The desert had been a howling wasteland of yellow sand and screaming wind. Colour itself seemed forbidden here; even the sky was the same sickly yellow. Not a blade of grass, not a drop of water, nothing but endless dunes that could drive a person mad.
Yet as Chu Feng and Long Xiaoxiao flew onward following the guidance of the Wish God Beads, a patch of green suddenly appeared ahead.
A jungle.
It was tiny from a distance, no more than a thousand square metres, but its very existence felt wrong. How could lush greenery thrive in such a barren hell?
As they drew closer, they heard the gurgle of running water, the chirping of birds, even the roars and cries of beasts. All of it coming from that one small patch of trees.
Mysterious it might be, but the two of them exchanged a glance and grinned. They were not afraid. They were excited.
Because this jungle was exactly where the Wish God Beads had led them.
They descended and stepped straight into the trees.
Only then did they realise the jungle was far larger than it appeared from outside.
It stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.
Even when they rose into the air again, the canopy went on forever. The tiny patch they had seen earlier had vanished completely.
Chu Feng instantly understood. This was no ordinary forest. It was a formation, an extraordinarily sophisticated one.
A spirit master like himself could open a pocket world in the blink of an eye, but that world always required a boundary gate to enter. It could not simply be placed directly into the real world.
This jungle, however, needed no gate. It sat here openly, yet only those who stepped inside discovered its true vastness.
And once inside, leaving did not seem so simple.
Still, the guidance of the Wish God Beads remained clear in their minds, so they pressed forward without worry.
After travelling a considerable distance, they finally spotted a building.
A small white house, roughly a hundred square metres. The walls were a flawless, spotless snow-white. The roof was thatched with coarse wild grass, yet every strand was laid with perfect precision, giving the simple structure an unexpectedly refined beauty.
The house had four wooden doors but no windows.
Even with his Heaven’s Eyes, Chu Feng could not see through the wood or discern anything inside the building.
A stone stele stood before the house. Three large characters were carved upon it:
Wish God Palace.
“Hey, the Long clan has arrived.”
Before Chu Feng and Long Xiaoxiao could get any closer, a voice rang out from nearby.
The area immediately around the Wish God Palace was clear of trees. Four young men stood in two separate corners of the clearing.
Two of them were strikingly handsome, dressed in identical white robes embroidered with delicate lightning runes. The plaques at their waists openly declared their origin: Yu Heavenly Clan.
The Yu Heavenly Clan was the strongest heavenly clan in the entire Sacred Light Galaxy.
The other pair stood in the opposite corner. One was tall and thin, easily five metres in height, his face deathly pale, devoid of any colour, yet his features carried a devilish charm.
The second was not merely fat; he was colossal. His shoulders were five metres across, his palms nearly a metre long, and he stood a full ten metres tall. His face was fierce and brutal.
Their inhuman proportions were only natural.
They were not human. They were from the demon clans.
These two had to be the juniors from the All-Demon Sacred Palace.
Seeing the four of them, Chu Feng felt a quiet surge of emotion.
He remembered the day his master had first told him how the Sacred Light Galaxy was divided:
Six Upper Starfields.
Thirty Middle Starfields.
Fifty Lower Starfields.
Ten Abandoned Starfields.
And the Ancestral Martial Starfield, where he had come from, was merely one of those ten abandoned places.
Back then, the very thought had made him feel small and powerless.
Even the Middle Starfields had seemed impossibly strong, let alone the Upper Starfields.
Yet now he stood here, about to undergo the same trial as the most privileged geniuses of the forces that ruled the Upper Starfields.
True, he had only gained this chance because of Long Xiaoxiao.
But he also knew, deep down, that he now possessed the ability to be here in his own right.
The road had been anything but easy, but looking at these four young men born with golden spoons, Chu Feng felt two words rise clearly in his heart.
Growth.
He still believed he was not growing fast enough.
But he had grown all the same.
When he had first returned to the Great Thousand Upper Realm, even some of the younger generation from the Chu Heavenly Clan had surpassed him, never mind monsters like Linghu Hongfei, one of the Ancestral Martial Ten Stars.
Now, however, not a single person of his generation from the Chu Heavenly Clan could compare to him. Even the former Ancestral Martial Ten Stars were far beneath him.
The only ones in the entire Sacred Light Galaxy who could still stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him now were probably the geniuses of the Sacred Light Clan itself, Wolong Martial Sect, and the top talents from the Long clan, Yu Heavenly Clan, Cloudsky Immortal Sect, and All-Demon Sacred Palace.
