The land of the Mighty, also known as Sumeru. This was a world separated from the three godly countries. It was a paradise separate from the conflicts of three emperors. It was not to say that there were no conflicts in this land. But rather, it was so that the conflicts were much more easily managed. This world was also an ancient world. Apparently, in ancient times, the world was much bigger and grander. It used to be a greater world as well, perhaps the likes of Heaven world or the Ancient world. But now, it had constantly shrunk and was only the scale of large worlds. The world was primarily composed of two continents and the ocean in between them. On each continent, there were four powerful great tribes. Each of the great tribes was headed by a god. But, it did not mean that there were only 8 gods in the world. Some great tribes had more than one god as well. Some of the other large tribes also had a god. But these gods did not have the authority to stay in their tribes or start wars for the sake of their tribes. Almost all the "extra" gods were stationed at the small island located between the two continents - the rock island. Surprisingly, this process had been implemented by all who had managed to become gods. This was because the ruler of the world had created systems of rules for becoming great tribes or conducting battles between gods. And, that ruler was known to all as the Lord of the Might.

Lord of the Might, also called Sumeru Lord was not a true god or an emperor. He was only a dao god. But, he had been a god since time immemorial. In fact, he could even be the oldest living god in the explored universe! For gods, age was not only a number, it represented their accumulation. And Sumeru Lord had a terrifying amount of accumulation, enough to go against even the strongest of true gods as long as they were not the three emperors themselves. As such, through his iron law, he had managed the high-level affairs of the Sumeru world. Below him were the extra gods who were responsible for nothing but maintaining the deterrence against foreign threats like void beasts or invaders. Most of the time, they would be researching their dao and increasing their accumulation. The 8 great tribes also reported to him.

Below these great tribes were large tribes, medium tribes and small tribes. The division was based on the strength of each tribe. The cultivation pathway of Sumeru land was completely different from the other explored worlds in the universe. This was because this world primarily focussed on the astral aspect of cultivation. It made sense in some ways as the world had extremely rigid laws, making it very hard to complete the initial stages of the celestial cultivation path in this world. Whereas, astral cultivation was extremely easy for the natives of this world to do due to the various blessings given out by this world's will. This was another unique point about this world, it still had an intact world-will. In most other worlds, either the world-will was slumbering or destroyed long ago by powerful cultivators. The Sumeru world-will would bless newborns with different blessings, giving them talents in different domains of cultivation. Ancestors of the tribes would also bless the newborns, which made the cultivation pathway of this world unique to themselves and impossible to replicate in other places.

Cultivation in the Sumeru world was not as granularly divided as in the 26 dominions. There were basically 9 grades to cultivation, going from grade 1 to grade 9. Beyond grade 9 was the realm of gods. Every three grades, there was a big bottleneck that was extremely difficult to cross. Also, each grade represented a wide range of strength. Cultivating an entire grade usually took a long time and the difference of an entire grade was almost unsurpassable. Grade 1 to 3 was considered as the training period and one was still considered a minor if they were below grade 4. Grade 4 to 6 was the middle grade, which was also considered the grade of adults. Such cultivators could hold reasonable positions in their tribes. Grade 7 to 9 corresponded to powerful elders of large or great tribes. Each of their actions could cause an avalanche in the entire world. If one had to do a rough comparison, grade 3 was equivalent to rank 3 or rank 4 ascendants. Grade 6 was equivalent to rank-8 ascendants or higher. Grade 9 was equivalent to 8 or 9-star divinity.

Overall, the Sumeru world was still quite powerful, especially given that all of the gods or divinities in this world were dao gods or dao divinities, who were stronger than their celestial counterparts on average. This was the reason why the entire army of devils was stopped by the alliance of only 2 tribes. In fact, the devils had been beaten extremely badly and were barely holding on due to the tribes not taking decisive action as they were trying to protect their members. The devils had truly hit an iron wall this time. It was not to say that they did not have many gains. Any wild cultivator they managed to enslave or poach was a dao cultivator with great prospects in the outside world. Alas! not a lot of cultivators joined them. In this land of Might, the expedition of Divine Sea Sect had just clashed with the defeated army of devils. After a terrifying battle, the entire expedition suffered lots of casualties. The devils retreated in the end with even greater casualties but it still caused the expedition army to become even more careful of their situation. Thus, they slowly started regrouping and preparing for properly travelling in this new world. Till now, they had yet to meet any of the natives from this world.

On the ship of Divine Sea Sect, Razor, Ross and all other geniuses of Michael's batch were worriedly looking at the life lanterns of two of their friends - Michael and Alexis. Both their life lanterns showed that they were in a very serious situation, where it was likely that they were on the verge of life and death. Alas, there was nothing that they could do on their own. Fate Seer divinity herself had stopped others from searching for them. Apparently, it was a fate calamity and anyone interfering would only cause the situation to worsen. Now, they could only hope that both of them would be able to survive the calamity on their own.

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Tens of thousands of kilometres away from their camp, in the habitat of a small scale tribe called the Iron Lion tribe, Michael opened his eyes hazily. He could see that his body was still battered. But he was feeling much better. The last thing that he could remember was carrying Alexis on his back while travelling towards a water source. He sat up slowly, to find an old woman mixing some herbs on the table some distance away. He called for her, hoping that she would understand him.

"O!h Yo['ve] wo[ken up]!"

Michael initially thought that the woman would say something completely unintelligible. But surprisingly, he could understand her to a large extent. Also, she was not using the common universal language from the 26 dominions but the language that was similar to the one spoken in Aterna!

"Let me bring you some water!", the old woman said.

Michael smiled at her and nodded. This was completely out of his expectations but he still did not start thinking about it then. He started to search around but couldn't find Alexis anywhere. When the woman returned, he tried to ask her about Alexis. She managed to understand what he was saying with some difficulty.

"Your companion is being treated in another room. We are not sure about her curse but she is stable. Those invaders are truly cruel, to do such a thing to a child! Is she your wife?"

"No, she is my junior sister-disciple. We are under the same teacher."

"Don't worry, she will be fine. You should take care of yourself. You are a good disciple, bringing your sister-disciple across the jungle even when you were so badly injured. I can't imagine what those devils did to you! You haven't even awakened your blessing! Hopefully, you will be able to awaken your avatar and get your revenge!"

"Yes, please tell me where I am."

"You are in the Iron Lion tribe, child", a middle-aged man replied.

"Patriarch!", the old lady bowed. Michael too bowed to show his respect.

"You don't need to bow child. You are a guest of this tribe, so we won't let you bow your head to us. Can you tell me what exactly happened to you?"

Michael told his story to both of them in a way that they would believe. He said that he and his group of fellow disciples were travelling when they were attacked by the invaders. He and his sister had gotten separated and then tortured by the invaders before he somehow managed to run when the invaders suddenly started fighting another group. He kept his story vague but did not deliberately tell any lies. Overall, it was extremely believable and both of them believed him as well. The patriarch of the Iron Lion tribe sighed and said, "these invaders are a bunch of devils. Don't worry, the tribe alliance will soon move and kill them all. You are already safe here. Focus on your health. Later, you can go to the awakening hall and find some scriptures to help you in awakening."

Michael thanked him deeply. Then he lied down on the bed and started thinking.

I should have been believable to them. The way they distinguish people who are not from this world seems to be the law marks engraved on our bodies. The fact that I used all my law marks to put Alexis in suspended animation has worked in my favour then! For Alexis, the power of calamity fate should have already suppressed all of her powers including her law marks. With my law marks constantly covering up her state, she should have also passed their judgement. Or they could be keeping her in observation for some time. Thinking back, it was truly dangerous this time. To think I managed to survive all of that!

Slowly, he drifted back to sleep to let his body recover.

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Michael remained on the bed for around a week before he started moving around a bit. In under a month, he was more or less healed except for having sacrificed all law marks as well as having blown off this right arm. Michael could feel that both of these was going to be long term injuries. Regenerating the entire arm should not have been difficult when he was weaker, but now, he would need to fill up a lot more life energy to have an arm strong enough to match his body. He would have to go through his third tribulation to gather law marks again. But it would be extremely hard as he would need to overcome even more powerful tribulation to make up for the law marks that he had lost. While the loss of his arm was not permanent, the loss of his law marks and volcanic bloodline was indeed permanent. With that detonation, his power had, for one attack, reached almost the rank-8 ascendant level. This was like detonating all the potential he had in his divine bloodline. Now, he only had the volcano in his conscient while the volcanic blood in his body was already gone. However, what was lost was lost. He could only look forward now.

Michael started spending his time looking through the practices of the cultivators in this secret realm afterwards. He was shocked to find that almost everyone here was a cultivator of dao! But it was not only dao that they cultivated but their cultivation mixed psychic cultivation, dao cultivation, martial cultivation as well as their tribal totems to form a completely different system! The natives called this astral cultivation. Their cultivation was divided into two branches - shamans and warriors. Shamans were supposed to focus on spells and rituals whereas warriors were the combatants. Michael was definitely more interested in the warrior path. Looking at their cultivation, in the first step, cultivators awakened their astral persona, which allowed them to manifest a shadowy persona, also called their avatar. This persona would then be filled with their consciousness power to be given form. This allowed the natives of this world to bring out the power of mythical beings through their mind. The persona would have many different abilities based on what it represented and what all went into awakening it. From grade 1 to grade 3, people kept on refining their persona and completing it, like clay being moulded into something. Then, in grade 4, they would form their dao and fill their persona with their dao creating their dao avatar. Dao avatars were much more solid and corporeal, as well as much more powerful than regular avatars. The difference between a normal avatar and a dao avatar was the same as a balloon and metal sphere. Thus, in grade 4, the cultivators of this world gained a great increase in strength. Beyond grade 4, one cultivated their dao for a long period of time, reaching grade 6. Beyond that, one would declare their dao in the astral plane, becoming connected to the world. That was the level of grade 7 or higher. Naturally, it was extremely hard to reach that level. In the Iron Lion tribe, the patriarch was a grade 5 cultivator whose astral avatar was an iron lion. Michael had seen the patriarch turning into an iron lion twenty feet in height and shattering huge trees with a single swipe of his claw. Thus, he was deeply in awe of the warrior's astral cultivation path. Given his current situation, he would benefit a lot if he could awaken as well.

The main requirement for awakening was to have the blessing of awakening from the world. Alas! Michael did not have that. But he was still interested in the applications of different cultivation aspects and thus, he started to read through the scriptures and theories of cultivation of the Iron Lion tribe. But what he did not know was that while he was reading these scriptures, the iron lion patriarch was always taking note of his situation.

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In the discussion chamber, one of the elders of the tribe was giving updates of various situations to the patriarch. After a while, he said,

"Patriarch, this guy is definitely a spy. I feel it in my gut. Other tribes have always been after our knowledge and cultivation techniques. This brat has been doing the same thing since he arrived, looking through our cultivation scriptures! It has already been 3 months, and he hasn't shown any sign of awakening. If he wanted to only awaken, he should have found the method much sooner. We should exile him as soon as possible!"

"We should still wait a bit!", another elder said. He then said, "Patriarch also knows that the tournament for tribal rankings is upcoming. We do not have anyone from our tribe to truly win glory. Thus, we can only win in the group tournament. Let's wait a bit more. After he awakens, he will add to our overall numbers too. Besides, I can feel that he has a very strong foundation. He will definitely reach grade-2 directly."

The elders were divided on the situation. Iron Lion patriarch stayed silent for some time before saying, "We have already given him enough time. Now, if he won't awaken in the next few days, we will ask him to leave with the girl!"

As soon as the patriarch said these words, the aura of awakening spread through the tribe!

"Who is awakening now? All our children have either awakened or have yet to grasp their totem. Who is it?"

Soon, one of the senior disciples came calling, "Patriarch! That one-armed Michael is awakening! He is creating a giant avatar!"

As the patriarch and the elders emerged from the discussion hall, they saw a hundred feet giant standing above the scripture pavilion!