally found you, my fellow... It seems that our speculation on time was too bold; with our current dimensions, it's quite unlikely to have a general temporal confluence." Wu Hen also smiled.

In fact, when he saw another decaying Nuwa God End, Wu Hen realized that the person he couldn't find might not be a compatriot from his homeland, but she too belonged to Nuwa's people.

The Cang Chu Divine Realm Nuwa's people might not only represent their lineage.

"I… I've been looking for you for nearly half a year!" Mo Chuan also said excitedly.

Finding another Spirit Awakener still fighting, just like her, in a world that had decayed was indeed uplifting.

But after returning to the Divine Realm, Mo Chuan had searched every bunker and wasteland that could hide people in the whole world and still hadn't found this Wu Tian.

"I'm sorry, I was negligent, allowing your host to perish in the Desert Dust," Wu Hen said.

"Nuwa has withered, and even if I bring you back, it wouldn't matter. Yet, Nuwa used her last Divine Power to preserve my Super Tenth Rank life form..." Mo Chuan said.

"That's good," Wu Hen nodded. He saw Mo Chuan looking curiously at the other people in the room, so he briefly introduced them, "They are ancient civilization researchers from the Da Xuan Hui Ridge and humanitarian rescue envoys of the Cang Chu Divine Realm. They captured the distress call from your Nuwa God End and specifically came here to save your civilization…"

A surge of joy rose in Mo Chuan's heart, followed by a complex gaze.

"What's wrong?" Wu Hen asked, puzzled.

"It was Da Xuan that accelerated our demise… But what you just mentioned, I don't quite understand. Aren't you a guardian from within our Divine Realm?" Mo Chuan said.

"We both misunderstood each other at the beginning; I thought you came from my place and you thought I came from your Divine Realm, but... there's more than one Nuwa God End in the Cang Chu Divine Realm," Wu Hen explained to Mo Chuan.

Mo Chuan's shock was indescribable.

Her dark eyes stared at Wu Hen for a long time, her somewhat dry lips opened several times without knowing what to say, suddenly falling into deep thought.

It was apparent that Mo Chuan's mind was in utter disarray.

In fact, Wu Hen himself had not yet digested this information.

Everything had happened so suddenly, just like the first time he saw the Sky Shadow of the Nuwa God End walking in the Otherworldly Dust, and now suddenly another Nuwa God End was encountered, ostensibly just a chance meeting of two God Ends, but actually harboring many more profound truths!

"Is everything... alright with you?" After a while, Mo Chuan finally asked earnestly.

"Stumbling along the way, barely surviving," Wu Hen recalled carefully, his own Divine Realm had also experienced several major apocalyptic crises, all of which he had survived because of his invincible courage.

"It's better than here. After my return this time, I could barely see any living people left. Only the walking dead remain on the ash-covered land, they are lost in their own homeland," Mo Chuan said.

"Lord Wu Tian, it's not that we lack compassion, but the Divine Realm here has already lost its pulse of life, and this embedded world is also being eroded by ashes. It won't be long before they merge into the outer world's Skyfire Land. We didn't even encounter any obstruction when we stepped into this Divine Realm, let alone the fact that we are only scholars of Da Xuan, even if we were real immortals from Cang Chu, it wouldn't be possible to revive this Divine Realm," the old man Huang Cang said sadly.

It's impossible to apply the Revitalization Technique to a corpse that's already maggot-ridden, finding the root of the God End's apocalypse won't revive it now.

This Divine Realm is just a vast corpse, barely maintaining itself due to its plant-like nature, merely dead but not rigid.

Huang Cang's words were all too clear to Wu Hen.

But saying such things was meaningless and would only bring more pain to a lonely and strong soul.

"Go outside and do the humanitarian rescue work you are supposed to do. If you aren't humane, I won't be humane to you." Wu Hen also displayed the nature of a Great Demon, commanding the scholars of Da Xuan.

They were forcibly dragged into this world by Wu Hen, naturally not daring to resist. Their equipment could actually easily detect life and spirits, and could find those who were still breathing among the desperate ruins and ash cemeteries, but how to settle them became the biggest headache as Da Xuan refused to accept refugees.

After the group of more than a dozen left the relatively clean room, Mo Chuan got up and walked to the curtain.

She pulled back the curtain, and still saw the black "goose-feather heavy snow," it was true that placing hope on everything being a nightmare was fruitless, what needed to be faced still had to be faced.

"There is something I want to ask you, there is also a Douyi Star Palace in your Divine Realm, right?" Wu Hen said.

"Yes, the reason we were able to hold out till here is all thanks to the technology of the Douyi Star Palace, and our entire Divine Realm revered the Douyi Warriors. Even though we've acquired other abilities in the Otherworldly, none seemed to evolve to a high enough level," Mo Chuan replied.

"That's strange, Divine Realms should be completely independent of each other; why would there be a communicating Douyi Star Palace?" Wu Hen quickly raised this question.

Mo Chuan quickly understood the implication in Wu Hen's words.

If the Nuwa God End found in the Otherworldly Dust isn't unique, then it means there are many civilizations similar to homelands.

If these Divine Realms housing Nuwa's people were healthy, then inside them should be countless independent Earths, whether during the Cretaceous or Stone Age, definitely unlinked to the real universe with no cultural exchanges.

Similarly, this decayed Nuwa God End probably entered the Cang Chu Divine Realm earlier than Wu Hen's Divine Realm; with no interactions between the two realms, yet the Douyi Star Palace is similar.

"We should be the Pioneers. Our Divine Realm's predecessors perished in battles within Desert Dust, leaving their fighting clothes along the way, and when your people were exploring the Otherworldly, they discovered these abandoned fighting clothes, brought them back to your homeland, and established the Douyi Star Palace?" Mo Chuan felt this was a likely possibility.

Upon hearing this, Wu Hen immediately nodded in agreement.

No wonder the Mist Battle Clothing was several months ahead of the Douyi Star Palace in his homeland.

That was because there was an earlier Divine Realm that entered Cang Chu, and they had developed the fighting clothes technology to a higher level.

So, it turns out, Mingyi wasn't really from the future.

The predecessor she mentioned, the Female Martial Leader, was actually someone from Mo Chuan's Divine Realm. Clearly, Mingyi knew that there was more than one Nuwa God End, and understood how the Douyi Star Palace in her homeland was established, so she referred to them as the pioneers.

On analyzing it this way, everything made sense.

The Douyi Star Palace in his homeland was indeed the earliest entity capable of withstanding Alien Species, and compared to other weapons technology in the homeland, it had a breakthrough advantage.

That's because the earliest Spirit Awakeners had picked up the fighting clothes of other Nuwa's people in the Desert Dust, used them as a foundation for research, and relied on these Spirit Awakened warriors to sustain the homeland through its early tough stages.