Dalila, clad in a flowing purple alchemist robe that shimmered with amethyst runes, stepped forward and appeared elsewhere. Her expression was serene, but the gleam in her eyes was one of amusement. Without a word, she knelt and pressed a jade-white formation disc into the earth.
*Bzz~*
A low hum reverberated across the town plaza near the entrance.
Then, with a sudden jolt, the disc lit up. Golden runes of energy surged from it like lightning veins, crawling across the ground with eerie precision. A second later, a beam of light shot into the skies, piercing through the skies but it didn't reach the cloudy heavens nor the multicolored auroras.
*Vmmmm~*
A translucent dome instantly swept outward, rippling through space like a tidal wave of curtains. The vibrant town, bustling with Immortal Emperors and Sovereigns, was locked in a massive, bizarre prison.
No one could enter.
No one could escape.
Gasps of horror echoed as countless formations faltered. Illusions cracked. Concealed defenses flickered and died. Every spatial marker meant for teleportation was snuffed out like candles in a storm.
Dalila rose calmly, brushing dust off her robes, "The town is sealed."
Isabella smiled and appeared beside her, "Perfect."
Like wolves descending the mountain, the group of women moved.
Shirley turned her spear in her grasp, the icefire spear humming in hunger, "Let's plunder more rings."
Surrounding her were broken structures and a lot of geniuses who either had their body parts missing or were frozen like they were enduring frostbite and inflamed flesh at the same time.
She vanished into a streak of icefire, flashing across rooftops and shattering protective domes with a single flick of her weapon. Screams followed. Many stalls exploded. Merchants fled- only to find themselves frozen in statues of burning frost. Aila's whip lashed through the air, wrapping around a six-armed lizardman mid-leap. He seemed to be a servant of some other supreme genius. With a tug, she crushed his defense and hurled him through a elemental crystal merchant's stall, snatching his life ring mid-fall. Her eyes remained cold, focused. She moved like a rabbit, her movements hard to predict.
Bylai soared above, her golden glaive spinning like a death wheel. With one cleave, she split apart the brothel's reinforced gates, revealing a group of stunned Sovereigns. A single sweep of her weapon sent bodies and furniture flying like feathers in a hurricane.
Niera, Dalila, Flamerose, Frostrose, and Freya followed suit.
A thousand beams of multicolored flame energies shot from their fingertips, dancing across the town. Every one of them found a target, binding, blasting, or dazing cultivators who resisted.
Even those hiding in spatial folds were found.
Even those using treasures to obscure their presence were exposed.
And in the center of it all, Isabella walked calmly.
She walked through the street, holding her head high. She wasn't the only person who hadn't taken out a weapon because her armament was a gauntlet. If she used it, she wouldn't be able to hold back her powers.
Still, she didn't rush ahead like the others.
Geniuses threw techniques at her in panic, but they crumbled against her presence before even reaching her. Her dragon aura made weaker bloodlines tremble, their spines locking in fear. She merely raised her hand, and storage rings floated to her. Her pull was extremely strong that they couldn't resist and with her dragon soul, she forcefully broke their bonds if they refused to give up.
Everywhere in the town, spatial rings and life rings were plundered.
Elemental transcendent crystals, Elemental transcendent cores, high-quality ingredients, and even fragments of Empyrean Grade Armaments were swept away in massive, calculated looting.
An elder tried to hide inside a pavilion, activating a miniature world. It was a space-attributed rock that held a tiny space. He vanished from sight but was quickly exposed by Isabella, who dragged him out by stabbing the space inside with a conjured spear and making it collapse.
"Ah! Spare me!"
The elder dropped to his knees and started begging.
Elsewhere, a proud supreme genius of the Moonsmile Family tried to gather his sect's formation for a counterattack. He only got one word out before his mouth was sealed by a foot to the face, sending him flying.
Bylai's golden hair gleamed in the darkness of the palace and the blinding light radiating from outside before she cut off his hand and took away his rings.
Eventually, they gathered a lot of supreme geniuses in the town square.
The supreme geniuses couldn't understand.
How were these beauties so powerful?
When had supreme geniuses ever had to suffer in the same realm? Even with so many of them having gathered, they couldn't mount a counterattack and their escape paths were sealed. No one had managed to escape the moment these women set foot into
this place.
It wasn't a battle. They figured it was a clean, coordinated raid.
Within minutes, half the town was flattened. Within half an hour, every supreme genius with something worth taking had been found and plundered. If they resisted, they were swiftly met with an even greater slap that made their heads explode. They were more ruthless than their beautiful faces suggested, leaving them breathless. "Judging from the density of their undulations, there are seventy-one supreme geniuses, eight hundred and two geniuses, and four thousand ordinary cultivators. That's the current population of the town- the ones who survived that is..."
After multiple sweeps of soul sense, Niera reported.
She held a staff that mounted an orb at the top, glowing like the sun.
"That's more or less the case." Shirley nodded, "Everyone else would be still exploring this vast shard world... from the Elemental Dimension... I wonder what we'll find
here..."
Her lips curled, and her gaze turned excited.
Isabella and the others smiled, knowing she had always been the adventure type.
However, Isabella pursed her lips, appearing a bit intrigued. She raised her hands and looked closely at her palms, wondering if it was her own imagination or not.
"This place recognizes as outsiders... I think there's a forceful bottleneck cast on us... don't you all think that's the case?"
"Now that you mention it..."
Shirley checked and she was surprised to find that she couldn't make the final step.
One by one, they probed their cultivation bases, stretching their senses toward the edge of advancement-and hit something.
It wasn't a wall or some kind of solid resistance.
It was like standing at the peak of a mountain, the skies open and ready, the winds whispering promises of ascension, yet when they tried to take that final step, their bodies wouldn't respond. Their cultivation surged, their comprehension aligned, the cosmos called... but nothing moved.
Shirley frowned deeply, her brows knitting together. This was really strange.
There was a difference between making a breakthrough and being expelled and not
being allowed to make a breakthrough.
"So it's true... we really can't make a breakthrough here. I heard that there are Empyrean-level creatures here. In that case, it seems like we outsiders can't enter the next stage, but the aboriginals can... we'll have to be careful."
Isabella, Shirley, Niera, Bylai, Aila, Dalila, Flamerose, Frostrose, and Freya all looked at
each other.
"In any case, let's deal with these people and leave. The next time they block us, we'll
make sure that there's no mercy involved..."
Isabella uttered, and the others nodded.