Free Web NovelChapter 35: Chapter 35—Bizarre Domain
Chapter 35—Bizarre Domain
The entire Azure Cloud City air turned heavy and oppressive.
Everyone who had been heading toward the Lei Clan compound—guests invited to the wedding, citizens hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebration, those bound to attend by alliance obligations, those simply hungry for the free food and festivity of a great clan’s marriage day—all of them stopped at the same moment.
And many who had been busy with their daily lives stopped too.
Boom!
A massive, dark beam of golden light erupted from the direction of the Xiao Clan household and drove straight upward into the sky, visible from every corner of Azure Cloud City.
Carriages halted mid-street. People on horseback pulled their reins. Those on foot stumbled to a stop and craned their necks upward.
"What in the heavens is that?"
"Is the end near?"
"Is heaven punishing us?"
Reactions scattered through the crowd like seeds thrown to the wind. Some fell to their knees. Some trembled. A handful grinned with a kind of manic excitement. But not one person moved toward the Xiao Clan’s direction—because the nearby city guards had already drawn their swords and formed lines across every approach road, holding the crowd firmly in place.
A young guard in white city guard armor pushed his way to his superior, a middle-aged man in a cyan martial arts hanfu robe who was leaning against a wall with the relaxed posture of someone who had seen strange things before and intended to keep seeing them from a safe distance.
"Captain Tan—what should we do?"
Captain Tan picked his nose. "Maintain order," he said nonchalantly.
The young guard opened his mouth to push further.
"Do you genuinely think we are powerful enough to go near that?" Tan cut him off, his voice carrying a dry edge. "Or to claim whatever it is, even if it turns out to be a treasure?" He let the question sit for a moment. "That’s the property of a Bizarre Cultivator... or it could be a Bizarre Creature itself." He raised his voice to address the handful of guards who had been quietly shuffling toward the source of the light, trying to look casual about it. "Anyone who doesn’t value their life can proceed. Anyone who does—stay put."
The shuffling stopped. Not a single guard took another step forward. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
The same scene repeated itself on every street in Azure Cloud City. The captains who led the guards were not fools.
The most striking reaction, however—or rather the absence of one—came from the slums.
The slums of Azure Cloud City sprawled in the outer city, far from the wealth and polish of the inner zone. The streets were narrow muddy lanes, barely wide enough for a cart, lined on both sides by wooden huts pressed so tightly together they shared walls. More than a hundred such huts crowded a stretch of road only a kilometer long. The ground was littered with dried mud and rotting scraps, and the indignities of people who had nothing and nowhere else to be. The smell was constant. The people who walked here had learned not to notice it.
When the golden beam detonated into the sky above the Xiao Clan household, the beggars and the poor of the slums glanced up—and looked away again, unaffected, as though a falling star held no more interest than a passing cloud.
All except one.
A twelve-year-old boy, in a tattered yellow robe, felt his body jolt the instant the light hit his eyes. He moved fast—yanking his right hand inside the robe before anyone nearby could see it. He peered down at his own palm, hidden in the fabric.
Zzz!
His hand had transformed into a fox’s golden claw.
He broke into a cold sweat. ’Damn it—why is this happening again?’ He bit his lip hard and scowled at the hidden hand. ’I shouldn’t have eaten that fox.’
He remembered it clearly. Weeks ago, suffering from a hunger that had moved past pain into a kind of blank numbness, he had wandered into the area beyond Azure Cloud City’s outer walls and found a dead Bizarre fox lying on the ground. He had been afraid to get close at first—it was leaking chilly energy—but hunger had stripped away his caution entirely. He had not cared about his life. He had only wanted to die with his stomach full.
Looking back, he could barely recognize the boy who had made that decision.
He had eaten the claw first—the most accessible part, easily abandoned if it showed signs of poison. Seeing no change, he had devoured the rest entirely. He had not even left the bones behind, smashing them into fragments and swallowing the dust. He could not quite understand now why he had gone so mad about eating every last piece of it.
He had not expected to faint the moment he finished.
He had not expected to wake up with fire burning through every vein in his body.
He had not expected—when the fire finally passed—to find that he could reshape his right palm into a golden fox claw at will.
He exhaled. ’In this damned world, you either eat, or you get eaten.’
He made his decision in the same breath. He straightened, fixed his gaze on the direction of the Xiao household, forced the claw back into a human hand, and dashed forward.
For the first time in years, he felt something that resembled hope.
On the street behind him, a young woman in tattered robes watched him go. Beside her, a middle-aged man wearing nothing above the waist shook his head.
"Don’t worry about him. The world will hit him soon enough, and he’ll end up just like the rest of us—a broken puppet."
A few nearby nodded with the quiet, weary agreement of people who had given up expecting anything else. Even the extraordinary golden light blazing above the skyline had not stirred them. That was how thoroughly life had ground them down.
---
On the other side of the invisible boundary, Lei Cheng and Hua Mingyue stepped into the domain.
The world transformed. The moment he fully placed his second leg through, an insane pressure bore down on him—pressing him toward his knees.
Green energy surged around his body and pushed back against the force. He straightened, panting.
’So this is a Bizarre Domain.’ He noted, clicking his tongue. ’Any ordinary person would definitely die the moment they step in.’
Without his Life Intent, he doubted he could have survived the pressure within the domain.
Hua Mingyue stood beside him, entirely carefree.
For a moment, he wondered just when he would reach her level of strength.
Then he checked his surroundings.
They were standing in a forest—deep, ancient, the kind that felt like it had existed before the city around it was ever built. Enormous trees rose in every direction, their trunks wider than a man’s arm-span, their roots pushing up through the earth in thick ridges. Boulders of various sizes were scattered between them, half-buried in undergrowth.
Not a single bird sang. Not a single insect moved. The forest felt unnaturally silent.
"There isn’t any life here?" he muttered, scanning the forest.
Hua Mingyue turned to him, "This is a newly formed domain. That fox has yet to capture any life."
Lei Cheng fell silent.
Directly ahead, he spotted a cave carved into a large rock formation. A title had been written above its entrance.
Nie Clan Head.
His grin spread wide and slow. "Clan Head—is it? Xiao Ming... Nie Hua—you really think highly of yourself."
He turned back toward the domain’s edge with curiosity—and simply stepped toward it. In one stride, half of his body crossed the boundary and was outside. He looked down at himself.
The half inside the domain was visible clearly—limbs, torso, the fabric of his robe. The half outside had disappeared completely. Where his arm and shoulder and leg should have been visible in the open courtyard, there was nothing—just empty air and cleared stone ground, as though that half of him had simply ceased to exist.
He clenched his left fist—still inside the domain. It responded normally. He flexed his left toes. They moved just fine. He could feel the whole of himself.
’It’s not visible to the human eye—and anything inside it is hidden from outside.’
He returned to the domain fully and nodded to himself.
"Did you confirm everything you needed?" Hua Mingyue asked, placing the edge of her fan lightly in front of her lips.
"Let’s go." He pointed to the cave.
They stepped inside.
A sound reached them before their eyes adjusted—a scream, raw and pain-filled.
They found Mo Ming.
His body was only partially his own anymore. Golden fur had spread across the lower half of him entirely. Below the waist, he was already a fox—nine tails rising behind him, fox legs replacing where human legs had been. Above the waist, the transformation was still in progress, the fur creeping upward in visible increments, his flesh cracking and reshaping with each passing moment.
Hua Mingyue raised her brows. "He actually survived to this point." She closed her fan with a quiet snap. "He gained nine tails—that is incredibly lucky. His potential is almost similar to the fox bound to him..." She trailed off, then turned to Lei Cheng. "If he survives, he will be formidable."
Even Hua Mingyue sounded faintly impressed.
"That’s a significant if," Lei Cheng said.
He raised his palm, clenched his fist, and released his Life Intent.
Bang!
The ground beneath Mo Ming shattered. A thick dark-green vine erupted from the break and coiled around Mo Ming’s body in an instant—binding tight, lifting him into the air. Mo Ming was too deep in his own agony to register what was happening, let alone resist.
"Life Explosion."
A massive flood of Life Intent poured directly into Mo Ming’s body through the vine.
Mo Ming screamed. "Stop—stop it!"
His body became a battlefield. Life Intent and Bizarre energy—the fox transformation driving through him—collided head-on and began tearing at each other. Green scars erupted across his body wherever the Life Intent struck. The golden energy surged to close them. The Life Intent surged back harder, breaking them open again. The cycle escalated, each side feeding the other’s intensity. Mo Ming’s flesh caught between them.
Crack!
His body burst apart entirely—fragments scattering in every direction across the cave floor.
Hua Mingyue narrowed her eyes and studied the remains. Then she noticed: one severed finger lying to the side, still glowing faintly with golden light, its tip slowly reshaping into a fox claw.
’He isn’t dead,’ she murmured quietly. ’If he survives, he will be a very strong ally to that fox girl. But the odds are perhaps one in a hundred.’
A delicate, bell-like laugh spread through the cave.
"Lei Cheng, you dandy... Under domain oppression, how much power can you wield now?"
The voice came from everywhere at once.
"Now suffer."
A golden energy fox claw materialized directly in front of Lei Cheng’s face—slashing toward him with full, concentrated force.
