CHAPTER 435: POWERFUL EMPYREAN SWORD REALM

"Good." The commander gave a final nod. With that said, Apollo and Tamora left the room and came out.

Outside, Tamora led Apollo down a narrow corridor lined with dim lanterns and faint sword engravings pulsing on the walls. "You really surprised the commander," she said quietly. "He doesn’t trust people easily, especially outsiders."

Apollo gave a faint smile. "Then I’ll have to earn it."

They then first take a tour of the outpost while Tamora starts to give him a brief overview of the current situation.

"The Crimson Sword domain has a total of 108 outposts like this one with similar distribution of strength that guard the domain from the abyss."

"Previously the situation wasn’t this grave, but since a year ago the appearance of abyssal rifts seemed to be increasing, and stronger abyssal monsters started to appear one after another and destroy everything in their path."

Tamora’s voice carried a weight that went beyond simple explanation—it was the weariness of someone who’d seen too many friends fall.

She continued, "Each outpost like ours was built around a Sword Pillar—an ancient relic that stabilises the barrier between realms. But lately, even the Sword Pillars have started to crack. Once one falls, that sector becomes a breeding ground for the Abyss."

They turned a corner, emerging into the open courtyard. Soldiers guarding under the grey sky, their movements sharp yet fatigued. The air buzzed faintly with restrained sword essence; runes flared and dimmed with every clash.

Most of them were in the void god realm, while quite some were in the true god realm, but they were elite and had extraordinary strength, as they were all proud swordsmen.

He even sensed two or three powerful sword auras that clearly reached the eternal god realm; although they were not as strong as the commander he had encountered, they were definitely formidable. And yet this is just one of the outposts.

The scale of war isn’t something to be taken lightly. But this is just the situation of one domain; he had to learn more about other domains or even the entire Empyrean Sword realm.

"Tell me something," he finally said. "Are there higher forces beyond these outposts? Or is your Crimson Domain on its own?"

Tamora hesitated for a moment before answering. "Each of the three thousand domains has its own lord—sword masters who inherited fragments of the Empyrean will, which is said to grant the sword masters tremendous strength."

"In fact, they are the ones that are actually holding the strongest monster from Abyss; otherwise, the situation would be unimaginable."

"Empyrean will." He wondered who Empyrean actually was and how strong he was. He can be sure the sword master had to be at least in the transcendent realm, meaning there should be three thousand or more transcendent beings in the Empyrean Sword Realm.

That number alone made the scale of this realm staggering. Even the Black Flame Sovereign Realm, for all its power and heritage, paled in comparison. The Empyrean Sword Realm wasn’t merely vast—it was a world built on the apex of the sword path itself, where the will of one being still governed reality.

He looked at Tamora, his tone casual but edged with curiosity. "Then this Empyrean Will... Was it truly a person once? Or something greater?"

Tamora exhaled slowly, her gaze flickering toward the horizon.

"No one knows anymore. The legends say the Empyrean was the first sword—the one that severed chaos itself when creation was young. He forged this realm from the edge of that cut, shaping a world where the sword was law. But after creating the world... he disappeared."

Apollo quietly absorbed her words, eyes narrowing with a thoughtful glint. ’The first sword... severed chaos... forged a world...’

"Here we are."

Then they stopped at an old building, which appeared to be logistics but also seemed to be an archive.

Tamora pushed open the worn wooden door, and a thin breeze carrying the scent of old ink and metallic sword-qi drifted out.

Inside, the archive felt like stepping into another era.

Shelves of ancient bamboo scrolls and rune-etched tablets lined the walls.

"Everything from troop logistics to ancient scriptures is kept here," Tamora said softly, as though afraid to disturb the slumbering knowledge. "If the Crimson Domain has learnt something in the last hundred thousand years, it’s stored somewhere in these walls."

"Good." Apollo nodded and then started to look through all of the ancient scrolls while Tamora left him alone.

He first tried to find the history of the Empyrean sword world, and, like he heard from Tamora, it was the same as the great Empyrean cut the origin and created this world. In fact, they didn’t know anything much, and the Empyrean title was only given by latecomers.

So the entire thing is a mystery, and for the matter of Abyss, it wasn’t something new. According to the records here, Abyss has been trying to invade for millions of years, but they never actually gained the upper hand.

At most one of the three thousand domains was devastated, but they were still later able to control things under.

It was clear the strength of the empyrean sword realm was so terrifying that even the abyss seemed unable to do much. After reading all this, he tried to find out about the origin, but how the hell can he find out about something that seems like a legend or myth?

He can be sure the severed origin should be the origin that Empyrean cut to create this world.

Knowing all of this, he was troubled about what the hell he should do now. But still he continued to search through all the scrolls, as only by knowing more about Empyreanwill he be able to find the origin.

He seemed to be lost in his search, while outside, the atmosphere of the entire crimson domain seemed to be slowly changing. The air seemed to grow heavier as many started to feel something terrifying was going to happen.

At that time in the centre of the crimson domain on an unimaginably tall mountain, a young man with a rustic sword seemed to open his eyes and looked above in the sky.