Cultivation Online

Chapter 2542: Taking Shelter

‘These kids are fast!’ Yuan cried inwardly as he struggled to keep up with them.

Unable to use spiritual energy, he could only rely on the strength of his physical body to chase after these children. But despite tempering his body to an extreme degree that would overwhelm even a Cultivation God in the Nine Heavens, he was still having difficulty keeping up with children who appeared to be no older than ten.

‘No! It’s not that they’re fast—it’s that I’m slow!’ Yuan suddenly realized as he began moving.

There was something fundamentally different about the atmosphere in this place. The gravity was unimaginably heavy, making Yuan feel as though mountains were chained to his back.

Perhaps his senses had been muddled after the teleportation, but he really didn’t notice the gravity until he just started moving.

“Why are you moving so slow? Hurry up if you don’t want to disappear!” One of the kids suddenly turned his head around to shout at Yuan.

“What do you mean by that? I don’t even know what’s going on!”

“Are you serious?!”

“Are you really an adult? Even children younger than us know about it!”

The children exclaimed in disbelief after hearing Yuan’s words.

“I already told you that I am not from this place!” Yuan sighed loudly.

“We’ll explain it to you once we reach the shelter! Just keep running for now!”

A few minutes later, they arrived at a small, unassuming rectangular building, and the children entered without hesitation.

Yuan raised an eyebrow at the structure, which resembled nothing more than a public restroom, before silently following them inside.

The moment Yuan stepped into the building, an odd sensation washed over him, as though he had just passed through an invisible barrier.

“What the—?”

Yuan raised his eyebrows at the sight before him. After following the children into the building, he found himself teleported to an entirely different place.

He was no longer inside a building, but in a vast underground expanse shrouded in darkness, with only dim lights illuminating the area.

There were many buildings scattered throughout the area as well, though none were as tall as the skyscrapers outside.

However, what stood out to Yuan most was the sheer number of people present, with more and more individuals teleported into the underground expanse with every passing second.

Yuan examined the cultivations of those around him, and the discovery left him utterly shocked. Everyone present was at least a Cultivation God, while many had even reached the Absolute God Realm.

Yet the most shocking part was that the majority of them emitted auras Yuan could not perceive at all. That could only mean one thing—that their cultivation was so high that even he was unable to see through it.

It had not been long since Yuan learned of a realm above the Cultivation God Realm in the Demonic Realm, and seeing so many people who might possess cultivations even beyond the Absolute God Realm left him utterly dazed.

‘What cultivation level are these people? How long did it take them to achieve it? If it took trillions of years for the Demonic Realm to discover the realm of Absolute God, how old is this world?!’ Yuan cried inwardly, wondering if he’d somehow entered an ancient civilization unfathomably old, or if it was a world where time moved countless times faster than the Demonic Realm.

“Mister, are you okay?”

One of the children suddenly asked, snapping Yuan out of his daze.

Yuan lowered his head to look at the children standing before him. There were four of them—two boys and two girls—and they were all staring at him with curious, inquisitive gazes, as though intrigued by his unusual existence.

“Do you really have no idea what is going on, Mister?” one of them eventually questioned him.

Yuan calmly nodded.

Then, one of the boys said, “When the sirens activate, everyone must enter the shelter, or you will disappear from this world.”

Yuan then asked, “How will you disappear?”

However, the children shook their heads. “We won’t know the details until we grow up. We are only told that we will disappear if we fail to seek shelter in time.”

Upon hearing this, Yuan could not help but feel that something about the entire situation was suspicious. He wondered whether the children were being lied to or brainwashed. However, that still did not explain why there were so many adults inside the shelter.

“Then how long do we have to stay down here?” Yuan then asked.

“It depends. Some days we won’t be able to return to the surface for weeks, while there are days when we can leave after just a few hours,” replied one of the girls.

“Then what do you all do down here?”

“The same thing we do on the surface.”

“And what is that?”

“School. Play. Everything.”

“What is this world’s population like? Is everyone here?” Yuan asked as he looked around.

At a glance, he could easily count more than a hundred thousand people, with hundreds more appearing every passing second.

“I don’t know how many people are in this world, but not everyone goes to the same place.”

“There are many shelters out there, one for each sector. And we’re currently in Shelter 11.”

“In that case, how many Sectors are on Earth?”

“There are ninety-nine Minor Sectors, nine Major Sectors, and one Core Sector.”

“What are the differences between seach sectors? Wealth? Fame? Influence?” Yuan inquired.

“I’m not too sure… What about you guys?”

“I don’t know, either.”

“Anyway, I have to return home now. It was nice meeting you, weird Mister!”

“Me, too! Let’s chat again next time!”

One by one, the children scattered in different directions, quickly disappearing into the crowd.

Although Yuan still had many questions, he felt that he would not learn much more from them.

‘Should I speak to another adult, or…?’

Yuan surveyed his surroundings with a thoughtful expression.

Eventually, he decided to take a brief tour of the area to better understand his new environment before approaching another resident.

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