Qianye stood silently in place and only walked toward the forest after the initial strengthening had been completed. Along the way, he scanned the surroundings cautiously with True Sight.

Just the abnormally powerful gravity was enough to make this world sufficiently dangerous, not to mention the hidden threats brought about by it. Human experts would have to constantly protect their innards with origin power since they weren’t as powerful as Qianye with regards to constitution. This was a significant disadvantage for the human race as they would be spending more origin power than the dark races.

There was nothing abnormal around the borders of the forest. There was only short foliage in addition to the uncovered soil and moss at the roots of the ancient trees. At a glance, the forest looked no different from one back in the empire. There was only one exception to this—Qianye couldn’t recognize any of the species here.

The most important reason for entering the Great Maelstrom was to improve one’s own strength, and the second was to collect rare materials. Qianye wasn’t so worried about the first part, but the second one was going to be somewhat difficult. There were enormous amounts of rare resources here, but most of the recorded ones were near the entrance. There was next to no information about this high gravity environment, so how was he to differentiate what's useful?

After going a certain distance, Qianye noticed something flickering about in his vision.

It vanished as Qianye turned to look, but there was no escaping after catching his attention. He took cautious steps forward and circled around an ancient tree to glance behind it.

There, he found an unassuming piece of rock sitting amidst the interlocking roots of the tree. The stone was fairly even in shape and about half a meter in length. There was even moss on the surface, clearly something that had been sitting there for countless years. If it wasn’t for the abnormal movement just now, Qianye might very well have overlooked it.

Qianye’s eyes turned blue as he channeled his True Sight on the rock.

Very soon, he found that the origin power fluctuations were coming, not from the stone, but the moss on top of it. Qianye used his finger to scrape off a small piece and found the defect bursting into raging flames. It wasn’t a real blaze but a phenomenon brought about by the strong origin power reaction.

It was unimaginable that a small patch of moss would actually contain such intense origin power. The glow in Qianye’s vision soon faded away as the missing spot in the moss stopped leaking origin power.

Although he had no idea what attribute origin power it was, this kind of moss—and perhaps even the rock itself—were extraordinary objects. Qianye carefully dug the rock out from among the roots and placed it in Andruil’s space. He tried cutting into one of the roots but found nothing special inside, at least with regards to origin power.

Qianye’s harvest was quite bountiful, though, having grasped a new, potential rare resource. It wasn’t as though these ancient trees had no use. Perhaps due to the gravity, the wood material was extremely strong and even Qianye had to spend a bit of effort digging through them with East Peak. The wood here would make for top-tier ship-building material if they could be shipped to the empire since their quality was fairly close to that of high-grade alloys. The latter was too expensive to acquire in bulk, even for the empire. All they could afford was to produce certain key components with it. If an airship could be built entirely out of this wood, then its performance would only be inferior to the flagships belonging to major characters.

Unfortunately, the wood was too cumbersome and the space within Andruil’s space was limited. Qianye wasn’t about to fill his precious space with wood.

Just as Qianye was planning to continue his exploration in the forest, he suddenly sensed something. He immediately climbed into the crown of the tree and glanced up at the sky.

The world inside the Great Maelstrom was fairly strange. The sky was extremely high up and filled with floating clouds, but there was neither sun nor planet, so where was the light coming from?

A dark ball of light appeared in the sky at this moment, surrounded by flashes of lightning. A human silhouette flew out of the sphere and stood in the air.

In truth, that wasn’t a ball of light, but the door into this world. It would seem another person had arrived after Qianye. It was just that he couldn’t tell whether this guest was from Evernight or the Empire.

The dark-colored sphere faded away as soon as the figure had passed through. Apparently, the door would only allow for one person.

Compared to the confused Qianye, this person seemed to have come prepared. The glow of an origin shield lit up around him, protecting him firmly inside. However, this method was only useful against the adverse environment of this world and could do absolutely nothing against the powerful gravity. That person probably hadn’t imagined the gravitational pull would be so great, either. Following a cry of surprise, he started falling to the ground like a meteor.

Qianye had fallen into the lake back then, but this person wasn’t so lucky. He fell headfirst onto the rocky cliff with a cringe-inducing thud—simply imagining the pain involved made Qianye’s eyelids twitch.

Another flash of light appeared far off in the distance. With his powerful eyesight, Qianye was able to see another figure flying out of the materializing door and falling similarly to the ground. This person, however, was much more powerful. He managed to adjust his trajectory before hitting the ground and managed to take to the air once more.

Qianye pondered momentarily. He then retracted his aura, jumped down the tree, and started sneaking toward that person’s location. If the new arrivals were people from the empire, they might need his help, otherwise, if they were from Evernight, he naturally had to take this opportunity to kill them while they were weak.

As stormy winds brewed in the Great Maelstrom, Tidehark wasn’t at peace, either.

The collapse of the holy mountain had ended, and the tall peak was now nothing more than flat land. The dark-colored sphere in the air was only half the size compared to when it had appeared and fading fast. Additionally, bolts of dark lightning would arc out from time to time. Experienced experts would know that this was a sign of the passage starting to destabilize.

With the entrance becoming unstable, the risk of traversing the passage would increase sharply. The passage in the neutral lands had always existed, but no one had sought to use it in the past century because it was simply too unstable. Trying to traverse it was akin to suicide.

At this moment, an expert in his thirties was standing at the entrance, sweating profusely in his anxiety. He was equipped with numerous layers of armor and protective gear, much like a turtle-shell.

An elder patted his shoulder and said in a gloomy voice, “Don’t panic. Remember, you have to face the situation calmly. This is an opportunity the family spent fifty years to obtain, don’t miss it.”

The man nodded. The tension on his face lessened somewhat, replaced by a look of determination.

“Okay, go now! I’ll help you!” The old man pushed the man’s back, engulfing him with a gentle stream of origin power that brought him toward the passage.

Just as he was about to enter, however, the entrance started to ripple all of a sudden and the dark bolts of lightning increased noticeably. The man almost cried out as he channeled origin power with all his might, activating almost all of his defensive equipment.

The old man seemed to hesitate for a moment but ultimately decided to increase his force and push the man into the passage. The fluctuation intensified as lightning surged out like the tides, almost forming a net of electricity inside the passage! The despairing man crashed straight into the mesh of lightning, and at that moment, the imagery disappeared. The tunnel interior was no longer visible. Only a cry of desperation echoed outward from the entrance.

The old man’s expression was gloomy and his hands were trembling slightly. Anyone could tell that the situation just now was extremely perilous. The bystanders kept their silence—they couldn’t even offer words of condolence at this point because that would only serve to sprinkle salt on the elder’s wounds.

The old man turned about and roared, “Come, we must see Song Zining!”

Moments later, the old man was seated in the living room of Song Zining’s flagship, staring daggers at the latter with his eagle-like eyes. There were half a dozen other representatives in the room—people from the aristocratic families, the imperial clan, and even Yan Ding was around. However, the general only sat quietly in a corner. Apparently, he had come to realize that his role was negligibly small.

The first one to question Song Zining was an elder from the imperial clan. He rubbed his hairless chin as he said in a feminine voice, “Seventh Young Noble, I’m not the only one to seek you out. I believe everyone has the same question on their mind, so I’ll speak on their behalf as well. What say you?”

Song Zining smiled. “Eunuch Zhang, please speak freely.”

Eunuch Zhang said, “Then I’ll be frank. The quota and sequence of experts going into the Great Maelstrom were agreed beforehand and you were also present. Qianye’s name wasn’t on the list, not even in the second batch if I remember correctly.”

Song Zining nodded with a smile. “That is indeed the case, you did remember right.”

Eunuch Zhang’s expression sank. “I don’t understand why you would send Qianye into the passage first. It’s fine if there was no change in the passage, but it is just as the elder prince had expected, the passage becomes extremely dangerous after someone enters it. Now, the tunnel is no longer stable and no one else can enter. We still have two people on the list who didn’t make it inside. How will you explain this?”

Without waiting for Song Zining to speak, an aristocratic elder banged the table. “My nephew went into the tunnel but it’s clear that everything is pointing to disaster now! Not to mention the resources our Lu Family had to gather over five decades, my nephew is a top genius! How will you compensate us for this matter? Otherwise, our Lu family isn’t so easily bullied!”

Song Zining waved his fan slowly. “So, you want me to give you an explanation?”

“Exactly!”

“Humph, it only makes sense that you explain things.”

“Human life is beyond value. This isn’t something you can just gloss over.”

Song Zining replied calmly, “I’ve long since told you that the passage isn’t stable and that no one should enter. Despite that, your Lu family just had to grasp at that last straw. Who is to blame for that?”

The Lu family elder said, “This wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t let Qianye enter first.”