Sky-Mending City

Red Maple City. Training Hall.

Lu Yuan sat cross-legged in a thousandfold-gravity chamber, the surrounding Spirit Power slowly withdrawing as his session drew to a close. He opened his eyes and released a long, steady breath.

Glancing into his Battle-mark Space, he confirmed what he had been waiting for — the Heavenly King Fruits were finally gone.

The seven-hundred-odd Sovereign Grade Heavenly King Fruits he had started with had contained Spirit Power equivalent to roughly seven hundred thousand eighth-tier Spirit Crystals. For reference, a single Saint Grade Transcendent Gene required several million eighth-tier Spirit Crystals to temper to full completion.

Seven hundred thousand wasn't even enough to fully temper one.

His Stellar Body had only reached a tempering degree of fifty percent — and that was counting the progress carried over from before.

Lu Yuan rose to his feet and stretched, his joints cracking down the length of his spine.

*Time to head to the Upper Layer.*

He smiled to himself, left the Gravity Room, and walked out of the Training Hall, making for White Cloud City.

Access to the Upper Layer of the Land of Origin required passing through the teleportation gate in the central city of whichever continent housed the Land of Origin's entrance. On White Cloud Continent, that meant White Cloud City.

Using the teleportation hall in Red Maple City, he arrived without delay.

The moment he stepped into White Cloud City, more than a few Gene Warriors turned to look at him, faces lit with a mix of reverence and curiosity. Making any of White Cloud City's rankings meant being a genuinely renowned powerhouse — and Lu Yuan had, after all, once held the top spot on both the Prodigy Rankings and the King Rankings. His reputation preceded him.

He was long used to the attention. With a single step, his body slipped into the fabric of space, and an instant later he reappeared before a gray-white building in the western district.

The structure was unremarkable compared to its neighbors — barely twenty meters tall, covering roughly two hundred square meters of ground. Yet every Gene Warrior who passed by would glance toward it with undisguised awe.

Because only those of Battle King Rank and above were permitted inside.

Within was the teleportation gate to the Upper Layer.

Even though Battle King Rank technically qualified a warrior for entry, few actually made the journey — because death in the Upper Layer was permanent, not simply an ejection back to the real world. It was the end.

Lu Yuan had shared that hesitation. Only now, having fully absorbed and processed the gains from his recent battles, did he finally feel ready.

*Honestly, if the Upper Layer didn't have so many Aberration Feral Beasts — the exact kind that trigger the Evolution Cube's metamorphosis — I could just lay low and cultivate down here. Resources might be thinner, but I can evolve items. Staying in the Lower Layer, I'd get there eventually.*

His feet kept moving even as his thoughts wandered, carrying him toward the gray-white building.

Two white Constructs stood guard at the entrance. They turned to assess him, and sensing that his cultivation level cleared the threshold, neither moved to block his path. He walked straight through.

Inside was a vast, nearly empty hall. Two spatial gates hovered midair in slow rotation — one pulsing with a gray-green glow, the other shining white. A placard stood beside each.

A glance confirmed it: the gray-green gate was the entrance to the Upper Layer; the white one was the exit.

The hall held only four other people. Three were Battle Emperors — two Elves and one Kaman — and one was a Battle Sovereign, a Cat-kin. By the look of them, they had just come through the exit and were preparing to leave. They noticed Lu Yuan, recognition flickering across their faces, and each gave a brief nod. He returned the gesture, then stepped through the gray-green gate.

Space warped and spun around him. For a Gene Warrior without a spatial gene, stepping through such a gate would likely induce dizziness and disorientation. For Lu Yuan, with his Saint Grade spatial gene, it was no different from walking through an ordinary door.

He emerged into another hall.

It mirrored the one in White Cloud City — spacious and sparse, two spatial gates on opposite sides. The gray-green gate behind him marked the entrance; a white gate to his left served as the exit.

He was the only one in the hall. A quiet stillness hung over it.

He stepped out of the hall and found himself in a corridor. Glancing in both directions, he saw several rooms identical to the one he had just left. Above each doorframe hung a placard — he scanned them: *Qingyuan. Yuanfeng. Yinjiang.* Names he didn't recognize.

He turned to check the placard above his own door. It read: White Cloud.

*Because I came from the White Cloud Star Domain?* His brow lifted slightly. *Then those other rooms — do they connect to different star domains?*

It made sense that the number of Gene Warriors who could access the Land of Origin at this level was small. Rather than scatter arrivals, it seemed every star domain across Human Race territory funneled its people here, to the same city.

The reasoning clicked into place. Even as it did, figures had begun emerging from the other rooms in a steady trickle — a being with a human torso and a serpentine lower body, another with three heads, yet another that appeared to be nothing more than a drifting cloud of water vapor. None were races he had ever encountered in White Cloud City.

He fell in with the flow of arrivals, following the corridor until it opened into an enormous hall — nearly a thousand meters across, alive with noise and movement, packed with beings engaged in conversation on all sides.

Lu Yuan swept his gaze around the crowd. He could barely identify a familiar race. He exhaled quietly and skirted the crowd, making his way outside alone.

Two Constructs stood guard at the hall's entrance — considerably more powerful than their counterparts back in White Cloud City, by the feel of their auras.

Beyond the doors lay a city of towering structures. Across the streets below and the open air above, flying mounts, mechanical constructs, and Gene Warriors streaked past in every direction, quick and purposeful.

What struck Lu Yuan most was the sky. Nothing like the open blue he knew from the Land of Origin's Lower Layer. Here, Spatial Rifts tore open at irregular intervals. Green flames erupted without warning. A strange gray-white mist crept steadily across the heavens. The sky was oppressively dark and sunless — yet not so dim that one couldn't make out the surroundings.

*The environment up here doesn't look very welcoming.*

He was still taking it in when a shout cut through the ambient noise:

"Little Yuan!"

He turned toward the voice.

Near the entrance stood Li Qinghe, Si Tingyu, and Shuangyue. Li Qinghe wore form-fitting dark black leather armor that left nothing to the imagination, every curve highlighted to full effect. Beside her, Si Tingyu was clad in heavy gold-and-crimson battle plate, while Shuangyue wore flowing jade-green robes.

Lu Yuan smiled and walked over.

He had told Li Qinghe in advance that he intended to come to the Upper Layer. Information about this place circulated almost exclusively among Battle King Rank powerhouses — even the Battle Net held very little on the subject. With his own knowledge so limited, his plan had always been to find someone who could show him around first.

He stepped up to the three women.

"Qinghe. Instructor. Shuangyue."

Li Qinghe's face was bright with pleasure. She gave his shoulder a cheerful slap.

"I kept telling you to come up to the Upper Layer and let your big sis show you how it's done — and you took *this* long to finally show up? Don't worry, I'll make sure you get a proper taste of what I'm capable of."

Si Tingyu seemed to recall something — the incident back in the room. A faint blush colored her cheeks. She gave Lu Yuan a small smile and a nod, then shifted her gaze away with a trace of embarrassment.

Shuangyue noticed. One brow arched in quiet curiosity. She smiled and turned to Lu Yuan.

"A-Yuan, I heard you've already reached Battle Sovereign? Impressive — we only broke through not long ago ourselves, and you've already caught up."

Lu Yuan rubbed the back of his neck with a modest laugh. "Got lucky, mostly. Climbing the rankings earned me a lot of rewards."

"Making number one on both the Prodigy Rankings and the King Rankings?" Shuangyue's eyes curved with amusement. "That's not luck."

Li Qinghe slung an arm around his shoulders with a grin.

"My little Yuan is naturally gifted. That kind of talent plus all that hard work — of course he's this strong." She looked at him and continued: "Anyway, since this is your first time in the Upper Layer, we'll take you around and fill you in on how things work up here."

Lu Yuan needed no convincing. "Sure."

Together they boarded a green warship covered in intricate patterns that Shuangyue produced from her storage. The vessel lifted off, pulling away from the hub's entry and exit point.

Li Qinghe gazed out at the vast city spreading below and began to explain.

"Where we are is Sky-Mending City — one of the largest cities in the Upper Layer of the Land of Origin. And I don't mean largest for our White Cloud Star Domain. I mean one of the largest cities in the entire universe. Powerhouses from the Human Race come here from every corner of the cosmos. The Mechanical Race, the spirit races, the beast races — they each have their own great cities too, though those are some distance from here."

Lu Yuan's eyes widened. "This is Sky-Mending City?"

He had first heard that name from an elder Elf, and had never imagined he would end up here so soon — let alone that it was the greatest city of the Human Race.

"So all those rooms back there — those are all teleportation gates from different star domains across Human Race territory?"

Si Tingyu gave a small nod. "Yes. Any powerhouse from any star domain in Human Race territory who wishes to come to the Upper Layer will arrive here first."

"Besides Sky-Mending City and the great cities of the other races — are there smaller settlements as well?"

"Of course," Li Qinghe said. "Using Sky-Mending City as the center, powerful War Gods and Battle Saints who've acquired the right special treasures can construct their own cities. But the Feral Beasts in the Upper Layer are far more dangerous than in the Lower Layer, so these settlements are tiny by comparison — closer to supply outposts or cultivation camps, really. And if an Aberration Beast Tide sweeps through, even a War God may not be able to hold their walls."

"There are Beast Tides here too?" The surprise in Lu Yuan's voice was genuine.

Shuangyue's expression grew more serious. "Many of the Aberration Feral Beasts here have established their own lairs. Some have even seized control over portions of the Upper Layer's territory. They're nearly impossible to fully eradicate — a constant headache."

Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu both nodded.

"The Upper Layer is home to both Aberration Feral Beasts and ordinary Feral Beasts," Li Qinghe continued, her tone turning grave. "If you're killed by an Aberration Feral Beast, you cannot revive in the real world. That's true death. So be careful — always."

Si Tingyu let out a quiet sigh. "Compared to when we first arrived, the Aberration numbers have been growing."

Shuangyue's face settled into a somber look. "My Ancestor told me that in the distant past, Aberration Feral Beasts in the Upper Layer were exceedingly rare. The numbers have crept upward over time, but lately the rate of appearance has accelerated sharply."

The words sent Lu Yuan's thoughts in two directions at once: the Spatial Rifts appearing in the real world, and the Tianming Sage's warning that time was running short.

*Maybe these things are connected.*

While the thought turned over in his mind, Li Qinghe spoke again.

"If you kill ordinary Feral Beasts, it works the same as the Lower Layer — you get item drops. But killing Aberration Feral Beasts yields no drops. Instead, your Gene Battle Mark records the merits earned from the kill."

"Merits?" Lu Yuan repeated, blinking.

Li Qinghe nodded. "Right. Sky-Mending City has a Merit Hall where you can exchange merits for all kinds of things — including some extraordinarily valuable treasures."

At the mention of treasures, Lu Yuan's attention sharpened immediately.

"Like what?"

All three women burst out laughing at his expression.

"A-Yuan looks exactly like we did when we first got here," Shuangyue said, eyes bright with amusement.

"Who wouldn't want those treasures?" Li Qinghe laughed. She turned back to him and continued: "The list includes City Hearts for building your own settlements, Saint Grade and even Divine Grade special Transcendent Genes, Gene Armaments, Saint Grade and Divine Grade Spirit Techniques and Body Techniques, even cultivation spirit fruits — all available in the Merit Hall. Someone did the math once: the rewards from hunting Aberration Feral Beasts are at least double what you'd get from hunting ordinary ones, sometimes more. Powerhouses who trust their own strength often make straight for the aberration zones — some even go looking for the source of the Aberrations themselves."

Lu Yuan's eyes lit up.

*If that's how it works, tracking down an aberration source is absolutely first on the list.*

Killing Aberration Feral Beasts earned merits, and merits could be exchanged for treasures. But for him specifically, there was a second layer entirely — killing Aberrations also yielded that unknown energy, the kind that triggered the Evolution Cube's metamorphosis.

Two returns on a single investment.

He narrowed his eyes, a clear strategy for resource acquisition already taking shape in his mind.