Chapter 874 874. Gale
The only issue with their exploration was the constant white light radiated by the sky, which ultimately forced them to advance on foot.
There was no night in that strange world. The sky kept on shining endlessly, without ever stopping pushing the limits of their minds. Even with seas of consciousness in the fifth rank, the six experts couldn’t sustain that continuous pressure that tried to pierce the walls of their spheres.
Reaching the ground didn’t solve that problem. As weeks passed, even the subtle pressure that reached the ground started to weigh on their minds and force them to take cover from the sight of that oppressing sky.
The six of them had to dig deep caves to avoid direct contact with the white light and take short breaks to shake off the pressure accumulated during the exploration.
Only a day or two of rest were enough for their minds to return to their peak. Still, the fact that they needed to hide from the light in the first place made them understand that the dimension wasn’t meant for beings on that level.
Of course, that wasn’t something that affected them too much.
The radiance of the sky was a positive influence on their mental spheres since it strengthened their walls. Noah even found himself flying alone at times to keep his training schedule going.
Also, he required all the pressure that he could get if he wanted to rely on the properties of his mental energy again. In his opinion, the separate dimension had already met the requirements of a training area suitable for heroic cultivators.
As they explored further, the azure ground started to turn brown due to the lack of "Breath" in its fabric. The environment had begun to lose the properties that made it part of a higher plane and was returning to the standards of the Mortal Lands.
It was at that point that the group saw the first magical beasts of the separate dimension.
They were rare creatures in the fourth rank that lazily fed on the "Breath" in the environment for their nourishment, but a few of them engaged in messy fights with beasts on a similar level. The population of that fauna increased as the ground became completely brown, and even some creatures in the human ranks began to appear.
The beasts’ level decreased as they pressed forward, but their number increased since those areas were incredible for beings in the human ranks. Their lack of a sea of consciousness also made them ignore the constant pressure radiated from the sky, so they didn’t experience any drawback when they hunted on the surface.
The limits of the dimension eventually arrived, and they appeared as a cracked cliff that led to a void often seen in similar structures.
The six experts turned at that point and continued to analyze the environment as they made their way back to the teleportation matrix. They had a general direction and had gathered some data by then. It was time to dive deeper into the dimension.
Noah had hunted and studied some magical beasts along the way, but he couldn’t find any difference from the creatures that populated the outside world. They even tasted the same, so he quickly gave up on the hypothesis that they could carry unusual features due to that unique environment.
The only pattern that he could see in their species was that the creatures that could live underground were more populated.
That led him to conclude that the sky affected them in some way that he couldn’t see in the span of a few weeks. After all, he didn’t see any flying creature in that period, and even the tallest beasts were rarer compared to the smallest.
There seemed to be a natural selection that privileged the creatures that put as much distance as possible with the sky.
Most of the data gathered from beasts in the human ranks though were unreliable since those creatures had yet to become proper inhabitants of those land.
They were too weak to reach for the territories where the ground was utterly blue and matched the requirement of a higher plane. Even the beasts in the heroic ranks found right after the teleportation matrix suffered from the same issue.
The group was seeing only the bottom of the food chain. The creatures that had gained from that environment had to be those living in the central areas.
Noah and the others took a break when they reached the formation and walked toward the solitary mountains in the distance. That side of the dimension followed a similar pattern, and complex living beings began to appear as the group left the plain to enter that new area. The only difference was in the power of the lifeforms there, which were far stronger compared to those found on the other side.
Magical plans and beasts started to show their presence as the group strived forward, uncaring of the continually increasing density of "Breath" in the air. Beings not limited to the lower tier of the fourth rank became a common sight in that mysterious land.
It seemed that only the area around the teleportation matrix was devoid of the presence of lifeforms that could increase their power. At the same time, the rest of the world was incredibly similar to the new continent when it first fell.
Some rare flying creatures began to appear too. Noah recognized most of those species and noted that all of them were the strongest kinds of those types of magical beasts.
It seemed that the sky belonged only to the various species carrying the best features of their types.
Noah didn’t stop his studies of the fauna during the exploration. Some of those species showed some of the improvements that they had gained due to that extreme environment. It wasn’t anything special. They just had slightly stronger innate abilities, but that feature started to manifest itself more often as the group moved toward the center of the dimension.
However, an unexpected event happened as they made their way through the valleys formed by the solitary mountains. A soft gale started to blew from a random direction and swept the six cultivators with its warm air.
The members of Noah’s group didn’t overthink about it since they were more interested in the lifeforms around them. Still, their consciousnesses became thinner under the influence of that wind, and their minds expanded until they reached a mental state similar to that experienced by Noah during the transformation.