Shards of the Broken Heart

“Who dares sully the prestige of my master?”

A giant lion-like beast emerged out of thin air and was now standing beside the throne. His aura was so strong that Alice was thrown out of the throne and sent flying in my direction.

I tried to catch her, but her momentum was so strong that she collided with me, and we tumbled down, rolling for dozens of meters before hitting the wall. The impact was so strong that many of our bones cracked.

My vision was blurry, and my ears were ringing; after some time, I focused my eyes to find out that the Luna sisters were desperately trying to defend against the beast. And I could see that they were incredibly overwhelmed with many injuries within the short span I was disoriented. I looked at Alice and found her unconscious.

And then my eyes shifted to the beast. From the tremendous aura radiating from it, I was sure our doom was inevitable if we didn’t run away from it. It was a mighty Spirit Beast!

When I was looking at the beast, I saw some flickering figures on the floor beside it. After a few moments, I came to a realisation. That was a teleportation formation. No matter how strong a Spirit Beast is, it could never emerge out of thin air with its cultivation.

That beast definitely came here through that teleportation formation. Seeing the formation, a single ray of hope expelled all the gloom inside me. I carried Alice and ran towards the beast with all my might, even though many of my bones were creaking.

Even within these few seconds when I was studying the inscriptions of the formation, the beast had cornered the Luna sisters to the opposite end of the hall and was going to deliver the final blow.

Even though we never interacted much, they were nice and were good friends with Alice. I liked their company and thus could not let them die, even if it would be the most rational decision to let them act as a decoy and leave through the transportation formation with Alice.

Thus, before the claw of the beast could hit them, I jumped and kicked the right eye of the beast. As I was approaching from the direction of its blind spot, the beast didn’t notice my attack.

The kick squashed his eyes, and blood started pouring out. His attacks missed the Luna sisters, and only then did they take notice of me and Alice in my arms. I landed by their side and told them to follow me.

The beast was momentarily distracted by his injury, and we took the chance to move to the teleportation formation. I handed Alice over to the sisters and injected my energy into the formation. Only when the formation was activated and functioning did the beast stop rampaging and take notice of us.

By the time he reached the formation, we were siphoned to a different place. All I heard at that time was an angry roar before my surroundings turned black.

When the light returned, I was in a hall similar to the one before. The only difference was that the hall was well-furnished. As the beast was on our tails, we didn’t have much time for sightseeing. We healed ourselves using some medicinal pills.

After feeding some to Alice and injecting some of my energy into her, she regained consciousness. I briefly explained to her about our current situation while exiting the hall. There were many rooms present in the palace, unlike the previous one.

I deduced that this was the original palace, with that being a dummy one made as its replica.

We entered some rooms and found nothing special in them. They only had furniture inside them suitable for anyone to live in. And thus left the remaining rooms be and exited the palace only to enter a herbal garden. The garden was full of many old and rare herbs.

And the most important thing was that there were spirit-grade herbs present among them. We were definitely overjoyed. We started harvesting these spirit-grade herbs and looked for the Tetraspine plant, which was the main objective of this exploration.

And we did find a patch of land dedicated explicitly to the Tetraspine plant. There were sufficient for both the Lunas and us. We harvested those herbs and left the garden without lingering any longer.

The beast could come any moment, and we would be only dimwits to die due to our greed. When we reached a gate at the other end of the herbal garden, we found a barrier separating the palace and the garden from the outside.

Even though no one knew what was outside, we could not remain inside waiting for the beast, so, taking a ‘leap of faith’, we exited the barrier. After leaving the barrier, we found ourselves in dark turquoise-colored water.

We were deep inside the ocean!

Due to cultivation, one can do strenuous exercise for a long time, even without breathing air. One could even sustain heavy pressure on his body.

We swam upwards for a few minutes. We externalised the internal energy and were able to swim to the water surface. After looking around, we found ourselves to be not so far away from the portal, from where we entered the Turquoise Realm.

We started running on the water using our respective movement techniques.

I felt an ominous feeling when we had covered three-quarters of the distance. After a few moments, a bloodthirsty aura swept over us and with a loud roar, a blazing beast emerged from the waters.

The water around the beast started boiling and turning into steam. One of its eyes was scarred with injury. As soon as it emerged, its eyes locked in our direction, and it started to charge towards us. The beast roared while spewing out flames in our direction.

“You puny humans! You marred my face. I will crush your bones and drink your blood!” *Roar*