I transmigrated to a chaotic world and became the sole player.

"Buzz—!!!"

The distorted, buzzing sound of space suddenly rose to a piercing, ear-piercing extreme! The folded void ahead abruptly collapsed inward, forming an irregular, pitch-black vortex about ten feet in diameter! At the vortex's edge, countless tiny spatial cracks shot out like lightning, emanating a destructive aura, and a powerful, chaotic suction force emanated from the vortex's depths, tearing apart everything around it!

"Now!" A fierce glint flashed in Lu Zhao's eyes, and he no longer hesitated. With a powerful leap, his figure, like a streak of gray-black light, defied the terrifying spatial tearing force and plunged headlong into the dark spatial vortex!

"boom!"

The moment his body entered the vortex, an indescribable tearing and crushing sensation descended once more! Compared to being passively swept in last time, this time his perception was much clearer. All around him was an endless, bizarre, chaotic mix of colors and fragmented scenes; the concepts of time and space completely failed here. Invisible spatial turbulence, like the sharpest blades, relentlessly sliced ​​and impacted his protective aura and physical body.

Lu Zhao pushed his "Silent Demon Dragon" Dao Foundation to its limit, forming a thick, constantly rotating shield of gray-black spiritual energy around his body. Its "devouring" property spontaneously absorbed and dissolved some of the incoming spatial turbulence energy. Simultaneously, his physical body, refined through the True Dragon Body Forging Technique and multiple temperings, was already incredibly strong, barely able to withstand this level of tearing.

But the danger doesn't only come from spatial turbulence.

Within the chaotic passage, strange shadows or orbs of light, radiating a dangerous aura, would occasionally flit by. Some were filled with an aura of destruction, while others carried unsettling fluctuations of life. Lu Zhao carefully avoided these things, relying on his powerful divine sense and intuition for danger to navigate the chaotic passage with difficulty.

His goal was that faint glimmer of light ahead, so different from the "Nine Netherworlds," carrying the vitality and aura of the "present world." It was the possible exit from the passage that "Jin" had mentioned, and it was his only direction.

I don't know how much time passed—it could have been a moment, or it could have been a long, agonizing ordeal. The light ahead grew brighter and clearer. At the same time, the passage became increasingly unstable, violently jolting and twisting, as if it might collapse at any moment.

"We're about to leave!" Lu Zhao's spirits lifted, but he also became more vigilant. The moment of exit is often the most dangerous.

"Boom!"

A deafening roar, as if shattering an invisible barrier, shattered the chaotic colors before them. In their place came blinding light and… howling winds!

"Whoosh—Bang!"

Lu Zhao's body, like a cannonball, was "spit out" from a dark crack that suddenly opened and quickly closed in the air, tracing an arc before crashing heavily to the ground, kicking up a cloud of yellow sand.

"Pfft!" Even with the protective aura and his powerful physique cushioning the impact, the collision still caused Lu Zhao's blood to surge and his internal organs to tremble, forcing him to cough up a small mouthful of blood. However, this injury was nothing to him now.

He quickly got up, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and cautiously surveyed his surroundings.

Above, the sky was a hazy gray, seemingly never-ending, with a dim sun hanging listlessly on the horizon. Below, stretched an endless, undulating Gobi Desert, covered with rough sand and scattered remnants of strange plants, withered and dead for who knows how long. A howling wind swept through, whipping up clouds of yellow sand that stung the face, and the air was thick with a dry, desolate scent, even carrying a faint smell of blood.

This was definitely not Yunmengze, nor was it any place in the Tiannan Region that he was familiar with!

"Where...is this?" Lu Zhao frowned, his divine sense spreading outwards like a tidal wave. His powerful divine sense, typical of a mid-Foundation Establishment cultivator, instantly covered an area of ​​several miles. However, the information that returned revealed only a vast Gobi Desert, scattered creatures emanating faint demonic energy (mostly drought-resistant poisonous insects and scorpions), and a few ancient-looking fragments of ruins half-buried by sandstorms. There was no sign of human habitation or any obvious landmarks.

The spiritual energy in the air was also very thin and filled with a violent and chaotic quality, completely different from the pure and clear spiritual energy of the Yunmeng Sect.

"It seems Senior 'Jin' was right; the exit of the passage is random," Lu Zhao thought to himself. "However, at least it confirms that we've returned to the real world, and not some other strange little world."

He looked up, trying to determine his location by the position of the sun and the celestial phenomena, but the hazy sky and the relentless wind made it difficult.

"We need to find a populated area first, or at least pinpoint our location," Lu Zhao decided. He chose a direction that appeared relatively flat and less windy, and began to walk forward.

He didn't choose to fly. In this completely unfamiliar environment, where spiritual energy was scarce and volatile, conserving his physical and spiritual strength and acting discreetly was the wisest choice. Besides, he had just experienced spatial travel, and his body and soul needed time to fully adapt and recover.

Traveling through the Gobi Desert was no easy task. The fierce winds whipped up sand and gravel, penetrating every crevice. The ground was uneven, fraught with hidden traps. Occasionally, they would encounter attacks from poisonous insects lurking beneath the sand, but these posed no threat to Lu Zhao, a Foundation Establishment cultivator, and could be dealt with effortlessly.

After traveling for about two hours, Lu Zhao suddenly stopped. His divine sense detected a faint fluctuation of spiritual energy several miles ahead, as well as... a faint smell of blood.

"Someone? Or are they monsters fighting?" Lu Zhao's heart stirred. He concealed his aura, lightly tapped his feet with the [Flowing Cloud Step], and moved like a ghost, using the sparse rocks and sand dunes in the Gobi Desert as cover, quietly approaching.

Soon, the scene ahead came into view.

It was a small, dried-up depression in the riverbed. At that moment, a chase and a fierce battle were unfolding in the depression.

The fleeing cultivators were three in a rather disheveled state. Two men and one woman, all dressed in matching gray-blue outfits, now torn and stained with blood and dust. The leader was a middle-aged man, at the eighth level of Qi Refining, wielding a chipped longsword. His face was deathly pale, and his left arm hung limply, clearly broken. The other young man and the woman were both at the sixth level of Qi Refining, similarly seriously injured and their auras weak.

Their pursuers were five cultivators dressed in variegated robes, with ferocious faces and exuding a dense aura of malevolence. The leader was a one-eyed, burly man, at the early Foundation Establishment stage, wielding a massive, door-sized ghost-headed saber, its blade faintly glowing with blood. The other four appeared to be at the seventh or eighth level of Qi Refining, their faces bearing cruel, cat-and-mouse smiles.

"Heh heh, you little bastards from the Yunmeng Merchant Guild, you're pretty fast runners! But where can you run to in this 'Black Wind Gobi'?" the one-eyed burly man sneered. "Hand over your goods and that item obediently, and if I'm in a good mood, I might give you a quick death!"

"Bah! Black Wind Bandits! You wicked beasts! Even if the treasure is destroyed, I will never give it to you!" the injured middle-aged man cursed angrily, but the despair in his eyes could not be concealed.

"Yunmeng Merchant Guild? Black Wind Gobi? Black Wind Bandits?" Lu Zhao, hidden in the shadows, felt a sudden unease.

He knew it was the "Yunmeng Chamber of Commerce," a sizable chamber of commerce under the Yunmeng Sect, primarily responsible for the sect's external trade and some disciples' training missions. The uniforms these people wore were indeed the insignia of the Yunmeng Chamber of Commerce.

And the "Black Wind Gobi"... he vaguely remembered seeing it on the sect's map. It seemed to be a vast desert located at the junction of the northwestern border of the Great Jin Dynasty and the western end of the "Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain Range." The environment was harsh, the spiritual energy thin, and it was home to many bandits and outlaws, the most notorious of whom was called the "Black Wind Bandits"!

"So that's how it is... I was actually dumped in the 'Black Wind Desert' on the northwestern border of the Great Jin Dynasty." Lu Zhao suddenly realized. This place was more than ten thousand miles away from the Tiannan Region where the Yunmeng Sect was located! It separated them by almost half the territory of the Great Jin Dynasty!

"Since we've run into them, and they're from the same merchant guild..." Lu Zhao looked at the Yunmeng Merchant Guild cultivators who were about to be surrounded and killed, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.

"I'll just help him out, and maybe I can ask for directions and find out what's going on lately."

Just as the one-eyed, burly man grinned and raised his ghost-headed sword, preparing to kill the middle-aged man—**

"Whoosh!"

A thin, grayish-black beam of light, as thin as a hair, shot out silently from behind a boulder on the side, heading straight for the one-eyed strongman's throat at an extremely fast speed!