Terra had no memory of anything from before her time as a slave. Those past years had erased everything. The only thing she knew was being trapped inside her own body, wishing that she was somewhere, anywhere, else.

The first happy memory she had was a pair of crying eyes that ended her period of torment. When she woke up, her broken parts had been healed and she was whole. All the damage that rapists and abusers gleefully dealt to her tiny frame was gone.

She was still mute.

Unable to speak, she followed Lilith like a lost puppy and watched her closely. She listened to everything she said. The most important thing she learned was who had saved her from hell.

She watched Ben from a distance and listened to him speak. He seemed like some men she had seen in the tents, they were the ones that didn’t rape her, the ones that came when she was sick or when a man had beat her so badly she was on the verge of death. They had gentle eyes that were filled with pity.

There were also women that came, they had some resemblance to Lilith, she was kind in a hard way.

She made a close friend in the form of a rabbit.

Terra learned to cultivate. She was given a book that was filled with information that made her understand the world around her. She learned that she was both special and unimportant, powerless and dangerous, great and poor.

She was shown her own shackles, and how to control them.

This was the essence of the Sealed Immortal Sutra. Using the cultivation technique inside, she began to awaken her special constitution.

A week later she broke through to the Qi Condensation Realm. This would have made the greatest of geniuses jealous.

One evening, Ben had met her in his room and took the entire night doing something he called awakening.

She lay on a bed of towels and took a series of pills while he held her wrist in one hand. After just a few minutes she was writhing in pain while she shit black faeces, sweated blood, threw up brown sludge and lost all control of her body.

Her blood burned and flesh tore then healed in cycles. After hours of torture, a small thread of blue blood appeared inside her heart.

When this happened, a sudden thunderclap shook the sky. Heaven itself trembled for a moment.

Ben stopped what he was doing and left the rest to Lilith.

The next morning Terra woke up in a clean bed. She sat there for hours without doing anything.

Before she got up, she decided to cultivate for a few minutes. She cycled her Qi through her body, when she did, something inside her blood woke up.

She had a brief vision of a being a woman imprisoned by divine chains. She was weighed down while she descended the side of a mountain. Up above her was a place she had been exiled from.

The pain of loss was complete. The woman had nothing left, her heart was empty, just like Terras own had been.

She came back to reality and felt burning inside her chest. The blue blood was squirming there inside her heart.

She didn’t leave her room that day.

Ripples of aura could be clearly felt for some time. It made Lilith and the others uncomfortable, like they were being watched by some great figure.

A week later she was a Core Formation Cultivator, stronger than anyone she had ever seen before she met Ben and Lilith. The tread of blue blood had grown to a sliver, it was enriching her heart and refining her blood.

There were other people who joined them, but Terra was told that she was masters only direct disciple.

It was clear that she scared other people, Terra was told that was because she needed to learn to withdraw her aura. Ben told her she didn’t need to worry about it.

The Spirit Vessel stopped above a country and Terra carried on cultivating inside the ship.

It took her one month to establish her foundation. This cultivation speed was faster than any other native of this world who wasn’t a Devil Cultivator. The sliver of blue blood turned into a thread that floated through her veins. She had very little real world experience, but her cultivation was quick as lightning.

She hadn’t learned a movement, offensive or defensive skill. She only knew how to cultivate and how to activate the strange energy of her awakened bloodline.

When Terra had broken into the Foundation Establishment Realm her progress slowed dramatically. Forming her Nascent Soul would take a long time when compared to her recent advances.

Then the day came when she was called and told to listen to her master carefully, as if she hadn’t been doing so already. That was when she met her brother disciple.

The two watched each other in silence for a full minute. Lin Feng didn’t need to say anything to understand Terra while she couldn’t speak to begin with.

The master came and spoke in front of everyone. Terra could ignore most of what he said, but she learned one important thing. Now was the time to prove herself to him.

She didn’t stop to think before jumping off the spirit vessel right behind her master.

---

Lin Feng was glad that he was finally going to be side by side with his master, but he had no chance to say farewell to his family. They left as a group and fled to the west.

He didn’t know what to expect when it came to his master’s assistants, but he had never seen such a powerful and beautiful woman. Just a glance from her shook his soul.

He boarded the base his master was working from. The floating fortress he was brought to was larger than Two Stone Town, it left him flabbergasted. It was larger than any oil tanker, aircraft carrier or sports stadium.

He met the monster that was his senior sister disciple. If he didn’t have such a strong soul, he wouldn’t have been able to look the 9 year old child in the eye.

Lin Feng began to feel inadequate. He decided to stay quiet awhile and just watch his senior sister.

He was further astonished when he realized that Ben was from a future Earth and had invented technology only imagined in science fiction.

In the upcoming battle he would only be as significant as an ant compared to Ben and Terra, he had to find some way to help, but what could he do?

---

Terra fell just behind Ben. She passed harmlessly through the swarm of drones. Ben pulled out a large black boulder and threw it at the ground.

The stone hit the lava pool, a circle of magma began hardening and cooling down.

The two figures landed on the Black Devil Stone. Around them was a dark red ring of stone and further out was the magma pool. A small distance away there stood two pillars with a blue fire between them.

Waves of sword Qi swept out and slashed at the hardening stone. It left behind a weird and confusing obsidian landscape that had vaguely floral feel to it.

Ben let off a dull red aura and steam evaporated from the surface of his skin. Terra had a blue glow around her. While they both wore simple black robes, Terra looked adorable as her head was lost in the hood and arms weren’t long enough for the sleeves.

She looked down at the stone she was standing on. Some instinct told her that she had a connection with it, so she sat down and began circulating her Qi and bloodline.

The stone started emitting waves of cold Qi that countered the fire Qi. The area started growing chaotic with the competing forces of the area.

The fire and the two pillars also became more active. Larger Fire Demons like flaming cats and birds were pouring out of the fire, but so far they stayed away from Ben and Terra. The fight between the drone swarm and the fire demon horde intensified.

Cultivators from nearby began arriving for one reason or another. Some sensed the disturbance and came to investigate, a few locals were holding back the monsters to buy time for the civilians retreat. More powerful individuals and groups trickled in to join the fight, the battlefield expanded to cover the whole former capital.

Lin Feng’s view from the airship was hellish and terrifying. Smoke and flames hung over the whole area turning the sky black and red. The epicenter of the destruction kept producing horrors that fought against the drones above and experts below. The ruins of the city slowly collapsed into a molten heap. The battleground was shrouded by dust and smoke.

Lin Feng focused his spiritual sense on the two figures at the center of the fight.

A girl was sitting still at the center of the rock, her aura was growing stronger by the second. Ripples of Yin Qi clashed with the ambient Fire Qi, Sword Qi moulded the landscape as magma cooled to stone.

If Terra knew how difficult it would be refining the stone, she wouldn’t have attempted it. While it would be easier for her than it would Ben, he had higher cultivation and the assistance of his Computer Core. Her only advantages lay in her natural constitution and awakened bloodline.

This ended up being good for Ben, it sped up the creation of his array and transferred his curse to her. He lost control over a new artifact, but quickly come, quickly go. There was another object of interest in front of him.

Ben built the obsidian formation and studied the pillars at the same time.

The pillars were a dozen meters tall and flared out at both ends. The bases and crowns had complex formations inlaid there, the rest of the pillar had images of men fighting the same fire demons he saw right now.

When he tried studying the formations at the top and bottom he started getting a headache. At first it seemed like the work of men, but the longer he looked, the more natural it seemed. Was it a natural formation, or man made? The more he looked it over, the more his horizons were broadened.

When he compared his current knowledge with the quality of the pillar in front of him, Ben realized that he was a caveman in comparison to whoever made these artifacts. His eyes lost focus and he couldn’t even comprehend the outer edges of the pillars.

‘Analyzing.’ Alice said in his head. ‘There are layers of fields that interfere with the visual you’re sending me. Is it a concealing formation?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s a kind of spatial treasure.’ Ben closed his eyes and let them rest.

Alice and Ben had a conversation about advanced formations. What they could do and further possibilities, the arrays being built on earth right now, and theoretical formations.

They talked about possible wide area formations covering continents, planets, stars and galaxy clusters.

The two talked for a few hours. On the outside only a second had passed.

'What the fuck?’ Ben was actually amazed, not at the time dilation, but at the pillars.

In the second Ben's eyes had been closed, the formations on the pillars had changed. It was subtle, but with his Computer Core recording optical data, he couldn't be wrong. There were minute differences here and there.

He looked closely at the details of the base and cap of the column.

There were four different formations, each with slightly different style. Each one featured fire of some sort as the main essence.

The first flame was the darkest of the four. It had a deep profound aura that he recognized from his limited time with his new pet Rupert, it was a type of abyssal Qi. Abyssal Fire. This flame was born from the intense pressure found in the deepest places of the world.

The next flame had the opposite type. He recognized this type of Qi from his interactions with Heavenly Connection cultivators. This had the feel of the void. It was Void Flame. This fire was found when absence was given form, this burned in the long spaces between the stars.

The third was very familiar. It was Blood Fire. Ben felt intense pressure from this array. His blood heated up in response and his Heart Core began circulating unbidden.

The last flame had an origin of fire that was unfamiliar to him. There was a old quality to it that Ben had no experience with. He felt a timelessness to it that surpassed everything. Every moment the fire burned had a connection with all of it’s past. It felt like the flame existed on a deeper plane. This was Eternal Fire, fire that had been burning for countless epochs.

He shifted his attention to the two bodies of the pillars. There were two murals there, each slightly different. On the left men fought against a horde of beasts like the ones seen now. On the right they fought against a tall flaming humanoid figure with a single burning eye in the center of its forehead.

Ben got another shock.

With his closer examination he found out that the figures looked like they were performing martial stances even as they fought. They weren’t murals, they were skill manuals. There were men flying across the field of battle, the wind that passed by them had its own form, as if it were Qi. There was a combat formation used by the soldiers on the front lines, each in a precise position. Attacks from the fire demons also had their own individual aggressive qualities to them.

The creatures themselves contained their own separate abilities. There were stronger beasts that were the strong generals of the beast horde, they were all carved with their own instinctive dao.

The two pillars were more than a mere spatial treasure. They contained countless secrets that would need to be explored.

The three eyed monster had its own horrible aura. When Ben looked at it, he felt something looking back. There in the depths of the third eye was a sparkle of intelligence.

In that moment Ben knew that something was watching him, waiting.

‘Enough fucking around. It’s time to get to work.’ He shook his head and began studying the most familiar part of the pillars, the Blood Fire.