At the Pacific barrier point, buried deep beneath the ocean in a structure that predated human civilization, a figure stood in the center of a chamber filled with white cultivation energy. The figure was Marcus, or one of the versions of Marcus at least, though he didn't know it. He had been told his name was Kaelan. He had been told he was a cultivator trained by the creators themselves. He had been given power that exceeded what most humans could even imagine.
The chamber was responding to something. The white energy was flickering, destabilizing, becoming less capable of containing the pressure that was pushing against it from the other side.
"The barrier is failing," Kaelan said, his voice steady even as his mind registered the impossibility of what he was observing. "But not from ex
