The vast expanse of the lower world stretched out beneath the rocky precipice, completely undisturbed.

The winds swept over the distant valleys in a slow, rhythmic cycle, and the faraway spires of the beast capital stood firmly against the horizon, completely untouched by any sudden disaster.

The world was entirely intact, operating exactly as it always had.

Yet, as Wei Xiang stood frozen on the high peak, a suffocating weight settled deep inside his chest.

He couldn’t sense Lin Wan’s familiar presence anymore.

A profound, empty silence met his scanning senses, a dead zone where her vibrant energy should have been.

He kept his eyes shut tight, pushing his consciousness further, forcing his spiritual sea to expand across the eastern borders, past the capital, and into the deepest hidden sanctuaries of the continent.

He searched for the sharp, pristine frequency of her soul—the one unique marker that had remained burned into his memory since the day she saved his life on that isolated mountain cliff.

He found absolutely nothing. There was no lingering trace of her scent in the wind, no residual ripple of her unique spatial aura, and not even a faint echo of her life force left within the entire boundary of this realm. It was as if she had been systematically erased from the very fabric of the land.

Wei Xiang’s golden eyes snapped open, a look of utter disbelief and mounting frustration fracturing his usually calm, lethal expression.

He turned his head sharply from left to right, his gaze piercing through the heavy layers of low-hanging clouds, but the tracking arrays inherent to his lineage remained completely dark, yielding no coordinates, no paths, and no answers.

The sheer irony of the silence struck him like a physical blow. He had spent months enduring the brutal, crushing environment of the Upper Realm, deliberately subjecting his body to agonizing cultivation techniques that would have shattered an ordinary beastman’s core.

He had climbed the freezing, isolated ridges of the northern avian territories, forcing his spiritual pathways to crack and reform under the pressure of the high heavens, all driven by a single, unyielding conviction.

He had truly believed that once he finally achieved this level of strength—once his internal core evolved to its absolute peak—he would be powerful enough to protect her from the high clans and locate her anywhere in the universe with a single thought.

So why can’t he sense her presence at all?

A wave of bitter, raw frustration rushed through his chest, his blood boiling against the sudden dead end.

His fists tightened automatically, his long, sharp nails digging so deeply into his palms that drops of dark crimson blood began to bead against his skin.

The steel-grey plumage on his back flared outward, the metallic feathers rustling with a lethal, aggressive sharpness that mirrored the turbulent storm brewing in his mind.

With a low growl, he slammed the edge of his right wing against the rocky cliffside. The steel-like feathers cut through the solid stone like a array of heavy blades, instantly shattering a towering boulder into a dozen jagged fragments that tumbled loudly into the deep, misty abyss below.

"You aren’t in the lower realm anymore, Wanwan..." he whispered fiercely into the wind, his jaw clenching so hard that a sharp, audible click echoed through the quiet clearing.

He stared down at the peaceful valley layout beneath him, his golden eyes burning with a mixture of possessive desperation and fierce determination.

The absolute lack of her presence meant his timeline was completely off. The plans he had meticulously constructed while climbing the ranks of the Upper Realm were now entirely useless.

"Where could you have gone?" he growled, his voice dropping into a rough, raspy register that was laced with deep, territorial agony. "Was I too late? Did I suffer through all that growth just to miss your path entirely?"

He forced himself to take a slow, deep breath, reigning in the chaotic spike of his spiritual energy before it could trigger a localized storm. He had to think logically.

If Lin Wan had been forcefully captured or dragged away by the feline patriarch, the spatial pathways connecting this lower world to the grand palaces would have retained a violent, ruptured energy signature.

The high clans were arrogant; they never cleaned up their tracks when taking what they believed belonged to them.

But there were no signs of a struggle, and no celestial tear lingered in the sky. The air here was clear of high-clan magic. This meant she hadn’t been taken against her will.

She had moved on her own terms, utilizing a power structure that completely bypassed the standard laws of the lower world to ascend to a place where his current lower-realm tracking could no longer reach her.

The realization settled into his mind with a heavy, definitive click. There was only one destination a female of her extraordinary caliber and dangerous secrets would choose to retreat to.

The Middle Realm. The brutal, high-stakes continent where the true cultivation rules began, and where the barriers of the lower worlds could no longer restrain a rising power.

Wei Xiang’s gaze hardened into solid, unyielding iron, the bitter frustration in his chest instantly burning away into a dark, obsessive resolve.

He adjusted his stance on the shattered edge of the cliff, his steel-grey wings expanding to their full, formidable span once more.

The metallic feathers caught the dim light of the setting sun, rustling with a deadly, piercing sharpness that sliced through the passing wind currents.

"No, I’ll definitely find you," he whispered fiercely, his voice a low, immutable vow that seemed to anchor itself deep into the ancient stone beneath his feet. "Whether dead or alive... I will track your scent across every single continent in the universe, Wanwan. No master, no king, and no realm will ever keep you hidden from me again."

With a sudden, powerful snap of his wings, Wei Xiang launched himself off the high rock.

A sharp, thunderous explosion of wind pressure rocked the cliffside as his body blurred into a streak of deep grey light, completely disappearing from the lower world’s sky as he plunged directly toward the hidden crossing point of the middle continent.

The spatial corridor leading from the lower depths to the borders of the Middle Realm was a turbulent sea of unfiltered elemental energy.

Unlike the hidden node he had used to descend from the Upper Realm, this transit pathway was far wider, used by migrating rogue cultivators and powerful beast tribes alike.

Wei Xiang cut through the grey, swirling vortex with absolute precision. His newly evolved core rotated rapidly within his chest, emitting a steady stream of pure, dense spiritual force that formed a protective, blade-like barrier around his frame.

The chaotic currents of the void slapped against his steel-grey wings, but they couldn’t slow his descent by even a fraction of a second.

His golden eyes remained fixed entirely on the shifting light at the end of the tunnel.

As he drew closer to the exit, the air began to change.

The thin, fragile spiritual layout of the lower realm was completely replaced by a heavy, dense, and vibrant pressure. It was an environment rich with primal elements—a place where the earth was sturdier, the air was thicker, and the natural laws were designed to sustain true power.

With a final, sharp sweep of his wings, Wei Xiang broke through the spatial barrier, emerging into the sky of a completely new world.

He hovered high in the air, his wings beating rhythmically against the dense atmosphere as he surveyed the landscape below.

Before him stretched a spectacular, endless expanse of towering mountain ridges, their peaks cutting into the clouds like jagged teeth.

Deep, ancient forests of emerald and gold covered the valleys, and the ambient spiritual energy was so thick it visibly drifted through the trees like silver mist.

This was the frontier of the Middle Realm.

Wei Xiang touched down silently on the thick branch of an ancient cedar tree, his wings folding tightly against his back as he pulled his heavy black hood over his face once more.

The hunt was far from over, but as he looked out across the vast, competitive continent, a cold, predatory smile touched his lips. He was closer now.

He could feel it in his blood. Every instinct in his avian lineage told him that beneath this grander sky, the paths of the world would eventually force them together again. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

" WanWan you can’t escape from me. I won’t let you."

Meanwhile, on a sprawling, elevated plateau thousands of miles away across the frontier of the Middle Realm, the morning sun broke through heavy, golden clouds, bathing the landscape in an intensely rich light.

The air here was remarkably crisp, so dense with spiritual energy that every breath felt like a pure, clean draft of mountain water.

For the first time since their birth, the three triplets, Xiao Chen, Xiao Rui, and Xiao Jue—were finally out in the open.