once the group came out of the spaceship, aster sent it back to the mind space, since there was a possibility that anything rune-related would experience problems due to the spatial distortions becoming active, then it was better to not leave the spaceship out, just in case.

    the moment they stepped out of the spaceship, aster and the others couldn''t help but look at the sky, the temporary city was settled in the remains of a planet that was half destroyed a long time ago.

    amusingly enough, the atmosphere of this planet was intact... before the temporary city was stablished, apparently those lovely godmothers of his, had a duel with a pair of representatives from the stall and the opposing faction within the fey family, which ended destroying the atmosphere.

    and now it was similar to the place where aster took felicia and alexandra to their date, an incomplete atmosphere that though still allowed people below the transcending realms to survive, prevented anyone that wasn''t a void manifestation or above to absorb spirit energy from the atmosphere, unless one wanted to die given the fierce nature of the spirit energy that lingered within outer space, that is.

    ''seriously, those two really resemble mom'', thought aster, according to valentina, they just exchanged one move with their opponents; while restraining their powers at the genesis manifestation realm and yet the result was catastrophic as the pieces of nearby shattered dead celestial bodies, suggested.

    anyway, back to the sky, which used to be a normal starry sky outside of the temporary city, now there were countless "blurs" that distorted said starry sky.

    "there really are too many of them, darling", said lilia while hugging aster from behind, even after spreading her spirit sense, she had a hard time counting the ones within the vicinity.

    "this place has a high concentration of distortions but at least they are limited to the vicinity, there should be one or two appearing randomly all over the four heavenly quadrants, otherwise long-distance communications wouldn''t be out", added eris, which made aster gaze at her.

    "have you three seen something like this before?", he asked, referring to mylene, eris and of course the ligress girl mira.

    "mm, no, not at this scale at least, some powerful secret realms can cause spatial distortions when they appear, but i haven''t heard about one that could result in a situation like this", said mylene while eris and mira simply shook their heads.

    secret realms can be quite spacious yes, but not to the point of hiding a whole mortal plane inside of them, though the three young misses from divine firmaments present within the family, couldn''t deepen too much into it because of the restrictions, they could tell aster that.

    also, aster could more or less guess so, since the silicon valley which was a real secret realm unlike the place at zartia that led to the planet where sarina and kana lived, use to belong to a powerful force in a divine firmament and it wasn''t even as big as a planet, of course it had been damaged and only the central part remained but even at its prime, at most it would occupy as much space as a star cluster.

    aster nodded in response; he looked around with his dragon eyes to then say.

    "for the time being, let''s go to the north side of the city", no one questioned aster''s decision so the group moved as a whole thanks to eris using her spirit energy to help everyone fly.

    aster didn''t want to use any spatial transportation mean, out of precaution, on the way he could see that all the locals and stores were either closed or in the process to cease their activities.

    for a good reason, though the fey were the absolute owners of the main spatial distortion which practically occupied all the space above the temporary city, the smaller distortions weren''t included in that.

    anyone could approach those, of course this agreement wasn''t out of kindness, it was a concession made by the ruler families to appease the other high tier forces and also locals that happened to be close to where the most notorious distortions appeared, hence why even second tier forces like the marius and teles families came here.

    in other words, while the ruler families hogged the meat for themselves, they still had to give some soup to the others, resulting in the massive camps that surrounded the temporary city right now, in fact the myriad occupation sect was partially like that.

    the core disciples that weren''t at the top as well as the inner disciples that were selected to participate, were going to be stationed outside of the temporary city while an elder would be left with each group to surveil them, that''s the instructions that dahlia who is top inner disciple from the green lotus faction received.

    she was literally the sole inner disciple that arrived previously, since she travelled with aster, that being said, she could ignore those instructions and remain with aster''s group and so she did, her aunt helena stayed as well.

    the group soon arrived at the destination pointed at by aster, they were still within the barrier of the temporary city, but at the border just a few meters away from the outside.

    "remember not to move until i say so", said aster, to which everyone nodded, aster might not be the strongest in the group, but everyone knew that his eyes were special, have been led by him to victory before, or more importantly trusted him, well there was lize who knew nothing and couldn''t be said to trust aster with her life, but she was the one who wanted to tag along, so she didn''t question the will of the group.

    "good morning, it seems that we keep getting into situations that don''t allow us to have a proper talk", a fresh and relaxed voice came from the left, drawing aster''s attention, it was cayden, the guy who slapped the face of the guys from the fey family guys earlier at the auction.

    the young saber from the wanderer sect was accompanied by his group, which consisted in other four big frame guys and one girl who was floating next to cayden, besides those six there was a middle-aged couple, the woman was a peak law integration realm cultivator, as for the man, he was actually a half step heavenly realm one.

    one must know that there are three different kind of people who become half step heavenly realm cultivators, there are those who end up there after failing to ascend to the heavenly realms and are likely going to be trapped in that point for the rest of their lives, a group mostly composed by old cultivators who had used all their potential.

    then there is the group of talented people who decide to experience the heavenly realms before entering them, to have a solid foundation and also ease up the breaking through process later on.

    and lastly, the group that is "forced" to enter the half step heavenly realm, which consists in vassals, servants and subordinates of high ranked families and forces, since half step heavenly cultivators can go to middle ranked stellar systems, they are important assets for those who reign from the high ranked ones, acting as envoys, representatives or bodyguards of important descendants.

    in this case, the middle-aged man who was protecting cayden belonged to the second category, judging by the slight resemblance between himself and cayden, he should be a distant relative from a secondary branch, the guy looked like an honest and kind uncle to be exact.

    "we can always talk after everything is over, or perhaps we might meet each other during the fun part", said aster as he returned the greet, making cayden laugh.

    "it''s starting", with two words, aster used the light protection of the paragon body to cover everyone.

    up in the sky the small distortions became clearer and then a continuous chain of small exploding sounds could be heard, drawing the attention of all the presents who stopped any kind of activity, included fighting to look at the sky.

    "finally, come, we''ll get there before anyone...", a random rogue cultivator who was the closest to one of the distortions rushed towards it while shouting to his team members, only for his voice to be stopped midway, the reason... the upper half of his body had disappeared.

    strangely enough there was no explosion nor any impact, as if whatever that had killed that sea of knowledge realm guy had disappeared into thin air.

    "w-what was that!".

    "everyone run... aghhh!".

    a couple of rogue cultivator''s screams returned everyone to the real world, the second guy just lost his right arm and that signaled the start of the chaos.

    while some turned around in a try to rush back to the temporary city, every group that had at least a void manipulation realm cultivator, instead created barriers with spirit energy while stopping their movements.

    "aghhh!".

    "no, spare me!".

    those who decided to run, watched with horror how some randomly lost limbs or even their heads, dying on the spot, it wasn''t until one of the few void manipulation realm rogue cultivators, got hit that some light shone upon those poor bastards.

    "they are broken space fragments, don''t panic, form groups and cooperate to create barriers, the more you move the higher the chance of being hit!", shouted the void manipulation cultivator.

    while those guys were drowning in panic not knowing there would the attack come, aster could perfectly see the strange shards that were coming out of the distortions, they didn''t fall in the same direction of the distortion, instead the moment they came out they disappeared and randomly rained down.

    the most interesting part, is that while those shards pierced holes through any living being they touched, when landing on the ground or any other unanimated object, they would simply sink into it without causing any damage.

    ''the number of shards doesn''t match with the distortions, they are coming from other places and being sent to other places as well'', thought aster.

    in case you wonder, the barrier of the temporary city was holding out for the time being, it was being hit by those shards non-stop, so aster expected it to fail within the next minute, but it had fulfilled its purpose.

    anyone who was within the barrier of the city, had the time to prepare for the impact of those shards, unlike those outside who lost an arm or a leg before reacting.

    the moment the barrier failed, a few shards made their way towards aster and the others, but before reaching twenty meters around them, they bounced and landed on the nearby ground, courtesy of a certain dragon mother whose eyes were glowing in a pretty red light.

    the deathly rain lasted nearly twenty minutes, forcing the protectors of each group to grit their teeth and pour more spirit energy into their barriers, some of the weaker void manipulation cultivators had no choice but to reduce the size of their barrier, sacrificing a team member or two in order to protect themselves.

    being left out of a barrier was a death sentence, the trajectory of the shards was completely random, so there was a chance to not be hit on the head right away, however the shards were raining all over the place so even if they moved at high speed, they couldn''t leave the affected area.

    after a whole twenty minutes the disaster finally stopped, revealing the many spirit energy barriers that were still standing with some cracks here and there, as well as some random body parts which were spread here and there, that was everything which was left from those abandoned guys.

    not even a second had passed, before another problem started, first the lights of the temporary city went out and then the other formations, including the one that created an artificial atmosphere, started failing one after another.

    in the middle of that, a dazzling golden light at the northern border of the temporary city, stood out like a sore thumb, making the poor bastards who had a near death experience, grit their teeth in anger.

    now imagine how they felt when a new batch of spaceships could be seen arriving from afar, though they were a mix from different models of spaceships, more than half belonged to the myriad occupation sect.

    speaking of which, the ones from the sect stopped moving at a certain distance, while the others couldn''t stop in time, giving way to the third disastrous event on today''s menu.

    "booom!", a bunch of spaceships suddenly fell from the sky after the formations that kept them floating, failed.

    "hahaha, congratulations on arriving before us!", as if to rub salt on the wound, william''s mocking voice echoed through the whole area, at least until he felt valentina and mikaela''s death glare from afar.

    he created a platform with his spirit energy, allowing the disciples in the spaceships from the sect to disembark, without the spaceships being affected by whatever was causing the disruption in the formations.

    there weren''t that many disciples anyway, the top hundred both from the core and inner heavenly ranks, the others who only came to observe, stayed in the spaceships for security.