Han Yu stood frozen, his body trembling as the land beneath him continued to quake.

The world around him was falling apart, and he could do nothing to stop it. The once-stable ground was now riddled with deep rifts, glowing faintly with violet-red light that leaked out from beneath the surface like the veins of a wounded beast.

Every few moments, a fragment of the world would twist in on itself, pulled toward the widening fissures that tore across the horizon. Above him, the sky itself was splitting, lines of pure distortion crawling across the heavens like cracks in glass.

It was no longer merely the illusionary sky of the inner realm, it was something far more terrifying, something that seemed to tear at the boundaries of existence itself.

Chunks of mountains and fragments of valleys floated through the air, slowly descending or being drawn into the radiant fissures like scraps of paper sucked into a raging fire. He could see figures within them; some screaming, some silent, others frozen in shock as they vanished into the tearing space.

Han Yu's knuckles turned white around the haft of his halberd as he gritted his teeth, the violent pressure in the air making it difficult to breathe.

The barrier around the tomb still shimmered faintly, untouched by the chaos that devoured the rest of the world. Han Yu hovered close to it, glancing up as another quake rippled through the land, sending fissures darting like lightning bolts across the ground.

A moment later, something massive fell from the sky. It was not a meteor or debris, it was a hill, an entire section of terrain that had been ripped from somewhere else.

BOOOOM

It slammed into the ground several hundred meters away, exploding in a thunderous boom that sent dust and stone flying into the air.

Han Yu flinched at the shockwave and raised his arm to shield his face. But the fragments never stuck him, instead they hit the barrier and stopped before him. And when the dust cleared, he could see what had happened.

A group of cultivators who had been unlucky enough to fall nearby were crushed beneath the weight of the hill, their bodies mangled beyond recognition. Others barely escaped, their protective qi flaring to hold back the falling debris.

It was a sight that made his stomach churn, a raw reminder of how powerless he was in the face of such upheaval.

Yet, somehow, nothing entered the barrier itself. No falling mountains, no spatial fissures, not even the stray energy of the quakes passed through it. The tomb and the land immediately surrounding it remained eerily stable, as though sealed within a bubble of protection.

Han Yu could not tell if it was the tomb's power or something else guarding it, but he was grateful nonetheless.

"Huh, those robes?"

Then, through the haze of dust and fractured light, he spotted figures falling from above.

His eyes widened as he realized they were people. Dozens of cultivators were descending from the cracked heavens, their forms flickering with the glow of spiritual artifacts as they tried to slow their fall. He watched several of them manage to land not far from the barrier, their bodies battered but intact.

Recognizing the insignias on their robes, Han Yu's heart leapt.

"Twin Leaf Peak Sect disciples!" he shouted, his voice hoarse.

The group of cultivators looked around, startled, before their eyes found him standing near the barrier.

They quickly made their way toward him, supporting one another as they crossed the broken ground. There were about seven of them, five men and two women, all of them wearing expressions of disbelief and exhaustion.

From their qi signatures, Han Yu could tell that three of them were at the Core Condensation Realm, while the others were in the late Qi Refining stages. The younger ones looked especially shaken, far too weak to be in such a dangerous place.

When they reached him, one of the older disciples stepped forward, a tall man with sharp features and a bloodstained sleeve.

"Han Yu? You're alive?" he asked, eyes wide, not having expected to see him here.

Han Yu nodded, still catching his breath. "I could say the same. How did you all end up here? This place should have been sealed within the inner realm. You were supposed to be outside, weren't you?"

The man exchanged a troubled glance with the others. "We were. The camp… it was fine one moment, then the ground and skies just... split apart. Cracks appeared everywhere. We tried to fly, but a force stronger than any elder's power pulled us in. We thought we were done for."

A younger female disciple beside him added shakily, "Everything went black. When I opened my eyes, I was falling through the sky. We barely managed to survive the landing."

Han Yu's brows furrowed deeply. He took a slow breath, his mind racing. "So, even those outside the inner realm… are being pulled in. These spatial fractures must be connecting both sides."

From the Spatial Energy he had felt, Han Yu managed to figure out these were no ordinary cracks but spatial fractures. He knew almost nothing about them, other than the fact that they were fractures between the real world and the void.

The disciples looked around nervously at the distorted sky, the endless cracks glowing faintly above them.

One of them, a short-haired youth, gestured toward the barrier. "What about you, Senior Brother Han? What is this thing? Why are you inside it?"

Han Yu turned to glance at the faintly shimmering wall of light behind him. "I don't know much myself. I was teleported here from one of the shrines within the realm. Since then, I've been stuck. I can't leave, and I can't see what's happening outside."

"Do you know what's going on? Where are the Elders? The Peak Heads?" another disciple asked, his tone desperate.

Han Yu shook his head. "I wish I knew. You were at the camp, weren't you? Were there any elders with you?"