Chapter 1074: Friend or Foe?

Darkness. Boundless, heavy, as if even time had solidified.

Han Wuxian felt like a stone cast into an eternal glacier, his consciousness sinking into a cold void, unable to feel his body, unable to feel pain, only an everlasting, suffocating deathly silence.

He could not tell how long had passed—perhaps an instant, perhaps ten thousand years.

A faint thread of warmth, like the first ray of sun entering the glacier, pierced the oppressive darkness.

Immediately followed by a sense of weight! A tangible heaviness, as if enveloped by something warm and dense. No longer the vacuum's weightlessness, but…

the feeling of having one's feet firmly on the ground?

And… sound? Not the vacuum's deathly silence, but… wind? A howling mountain wind carrying a familiar chill?

Han Wuxian's lingering consciousness was yanked back to reality by this sudden perception! His heavy eyelids felt glued, and he strained with all his might to painstakingly pry them open.

His blurred vision slowly focused.

The first thing that filled his view was… the sky? No longer the dead, cold void of deep space, but a familiar lead‑gray firmament tinged with the dampness characteristic of the South Region.

Heavy clouds hung low, pressing down so that breathing became difficult, while the biting mountain wind swirled dead leaves and fine snowflakes, howling as it swept by.

His gaze shifted downward.

He realized he was lying at the bottom of a massive impact crater, several zhang deep. The crater walls were the familiar, bluish‑gray patterned stones of Nan Ting Mountain Region! Around the crater were sparse, dead trees bearing icicles, and farther away, the familiar undulating mountain silhouettes, thinly blanketed in snow.

Nan Ting Mountain Region?!

The massive impact jolted Han Wuxian's lingering consciousness awake! He had actually… returned to the Nan Ting Mountain Region?!

He tried to sit up abruptly, but the searing pain and weakness radiating from his body darkened his vision, sending him crashing back down. Only then did he notice his condition.

His body was still riddled with cracks, golden blood dried on his skin in a horrifying sight. His power was utterly depleted, even moving a single finger was exceedingly difficult. Yet strangely, his surface was covered with a layer of… Dark Gold Material, like solidified lava!

The material was about half an inch thick, clinging to his skin, displaying a dark‑gold sheen that felt warm and jade‑like yet possessed the dense heft of stone. It was not armor; it resembled a second skin that had seeped from his body and solidified. Its surface was etched with extremely fine, arcane natural patterns, like the marks of ancient stars and the veins of the earth's mountains.

It was this strange Dark Gold Material that blocked the biting mountain wind and bone‑chilling cold, and more crucially, it seemed to slowly, spontaneously draw in the thin ambient Earth's Will, converting it into a faint yet exceedingly pure energy that nurtured his body on the brink of collapse. With each breath, the material pulsed gently, like the earth's amniotic membrane, bringing a hint of life‑giving warmth.

"Star core source material… the essence of the fragment core…" Han Wuxian suddenly understood. In the terrifying storm that detonated the star core source material and threatened to annihilate everything, the most central, most essential part of the fragment—containing the primal substance of ancient stars and the Earth's Will—seemed to possess a spirit, actively latching onto and protecting the detonator, and, amid the raging spatial turbulence, followed some unseen connection that brought him back to the mountain region that gave him life!

Surviving the calamity! A true miraculous survival!

Ecstatic joy surged through him like magma, but was instantly suppressed by deeper worry. Xiao Ran! He had been pursued by the Star Core Guard, vanished into the depths of spatial turbulence, his fate unknown! And the Star Core Guard—those three lunatics—seemed also grievously wounded in the fragment's explosion, though not necessarily fallen! Their cold, greedy gazes were etched into Han Wuxian's soul like a brand!

"Must… recover…" Han Wuxian's crimson‑gold eyes burned with urgent flame. He struggled, trying to summon a sliver of power, but his interior was empty; the energy supplied by the Dark Gold Material was only enough to sustain his most basic vital signs, utterly insufficient for action or restoration.

He laboriously turned his head, scanning the surroundings. The crater was evidently formed when the star core source material enveloped him during his spatial transit and slammed him down here. Scattered at the crater's base were charred twigs and broken stones. His gaze suddenly hardened!

Along the crater wall near his point of impact lay a solitary object—a storage pouch he habitually carried, sewn from the hide of an exceptionally resilient demon beast! Its material was unique, and having been instinctively clutched to his chest during the explosion, it miraculously survived the horrific shock.

Han Wuxian felt a spark of hope. He mustered all his strength, moving like a dying reptile, inch by inch toward the pouch. Each shift tugged at his wounds, excruciating pain nearly causing him to faint. The few feet separating him felt like a journey to the horizon.

Finally, his crack‑riddled, dried‑blood‑stained fingers touched the cold leather pouch.

A faint divine thought probed inside.

The interior space was small, and few items remained: several jade vials of elixirs that had shattered in the blast and dried up; a few fragments of formation plates whose spiritual light had dimmed; and… an ancient, unadorned token, neither gold nor jade, engraved with the characters "Fa Tian."

"Fa Tian Sect?" Han Wuxian asked, a hint of doubt in his voice.

The Fa Tian Sect is said to be the saintly academy of the South, and the sages of the South are reputed to be the predecessors of the Fa Tian Sect. Yet he had experienced everything in the Dongxing Sea Region and that mysterious starry sky…

How could this be related to the Fa Tian Sect?

"And I have no idea what happened to Xiao Ran, but since he survived a near‑death, I reckon his skill isn't so easily lost," Han Wuxian thought, his intuition suggesting that some information might be gleaned from Xiao Ran, though he'd never had the chance.

At that moment

Wooo!

A deep, desolate, horn‑like strange wind howl rose from the mountains beyond the crater. The sound was not natural; it seemed to contain some… extremely faint yet warning‑laden spiritual energy fluctuation?

A warning surged in Han Wuxian's heart! This wind… is the special spirit‑howl emitted when the outer defensive formation of the Nan Ting Mountain Region is triggered! Though exceedingly faint, as if the formation itself had been severely weakened, he would never mistake that sound!

Someone's coming? Friend or foe?!

He instantly held his breath, withdrawing all qi, like a lifeless dark‑gold rock at the crater's bottom.