161. Second World

"Where have you been, Aji?" Barsha asked, approaching him at the edge of the platform. She had been looking for him to discuss their next steps as a squad. They were currently assembled at the central portal station in Samarkan, preparing to teleport back to Prisma.

Priority for the teleportation array was currently being given to the independent cultivators and academy delegates who had traveled from various continents for the Moon Flower. To manage the immense traffic, the station officers were processing them in strict rotations, sending groups of ten at a time through the spatial gateway.

"I just stepped out for a breath of fresh air while waiting for our turn," Aji replied casually. Barsha often found herself exasperated by his relaxed demeanor. When the squad had chosen him as their leader, Aji had unhesitatingly handed the mantle over to her instead.

Yet beneath her annoyance, a quiet affection had taken root in her heart, though she took great care to hide it. Subtle pangs of jealousy flared whenever she saw Aji talking closely with Gayatri or Alicia.

As a woman, she could not suppress those feelings. She had initially disliked him when Aaman tasked her with looking after him, only to discover that Aji was vastly more powerful than any of them. Yet despite his incredible parameters, he never displayed a shred of arrogance.

His true strength was so profound that even Warrior Jiro held him in deep reverence, granting him private instruction during their time at Dompai without the rest of the squad's knowledge. Through that guidance, Aji's understanding of the martial path had reached an extraordinary level.

Barsha herself had achieved her current peak capacity through Warrior Jiro’s hellish conditioning. It was only after he taught her Ghost Speed—a technique capable of rivaling the speed of light—that she discovered Jiro had been a direct disciple of her grandfather, Saint Ganada. It was the ultimate mobility domain required of a true assassin.

Recalling her thoughts, Barsha asked Aji to join the rest of the Sky Squad. They needed to conduct a tactical debriefing on their recent engagement against the dark army—a campaign that had yielded extraordinary results.

Aji nodded and followed her. The squad gathered in a quiet corner of the platform, waiting for their rotation to Prisma.

With the entire team present, they began discussing their growing standing in the martial world. The regular defense troops returning to their respective provinces would undoubtedly spread word of the Sky Squad’s heroic stand against the Four Gates.

The vanguard was poised to become a beacon of hope across all five continents—a symbol capable of rallying the world against future dark invasions.

"Do you truly believe the dark army will strike again so soon?" Nora asked, skepticism lacing her voice. "The Four Gates just suffered a crushing defeat. Wouldn't they be forced to retreat for months, if not years, to recover their losses?"

"No," Gayatri countered firmly, refuting Nora's assumption. "I can feel it... The Four Gates were merely a distraction. The true invasion force will strike the moment the righteous alliance drops its guard to celebrate."

The squad turned to Gayatri in surprise. None of them doubted her sensory talents. Gayatri had never been wrong when deciphering hidden truths; her ability to perceive the density, color, and intent of aura signatures was unmatched.

If the Four Gates had indeed been deployed as mere sacrificial lures, it meant a far greater force was lurking in the shadows, waiting for the righteous sects to succumb to false complacency before launching a catastrophic assault.

If her premonition was accurate, the force behind it could be none other than Lord Demon Shura himself—the legendary entity capable of leveling continents single-handedly.

The thought sent a chill through the group.

"If the Four Gates were just a distraction..." Astro asked, a frown deepening on his brow, "...then how powerful is Shura's actual army?"

"Hold on a moment," Aji said, stepping in to calm the mounting anxiety and speculation. The moment he spoke, the squad fell quiet, instinctively according him a level of respect that rivaled their reverence for Warrior Jiro.

Looking at the young spellcaster, Aji asked gently, "Tell us, Gayatri. What did your sensory domain pick up that led you to conclude our recent victory was merely a lure?"

Gayatri hesitated for a moment. Yet she knew that Aji and her elder brother, Lao, had always been the two people who trusted her instincts unconditionally, even when her claims sounded improbable to others.

Gazing at her teammates, who were all waiting attentively for her explanation, she took a slow breath.

"I..." Gayatri began softly. "I felt an abnormal wave of energy expanding across all five continents. It's a pitch-black dark magic, denser than anything I've ever sensed before. It feels as though hundreds of thousands of dark signatures are emerging from hidden sanctuaries sealed away from the world... They are filling every corner of the realm."

She trailed off, half-expecting her comrades to dismiss her claims. Yet that was precisely what her sensory perception had detected—an overwhelming, unfathomable mass of dark signatures manifesting across the globe simultaneously.

The Sky Squad members exchanged bewildered glances. Some struggled to process the sheer scale of her claim. If an army of hundreds of thousands of dark operatives truly existed, how could they have evaded detection by the alliance's continental intelligence networks for twenty years?

Was such a thing even possible?

Though they trusted Gayatri's perception implicitly, her claim forced them to seek a more rational explanation. Could her senses have been disrupted by the residual atmospheric turbulence left behind by the battle in the Tulisma Forest, the blooming of the Moon Flower, and its subsequent destruction by Dasatama?

The chaotic energy generated by the clashing grandmasters could easily have distorted ambient mana fields across the region. That seemed like the most plausible explanation for the sudden, false signatures she had perceived across the continents.

Seeing the skepticism written on her teammates' faces, Gayatri remained silent, unwilling to force the issue. Barsha prepared to step in to maintain squad cohesion, as she often did when debates grew tense.

"Gayatri is correct," Aji's calm voice suddenly cut through the silence. The squad turned to him in surprise; Aji was notoriously quiet during tactical debriefs, making his direct interjection all the more striking. Was he simply coming to Gayatri's defense because he trusted her judgment?

The squad fell completely silent, waiting for him to elaborate. Barsha watched him closely, wondering if his unhesitating support of Gayatri stemmed from a deeper, personal affection between them.

Shaking off the thought, Barsha forced herself to remain professional. As squad leader, she could not allow personal sentiment to cloud her judgment.

"I have verified intelligence regarding Shura's true parameters," Aji stated calmly, invoking the name that struck terror into the hearts of every cultivator.

"Saint Yonan, my master," Aji continued carefully, choosing his words to maintain credibility while protecting his secrets, "explained to me that Shura possesses a high-tier spatial concealment magic capable of masking entire armies or physical structures from the world. It is known as the Second World."

Alicia gasped, her eyes widening as she heard her grandfather's name paired with the forbidden concept.

She recalled a specific passage from the private journals her grandfather had left behind. The Second World was a high-tier spatial concealment field. It did not create an alternate dimension, but rather cloaked a section of the physical world behind a seamless energetic veil, rendering everything within it completely undetectable to external sensory domains.

Entities contained within the Second World remained physically present on the continent, hidden behind an absolute seal. They could not exit the boundary at will unless the seal was formally unseated or the array was manipulated by an extraordinary volume of aura.

"I remember my grandfather's notes on the Second World!" Alicia declared, her voice trembling slightly as she looked at Aji. "I no longer harbor any doubt—Aji truly is my grandfather's disciple. The Second World was a secret record my grandfather hidden from the martial council, fearing that revealing the existence of an imperceptible dark army hidden in plain sight would plunge the world into absolute panic!"

A heavy, stunned silence fell over the platform. The skepticism evaporated, replaced by the grim realization that an apocalyptic war was about to erupt.