Crimson Sky Realm

Somewhere in the skies of Frost Swallow. Feng Xi and Zhang Wuji were on the back of a grade two steel back vulture on their way to the capital.

"Let me tell you the rules once again. Don't make that face! How could you have not told me that you have never killed. Irresponsible! Now listen. After we reach the royal palace, you will be escorted to the portal leading to the realm. You will be accompanied by your teammates-"

"Right, you didn't tell me. Who are my teammates going to be?"

"Don't interrupt! You'll know when you meet them. That's not important. The whole realm including where you will spawn is clearly marked in the map I gave you. Did you memorize it?"

"I have a map! Why would I memorize?"

*Slap* "What if you lose the map. I told you to memorize it didn't I? Haah, leave it. Remember the objective, kill and steal others' tokens. Let your teammates kill first. Don't try anything stupid. When you think you are used to seeing it, then and only then give it a try. It's important. *Slap* How could you forget to tell me you haven't killed!"

"Stop slapping! What if all the designs fall out of my head? And I spent all my time in the sect. Why would you assume I'd have killed. It's no big deal anyway. Also can't I just beat them up and steal their tokens? Why kill at all?"

"Sigh foolish disciple, why would the empire build a whole secret realm for something that could've easily been done in an arena?"

"Yeah, I've been actually wondering about that."

"The realm was constructed only to nourish a grade four blood devil tree. The blood devil fruit when consumed by a nascent soul allows one to have a taste of blood dao. That is a path for all nascent soul realm cultivators to a higher realm. The-"

"What's after nascent soul?"

"Dao seed real- *Slap* Don't interrupt. Ahem, every 33 years, the tree's to be fed with a lot of blood. Wars prisoners, enemies, criminals, they make a part of the offering. But it is not enough. So we have this competition." Feng Xi paused here for Zhang Wuji to recover from the expected shock.

"What after dao seed?"

"What after dao seed? That's it?"

"What?" Zhang Wuji looked at him with puzzlement.

"Oh my god! How cruel! WHAT!! No such reactions? I just told you that we are sacrificing 900 body refinement realm cultivators to feed a tree and this is the reaction I get?!"

"900?!" The number was too huge for him to notice the exaggerated actions his master did. Otherwise he would have had a second head growing out the back of his head from his master's slaps.

"Yes. That's where the less than one in ten survive thing comes from. When these many die, only then does the central district open in the Crimson Sky. And that's only body refinement realm cultivators. There's still qi condensation realm cultivators. Now that you know the gravity of the situation, what do you say?"

"What's there to say? Although 900 is indeed a huge number, the country gets secret realms in return, we get resources and nobody is forcing us. You were the one that said we have to take risks to get anything."

"Forget it. Now you only see it as a number. Anyway, did you pack your luggage."

"Yeah it's all in here." Zhang Wuji raised his hand to show his space ring. He wanted to continue enquiring about the higher realms but he had a feeling it wouldn't end well for his head.

*Slap* "I told you anything grade one and above aren't allowed in, space within spatial artefacts is sealed. Did none of that get into your thick skull?!"

"Ow! I'll take it out later!" He was getting irritated by the repeated hits by now.

"Hmph" Feng Xi snatched the ring and checked the contents within. Instantly his jaw hit the ground. "You.. you are you insane!"

"What? The rules say nothing about quantity. That's all the luggage I could carry. Otherwise I'd have packed all the tier 0 items I could gent my hands on." He snatched back his ring and put it on. Feng XI continued to stare at him stupefied. And thus their journey continued.

....

Crimson Sky Realm.

The sky was not crimson, just the regular blue. Earth, standard earth color with small shrubs here and there. There was a floating token each in front of them. The moment Zhang Wuji touched the token he felt a prick in his hand. Familiar with it, he just casually put the token in his pocket.

"All that luggage will be a burden. You should only bring the essentials. We'll search for resources first and stock up." Right as he was checking the realm out, he heard a voice from behind him. He had to turn all the way to face the person. He was completely surrounded by his luggage. They contained everything tier 0 that could possibly of use to him. His person was lost somewhere in the mountain of luggage.

Since he met them there have been sniggers and odd looks but this was the first time someone addressed it.

The speaker was Ouyang Nana. The girl was white. Too white. That combined with her stoic face could frighten anyone to death in the dead of the night.

And now she spoke, even her voice was scary. At least that's what Zhang Wuji thought. The prince on the other hand seemed like a big fan of hers. The royal family sent three people. A prince miles away from the throne and two others to guard. Irrespective of the distance from the throne, a prince is still a prince. The moment the ten came face to face, he assumed the leader position. From that moment all he did was aim for the only two girls in their party.

Zhang smiled in response and said "Wait for half an hour. I'll make a few trackers and flags that would be useful."

"There is no need for all that. There's tier 1 resource points all over the realm. There's one just five kilometers from here. You can make your toys then. Nana, you should stick close to me. My mother gave me quite a few interesting trinkets. I can show them to you." And with the prince's command Zhang Wuji hid most of the luggage and the party set off for the closest resource point.

Five kilometers wasn't a great distance. If they ran at top speed it would take them five minutes. If they used qi burst, less than three minutes. But it's been three days and Zhang Wuji was yet to reach the resource point.

Mid-way they were ambushed by a herd of giant worm like beasts. They were greatly outnumbered and ran like hell. When he was in the clear, he realized he was alone. After swearing to kick the prince in the head for stopping him from making trackers, he searched for them for a while before giving up mainly because of a group of cultivators that started to chase him. He felt like he had grown a pair of extra legs. Never did he run like that.

After escaping, he removed his outer clothing that had the Frost Swallow insignia, neatly folded it and put it in his bag. He could show it to allies when needed but he knew enemies were more trustworthy than allies. He had only one small bag of essentials left. He made a simple flag array out of those. He used it to keep himself safe and escape.

The tokens had a function that signaled whenever another token was nearby. He thought of getting rid of the token, hiding it till it was needed. But whenever he was more than twenty meters away from it, it would fly back to him and follow him around.

The token wasn't all bad. It also had a separate space within capable of holding items from the realm. For him the space was vital.

After a few days he observed an increase in solo travelers. They must have met with some kind of disaster too. Thinking of it as a chance he made slight changes to the flag array and ambushed some. It did not go well. Every single person sent here was at the top in their respective countries. He hadn't even reached the ninth level. One single flag array made out of tier 0 materials was nowhere enough.

He had a formation pen with a mid-grade spirit stone. It was a gradeless tool used by body refinement realm cultivators to draw patters and was allowed in. It was a cylindrical pen with a finger segment size slot for spirit stone that compensated for the lack of sufficient qi in body refinement. It had space for filling ink and was filled with formations that allowed the cultivator to activate it using the small amount of burst qi they could muster. With the mid-grade stone, he could draw all the patterns he wanted. He only had to arrange the ink. He roamed all over searching for suitable materials.

The realm had been opened multiple times. It was completely mapped out. Using the map his master gave him, he collected many of the essential materials. Though the flag array was not very useful in fights, it was good for escaping. The array was capable of smoking a fairly large area in a matter of seconds. With no energy sense, robbing one's sight made one completely helpless. Few trained the other senses. With the flag array he successfully collected enough materials to draw an elaborate trap.

He made a base camp and tried luring single cultivators. He used all the tricks he could think of. Shock them, paralyze, blind their senses. Then came the execution. Maybe it was his acting, excitement or stature he didn't know, but he failed again and again. Right when he was about to give up and just wait for the two months duration to end, he was struck with an idea. Projectile weapons.

After another round of resource hunting, he made a gun. It worked much like a railgun. Only it was much compact and worked on the generating and overcoming interactions of the five elements.

His final product was a meter long cylinder made of bamboo with a diameter of an inch. He used his mid grade spirit stone as energy source and the cylinder activated much like the formation pen. A slight pressure to activate his qi burst and the patterns took care of the rest. The whole body of the gun was filled with myriad patterns. Some added spin, elemental augmentation and other effects. But most of the formations were used to add velocity.

The projectile was a small stone. As long as it fit in the cylinder and was predominantly of the earth element, it was enough. He had further plans to improve the lethality of it, make it explosive maybe even poisonous but he neither had the materials nor the time.

Making the gun was challenging for him. It was movable and therefore used some of the principles of formation disks. All formations were fixed. Flag arrays had a control flag that allowed retrieval and deployment but not movement. Movement in formations led to non-uniform relative motion with the surrounding spiritual energy. A uniformity is necessary to do anything with the formation.

The solution to this static nature were formation disks. Made of special base material, these disks gave a lot of freedom when using pattern formations.

There were two kinds of disks. One was more of a transport for pattern formation than a moving formation. When placed on the ground the pattern on these palm sized disks unfolded into it's true form covering meters and more. The second kind was a truly movable formation. The material used along with peripheral patterns formed a film of spiritual energy over the main pattern that worked to maintain the uniformity.

With the film present, it didn't matter if one end of the pattern was opposite to spiritual energy flow and the other end aligned with it. Zhang Wuji had never made formation disks. It was his first time drawing the peripheral patterns. He drew them thirty four times before he got them right. Energy sense was necessary for such patterns. He could only depend on his knowledge and luck. His luck wasn't too good that day as there were only fifty four possible patterns in the situation.

The final product had a long range. After multiple tries he understood sniping was not easy. Hundred meters. That was the distance he was comfortable with. He could hit any stationary target at that distance. He was almost at the peak of body refinement and that was all he could do. He was a little ashamed of himself knowing that ordinary trained humans could do much much better.

After all kinds of tests were complete, he was ready. He looked at the night sky and decided to rest for the night and hunt the next day. The gun made no sound when firing. The range was much greater than the token. He was gonna rule the realm and make history!