"As I peered into the darkest of darkness, a void of no light, where no mere mortal or weak immortal ever dared to look, i saw eternal emptiness. Knowledge and wisdom were the two things standing between me and the void." --- Dao of the universe.
He dreamt of place of creation which was as beautiful as any heavenly palaciums. It was made of beautiful crystal gems and had a beautiful garden with lovely fruit trees. The fruit tress of different kind lined the palacium garden with a river of heavenly elixir, rich in sweetness, flowing through it. High up on the trees were lovely birds singing beautiful songs.
The scenery was a delightful one to watch and experience. And he was there, living the dream to the full. He was relaxing by the river, eating heavenly fruits, drinking heavenly elixir and listening to the birds sing making his mind peaceful and calm. A perfect mood. Certainly, he was having a wonderful time enjoying the place.
Then, he realized that he was alone in this place.
Where was everyone? How did he even get here in the first place? These things couldn't be right. The more he thought about it, the more he realized something must be wrong with the place. The solemn sense of danger with being the only one, or last one in a seemingly beautiful world.
His mind was quickly processing all those developments when everything suddenly changed.
Pure black tendrils of powerfully dangerous energy started to crawl all over the world turning it into a pit of terrible darkness. Remembering he was a light affiliate, he quickly materialised a orb of light energy. The darkness was extremely strong, but he had enough Chi to maintain the light energy for the time being. The orb was like a faint candle light in the sphere of darkness, but he kept the radiance going.
Then, he tried to move but couldn't raise his legs. The weight of the black tendrils was weighing him down heavily.
Is this a dream?
Just as he was having difficulty in his thoughts, a dark, treble voice boomed out of the darkness.
"Child, we know who you are. Nothing can save you."
More than a thousand large shining black eyes appeared out of the darkness.
Jufeng woke up with a jolt from his sleep. What kind of dreams was that? The black tendrils resembled the ones containing the atramental energy which attacked them at the lunar plains. Maybe, with a little difference? He couldn't say in totality. But the similarity was of high significance. He had no dealings with the dreams and illusions cultivator for them to infest his dreams with that. Possibly, just a dream. What we fear, sometimes, appear in our dreams. He wouldn't dwell on it for what it was. He remembered the words of his uncle, titan lord Primus that he needed to be much more stronger and powerful to be able to live without that kind of fear.
The feeling of water as he splashed it on his face was refreshingly soothing. And it had a little calming effect on his mind. As he was putting on his robe, he heard a knock on the door to his cave. He quickly fastened his robe and opened the door to find a disciple smiling at him.
"Greetings, junior brother Ju Feng. I'm Yan Zhihao. First disciple of associate master Wu Bingwen."
Yan Zhihao gave a slightly cupped hand gesture.
"I greet you senior brother Yan."
Ju Feng also extended a cupped hand forward, with a slight bow.
"I welcome you to the Lightning Reach. That's the name of our house by the way."
Yan Zhihao beamed before continuing.
"If you are ready, please let me know."
"I'm ready, senior brother Zhihao."
"Hm. Kindly follow then."
Yan Zhihao led Jufeng to the faction hall where other fifty inner disciples were waiting. In the flying stars sect, all the section disciples under a master would train together. All the core disciples were directly under the house masters, while the inner disciples would be with the associate masters. The top disciples of each section would help in training the new disciples. The strength of a faction was the strength of the sect as a whole. Yan Zhihao quickly introduced them to Jufeng and vise-versa.
Fifty inner disciples of lightning. That was much more than his home world's sect. The thought of this being one of the smallest sect in this world was really hard to believe. How many disciples would the biggest sect have? Frightening.
Couple of minutes later, mastee Zhou Lin and associate master Wu Bingwen, entered the hall and slowly walked to the front of the hall facing the disciples.They were wearing pristine white robes laced with gold threads.
"Good morning, master Zhou."
"Good morning, master Wu."
They all chorused at once.
"Hm."
Master Zhou Lin answered while associate master Wu Bingwen nodded in acknowledgement. The inner disciples were apprehensively watching. They had been training very hard for the upcoming selection into the core section of the faction where they would be directly under master Zhou Lin. They didn't want to disappoint their associate master, Wu Bingwen, despite knowing only a few would be selected.
The masters could understand their plight and deeply appreciated it. A true disciple was the one who put everything into practice, not because of anxiousness of success, but because of apprehension of failure. They commended that in them.
While still looking at them, master Zhou Lin's mind strayed to the source of their predicament.
Ozoros, the transient dominion.
On every plane, there were dominions of different sizes. It was inside these dominions that artifacts of different levels of power were hidden. One of these dominions was Ozoros, the transient dominion. A place located on the same planet, Charat. It was rumored to be a place where a powerful artifact was hidden, a divine or luminous treasure at the least.
There were two types of dominions. The wake dominions and the fallen dominions.
The wake dominions still had masters, and their masters could be divine beasts, ancient sacred beasts, primordial titans or even mutated demigods.
While the fallen dominions were ancient ruins. Once great and powerful dominions, but had become tombs and catacombs.
These two domininions were of the same regulations when it involved cultivators' entrace into their premises. There were some that had no restrictions, all cultivators could enter. There were some that only golden core cultivators and above could enter. Yet, there were some ruins which golden cores and above couldn't enter. Only Zhuji level cultivators and below could enter.
But there was a great issue with the third type of dominions. Those ruins were too powerful and dangerous for anyone below golden core level, yet they were the only that could enter them.
That was where a peak stage nascent soul or an hegemon came in.
After locating the area of a transient dominion, the hegemon or a peak stage nascent soul would have to open, and hold a rift for the premiers to enter. After the premiers were inside, they would have to locate the true entrance and activate at least two heavenly seals, enabling the hegemon or peakstage nascent soul to enter the dominion for a period of time.
But the difference with the emperor of Charat?
The supreme sovereign was in possession of five heavenly seals which could steadily hold the rift opened for a longer period of time before disintegrating.