Chapter 82: Small Grayfield
Translator: Ash Editor: Geoffrey
Peng Hai walked up to a milky white wall nearby and drew an imaginary line. Soon, a vibrant hologram shone on the wall.
As Peng Hai quickly punched in a few glyphs, a burst of buzzing noise came from the ceiling before a metal disc lightly fell from above.
The disc was approximately two meters in diameter, and with over a thousand glyphs engraved on a winding course, it formed a spiral-like glyph array. Its edge was slightly raised and was also embedded with over a hundred shining, transparent crystals. Evidently, one could easily discover an unlimited amount of starlight clustered at the center of each crystal.
It didn't take long for Li Yao to recognize that it was an extremely high-rank transmission formation.
From the many crystals inlaid on its edge, it was quite evident that this transmission formation required an exorbitant amount of spiritual energy to start. Certainly, the transmission formation must teleport to a very remote place.
Peng Hai swiftly punched in a couple of glyphs into the hologram. Soon, three small screens emerged in the hologram with each screen depicting a completely different world.
Peng Hai clicked on the gray world among them, then set the coordinates and other parameters before stepping onto the transmission formation.
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang similarly followed him onto the disc. The crystal inlaid around its edges were getting increasingly brighter, making it impossible to directly look at them. The array engraved underneath their feet started moving like a whirlpool, generating an inexplicable suction force which seemed to pull them into the ground.
Everything went black before Li Yao's eyes. He felt like he was like a noodle which was stretched to a hundred meter, and in 0.1 seconds, he was reverted back to his original form.
Li Yao was hit with a burst of dizziness; he had an urge to vomit. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a very strange world.
From the sky to the earth, everything was completely gray. As far as his eyes could see, it was a lifeless gray dessert. The earth beneath his feet was composed solely of broken stones and gravel... One would not be able to find the slightest trace of life here.
This world seemed to have no atmosphere. The air here was sparse; for each breath, Li Yao had to exert all his strength. Moreover, there was an unpleasant smell in the air, and upon inhaling the air, a feeling of extreme discomfort rose within him as the air travels down from his nasal cavity to the trachea. Li Yao felt like it was not air that he had breathed but some hot volcanic gas. As the air reached his lungs, he felt as if a ball of fire had been hurled into his lungs, it was extremely stifling.
What made him even more uncomfortable was that the gravity here was several times more than that of the Heaven Origin Sector. Just from standing, Li Yao felt his strength seeping away as his knees almost buckled to the ground.
The gray sky above was devoid of any stars, the moon, and the sun. Instead, a couple huge pieces of gray rocks with a human face carved upon them were hanging in the sky. They floated in an extremely strange manner, and their eyes seemingly stared directly upon the people on the ground. Looking at those rocks, Li Yao felt jittery.
In addition, he noticed one more staggering thing — standing approximately seven to eight hundred meters away from them were three people on the other side who dressed exactly like them!
"You don't need to check, that's us. This world has a diameter of approximately a kilometer. It is a typical world fragment,” Peng Hai smiled and said.
"We are inside the legendary world fragment?" Li Yao curiously looked at everything around him.
According to textbooks, there were two kinds of worlds in the universe.
The first was something like the Heaven Origin Sector which occupied a vast piece of space and stretched across several galaxies and had several habitable planets that had stable atmospheres and complete ecosystems.
This type of world was ideal for the humans or demon beasts to thrive and evolve, and for the development of civilization.
This type of world was called the "Main World" or also known as the "Boundless Universe".
The other type was much miserable. Perhaps you could say it was the space-time fragment formed due to the Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe, or perhaps a part of the Main World blasted off during the fight between super ancient cultivators, or maybe a part torn away during the spiritual energy tide, or it might even be possible that it was artificially created for all sorts of strange and unusual reasons.
This type of world was often very small with a radius varying from a couple hundred meters to even a few dozen meters, while the largest one would not even exceed the size of a continent. On account of its small volume, the fluctuation of spiritual energy was extremely intense. This type of world was very unstable and lacked a set of fixed rules of operation. It might even collapse in minutes.
This type of world went by the name of "World Fragment" or also known as the "Small World".
The Main World and the World Fragment were separated through a space-time gap; however, once the exact coordinates of the World Fragment were known, one could directly enter it through the transmission formation.
In the early days of modern cultivation civilization, mankind discovered many such World Fragments. However, at that time, humans had not yet learned how to utilize these World Fragments. These World Fragments were simply treated as a dumping site for waste from the Main World or were treated as a place of exile.
After 10,000 years of development, mankind had discovered millions of such World Fragments and realized the advantages of these World Fragments. From then on, these World Fragments were developed and utilized — they were no longer waste but turned into treasures to be exploited.
One of the most common use was to develop the World Fragment into a training field for powerful cultivators!
Peng Hai said, "This World Fragment is called 'Small Grayfield'. The specialty of this place lies in the underlying terrifying density of the ground and the high gravity which is approximately ten times that of Heaven Origin Sector. The strangest thing about this place is the gravity, which is unstable — it changes by the minute or even seconds. The gravity may vary from eight times to twelve times of that of the Heaven Origin Sector. It doesn't follow any law whatsoever. Often, the gravity would be twelve times for one second, and in the next, it could suddenly drop to eight times! For training the control over your body, the 'Small Grayfield' is the best place for cultivation!"
"So strange!" Li Yao was secretly shocked. This World Fragment was truly weird.
If the gravitational force was ten times higher than that of the Heaven Origin Sector, then according to the norms, the density of this place could be said to be especially high.
But the gravitational field here was subjected to change in an irregular fashion, and this phenomenon had no rule or any explainable reason.
And why were there statues engraved with human faces floating in the sky? Who created them? And even more, why could they violate all the laws of gravity and float in the sky? He could not find a single anti-gravity array on them anywhere!
However, Li Yao was not a scientist. Since he could not figure it out, he simply threw it at the back of his mind. When he arbitrarily blasted two punches, sure enough, he found some irregularities at the moments when his punches discharged power.
It was the so-called "force from the ground". The first part of any attack was to take a step to borrow strength from the ground.
The subtle changes in the gravitational field had led to Li Yao having a feeling as if he was stepping on cotton. The heavy-headedness and light-footedness kind of feeling rendered the punches, which were originally strong enough to tear the air, into powerless light jabs.
"There is a full set of training equipment in here. If you can adapt to the gravity of this place within a month, then I believe that after returning to the Heaven Origin Sector, your strength will have advanced to a completely new level, and getting admitted to the 'Nine Elite Universities' would be a piece of cake for you!" Peng Hai said with a smile.
Peng Hai paused and took a glance at the nearby Ding Lingdang, who seemed like she wanted to say something, before continuing, "Junior Sister Ding, you can't say senior brother didn't take care of you later. For the period of an entire month, the training room is under your management. You must operate the transmission formation and also help me look after this brat. Make sure to never ever step onto the other World Fragments besides the 'Small Grayfield, especially him. Even you have to be careful there. Both World Fragments were prepared for Building Foundation Stage cultivators and are extremely dangerous. If an ordinary person stepped in there, he would vanish in the puff of smoke."
Ding Lingdang was brimming with happiness. She jumped in jubilation and cheered, "Long live senior brother! For a long time, I've been wanting to cultivate in the 'Small Grayfield'! However, can't you promise me one more thing?"
Peng Hai frowned, "I knew you’d be insatiable. Say it, what else do you want?"
A huge grin appeared on Ding Lingdang's face, "Senior Brother Peng, as you know, fellow student Li Yao is hesitating between the Grand Desolate War Institution and the Deep Sea University. How about the two of us have a round of bout to let fellow student Li Yao experience the true strength of the Grand Desolate War Institution. Maybe watching us will cause his blood to start boiling and burst with joy. And who knows? He might just, on the spot, gave up on becoming a bullsh*t Refiner [1] and realize that a Body Practitioner is a very promising career!"
Once she was finished, without even waiting for Peng Hai to agree, Ding Lingdang began exercising her hands and feet on her own as very frightening sounds began to come from her joints.
Peng Hai calmly and collectedly backed away half a step. A helpless smile appeared on his face, "Do you want to show fellow student Li Yao, or do you simply want to have a round of spar with me?"
Ding Lingdang stuck her tongue out.
"You saw through me! Senior Brother Peng, you're the most outstanding graduate of Grand Desolate War Institution before me. All this time, I've been looking for an opportunity to learn from you, but you’ve always refused. Today, think of it as... letting fellow student Li Yao have a taste of the firepower of a battle-type cultivator! Let him see exactly how crazy it is!"
Peng Hai glanced at Li Yao before a peculiar aura started surging in his eyes. Finally, he nodded in agreement.
"Alright, for fellow student Li Yao's sake, I'll suppress my strength to 'Pinnacle Refinement Stage' and spar with you. But first, you have to agree that this is only for thirty seconds."
"No need. If it's just 'Pinnacle Refinement Stage', then I'll blow you away in ten seconds!"
Notes:
[1] I’ll be using Refiner instead of Artificer.