One of the thirty-six lesser realms. The ship was divided into three decks: the lower deck was turned into a prison, the second deck was full of goods, and the upper deck was filled with residential cabins for the passengers.
As the ship was moving through the void for more than a month, a voice echoed through the ship. "Dear customers, we will be arriving shortly to the Xiān Jìng." As soon as everyone heard that, the atmosphere on the upper deck became much better, while at the same time, the atmosphere on the lower deck became much grimmer than before, as most of the people there knew what was going to happen.
Not long after, everyone on the upper floor watched as they came in sight of the lower realm. A few hours later, something happened. The constant shaking and creaking of the ship stopped. Soon, the ship was getting closer to the barrier of the lower realm. However, instead of slowing down, the ship collided with the barrier and was sucked inside, leaving behind only a much smaller ship with the crew, who were stealing the escape vessel.
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Xiān Jìng. Lesser realm. Outer parts of the realm.
A strange-looking creature, similar to a human but hunching down low like the grass, was slowly moving through the dense, strange jungle filled with different kinds of bizarre, colourful vegetation and even more bizarre creatures flying around. This strange creature looked only vaguely similar to a human; instead of a head, it had a strongly deformed mushroom combined with flowers and all sorts of other fungi.
This strange creature was also missing one hand, and instead of the other, it had long yellow tentacles spreading in front of it, moving away the giant leaves in its way. Its clothes were torn into pieces but were still neatly fixed on its body by a whole organism of fungi and other vegetation fused together. This bizarre thing was limping and moving in one direction until it stopped. As it stopped, all sorts of small insects, which were all strangely mutated, started fleeing in the direction it was going.
This happened because the ship, which had entered the inner realm, started to move toward the surface, colliding with the giant trees as it crashed into the upper layer of the forest. This didn't stop the ship, as the upper deck was only a few meters below the floor of the forest.
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Cultivators who saw this coming left the ship before the crash, but a few of the cultivators, who were recruited without complete knowledge of the place, moved the ship forward, and the rest dispersed in their own directions.
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It took some time for the cultivators from the lower deck—at least those who survived the crash—to get out of the ship, but not many survived.
"What the fuck just happened?"
"Where is the captain? We were told that they would wait for us and meet after a year."
Many of the cultivators didn't understand what was happening or why the ship crashed, but without any explanation from the crew, they could only guess. Most of the prisoners, who knew exactly what was happening, set off on their journey, leaving only a few who stayed around the ship, while a few quickly started to rob the supplies from the wreckage.
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Few groups were quickly formed, as cultivators were already acquainted with each other, and also most of the cultivators present knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In the midst of the chaos, the strange creature wandering nearby also moved to the ship and met them.
Cultivators from the ship didn't register the strange creature from far away, but as it got closer, most of them, after such an incident, quickly moved to be ready for the creature.
"What the fuck are you!" shouted one of the cultivators as he saw the creature.
This strange thing moved closer to them—there were less than fifty cultivators—and before they started to fight with it, it spoke with a strange voice filled by many other voices.
"Did you come here to bring us food?"
The voice came out from somewhere on the creature. Seeing something that strange for the first time, they didn't know what to say to something as bizarre as that, and one of the cultivators only pointed to the stack of things left behind outside of the ship.
The creature quickly moved to the pile of goods and started to ravage through it with its tentacles. The other parts of its body didn't wait for anything; from the strange creature fell more and more bugs, tentacles, and other disgusting things which started to devour any food left in the pile along with other creatures that had already started emerging from under the pile.
It took it a while to eat, and as it got away from the pile, the creature suddenly looked like it had shed half of its mass. It quickly limped away from the pile, which had already turned into another battlefield filled with stench as smaller creatures started to get devoured by each other, their blood spilling everywhere.
Cultivators who saw that didn't believe their eyes, but soon they didn't even want to look, as some of the insects which were killed—or killed others—started to decompose themselves and also the things they were on. Everything they just saw was once again interrupted by the voice of the creature, which spoke again.
"We need to go back home."
The voice was completely different from before, and as the creature had shed quite a lot of burden, it started to move much faster than before. The others, after a bit of waiting, also followed behind. Murmuring among themselves and also keeping some distance, the creature started to mutter something incomprehensible and slowly went deeper into the jungle.
It took them more than an hour as they started to move, but none knew where they were going or if they were going in the right direction. What they clearly found out was that the whole jungle looked strange, and the more they used their Spirit Sense to explore or tried to use natural energy, the more they were attacked by everything around, which cost a few of them their lives. The whole group of cultivators was quickly reduced from more than fifty into thirty, not to mention the constant stream of insects and other plants which they encountered.