Chapter 879 - Alpha

The six demons looked at each other.

“Did we mishear that? He said he wants to destroy our tribes?” Hong Ying chuckled. Her laughter echoed in the empty space.

“He's the first person who has said that and walked away alive.” Zi Xue laughed too.

“Why don’t I kill him so he won’t destroy our tribes right now?” Xuan Feng chuckled coldly.

“Enough. That person is weird. I think he will be able to do something here. Let’s just head back and watch over him. This isn’t our territory, so we need to head back soon.”

“Alright.”

Su Yan stared at the six demons and Long Chen’s back before she said in a daze, “Brother Xiaolang, will Big Brother really come and take us back?”

Mo Xiaolang nodded.

“Why? I thought the demons were strong?”

“That’s because Long Chen has never gone back on his word. He will crawl to the Desolate Royal Territory if he has to.”

Mo Xiaolang laughed.

Maybe Long Chen would grow a lot by being alone this time.

***

Long Chen took a deep breath.

While he looked calm, his heart was in pain. This was like the pain he felt when Ling Xi was taken away from him.

“Ling Xi was taken away, and now Xiaolang! I am too weak!”

Long Chen clenched his fists tightly, and power concentrated in them.

“I must work ten times harder to become stronger and kill whoever gets in my way! How can others be wary of me if I don’t turn into a demon?”

Long Chen shouted and punched a tree in front of him. The tree was large and roughly half a meter in diameter. The bark was completely black and its leaves were inky green. It looked solemn and eerie.

He punched it as hard as he could, but the tree did not fall! It just shook violently while leaves floated down.

“What’s going on?”

Long Chen had put a lot of strength in his punch out of frustration, guilt, and blame.

He wanted to cast his frustrations away with that punch before he focused on his cultivation.

His punch, which should have destroyed trees several times larger than this one, was completely useless against this tree! He had only left a mark in the bark.

“Why are regular trees so hard here?”

Long Chen was stumped before he remembered that he was in the Three Royal Territories. This was the True Martial Territory!

He temporarily placed his worries in the back of his mind.

Long Chen looked up and around him. He saw that he was in a dark forest, and everything looked eerie to him. Inky black trees surrounded him and the roots tangled in the ground. A dense layer of leaves covered the ground. Several shrubs were lying around, revealing the equally black soil underneath them.

Even the sky was dark and inky green. The clouds, which were the same color, were very low in the sky, as if they could fall at any time.

“Is this the True Martial Territory and also where the Underworld Estate is? How big is this place?”

Long Chen was lost.

He snapped out of his grief for losing Xiaolang and focused on his goals.

He needed to find Ling Xi.

He punched again and found that the tree was still fine. He had to use all of his strength to break a tree around half a meter in diameter.

This was ridiculous!

Not only was the tree hard, the soil was equally hard too! Long Chen could easily tunnel underground in the Metal District, but he couldn’t do anything here! The ground was too tough.

“Is this how the Three Royal Territories are? To think that even common objects far exceed what we can find in the Ten Thousand Nations Territory. Even the strongest person in the Ten Thousand Nations Territory can barely break a tree. No wonder the people and demons of this place look down on us.”

Long Chen felt so powerless in this environment where everything was tough beyond his wildest dreams.

“Brat, don’t be sad. He might be gone, but I’m still here with you!”

Little Cat came out of the Primordial Realm and took a deep breath. “Aaah. The air of the Three Royal Territories is dense with nature’s spiritual energy. The spiritual energy here is called overlord spiritual energy. It’s a thousand times denser than the energy in the Ancient Graveyard. The Three Royal Territories are indeed a higher world. The energy is very dense even in the fringes of it.”

“Overlord spiritual energy?” Long Chen sensed that there was indeed a thick air of spiritual energy around him. He only took a single breath and felt much better. He could recover all of the essence that he had used for Blood Warp in just a single day.

It would’ve taken him tens of days and even several other items like spiritual herbs or Royal Crystals to recover back in the Ten Thousand Nations Territory.

“It’s exactly because of it that everything in the Three Royal Territories is this hardy. The rivers, sand, and leaves are all much harder here. You will feel like you’ve returned back to Baiyang Town. So... are you giving up?”

“No.” Long Chen looked at the challenging world around him and said, “This is where I belong. The Ten Thousand Nations Territory was just a place for me to solidify my basics. This is where I get to grow stronger.”

Little Cat paused in awe when he saw Long Chen’s confidence. He smiled after some time. “Not bad for someone with the Ancestral Dragon’s Inherited Blood Essence.”

“Stop trying to butter me up.”

Little Cat hopped onto Long Chen’s shoulder and said lazily, “Bullshit. I’m not trying to butter you up, but there is one thing that I must tell you.”

“What is it?”

“Because the overlord spiritual energy is very dense here, especially up in the sky, it suppresses everyone. Those below the Divine Martial Realm cannot fly here. With your strength, I think you can only hover around ten meters above the ground. You can jump, but I doubt that you can fly.”

“Is that so ...” The Three Royal Territories were indeed a challenging world where even flying had been restricted. This was truly a place for the strong.

To Long Chen, there was no difference between fighting on the ground or in the air. He didn’t really care about it.

“What the? Why aren’t you feeling dejected?”

He thought Long Chen would be down.

“Don’t underestimate me.” Long Chen prepared himself and walked around in the dark forest. There was not a single sound to be heard, not even the chirps of the insects and bees.

“Wait, where are you going?” Little Cat followed Long Chen as he stumbled in the Dream Demon’s body.

Long Chen thought for a moment. “I don’t know where I am. I need to ask someone the way to reach the Swordsoul Palace.”

Since he didn’t know where he was, Long Chen just chose a random direction.

He continued to make his way forward, watching his surroundings. As Little Cat had told him, everything here was harder than he had thought. Even the soil was harder than the metallic soil of the Metal District. Long Chen thought that merely tripping and falling would result in an injury.

He started to become more and more excited as he walked.

“I have to live in a challenging world like this and become an alpha!”

No matter how dangerous it was, no matter how much he had to struggle, Long Chen would forever trudge forward. He had to reach the peak!

“I need to find Ling Xi first to let her know I’m fulfilling my promise.”

He became excited when he thought that he was close to Ling Xi!

He walked for three days and nights as he studied the items he was given by the Five Emperors. The Five Emperor Palm was easy to use to begin with, so he decided to focus on the other things, the Emperor’s Manual and the Emperor Vanquishers.

The Emperor Vanquishers were stronger than the Three Thousand Star Clusters. He tried using the Yin and Yang Sword Root to form a link with them, but he saw nothing but a black world inside of them. Long Chen’s Yin and Yang Sword Root almost disappeared for good inside the empty space.

He needed time to slowly cultivate them.

“It took me several months to reach the Ninth Earthly Martial Stage from the Eighth Stage. Someone at the Heavenly Martial Realm can live for a very long time. Will it take me several months or even a year to reach the Third Heavenly Martial Stage?”

It took a lot of effort to enter the next stage. Long Chen had only improved as quickly as he had because of the Martial God Tombstone guiding him through the Earthly Martial Realm. Now he was alone here in the True Martial Territory, so progressing through the Heavenly Martial Realm was destined to be slow.

Reaching the next stage within just a year was not something a regular genius could do.

But Long Chen still complained that it was too slow.