Immortal Kingdoms

Victoria woke up from a deep slumber, her skin flushed red from the passion while her legs felt numb. She realized that as the sunlight sprinkled into the room, she was all alone on the massive bed—all signs of the previous activities through day and night wiped clean from both her body and the sheets.

…

Leonardo stretched his body as he walked through the tall mountains, immense pressure weighing down on his body as he advanced toward the depths of this ancient battlefield.

A region that only rebirth realm cultivators dared tread into stretched infinitely in front of him, but he didn't bother hesitating and continued with one step at a time, each step carrying him tens of kilometers ahead.

The massive protective formation allowed for the pressure to greatly reduce—though not completely, it was to a bearable extent.

The more he advanced, the lesser evident was the white triangle in his eyes, the lesser the presence of his multiple martial intents as he isolated his innate domain to slowly stretch out.

"This is where I'll have my rebirth tribulation," muttered Leonardo as black tears streamed down his otherwise indifferent face the further in he progressed.

Shadows of mythical beings of all sizes occasionally flashed through the distorted domain of his eternal night martial intent, an aura of time's long gone interacted with his boundless karma.

Karma and fate are curious things; to take on someone's karma is to inherit the good and bad of their past and present, mending it into your future.

It could be said that karma followed the principles of equivalent exchange—he might be about to take in their powers, but he would also take their burdens.

Whatever it was that caused the downfall of these god beasts in the core mainland, whatever bad blood or history they had, just like how he took the burden of the Infernal Throne on his shoulders and tread the path or re-establishing the six infernal planes; he would need to seek the remnant descendants of these ancient beasts and shelter them, and eradicate their enemies.

Even if he didn't find the mysterious existence behind the downfall of these beasts, that mysterious existence will still find him to snuff out the danger within Leonardo and the potential rise of god beasts.

Leonardo found it an appealing idea to have god beasts take habitat in his small world in the future—how marvelous would that be?

It was with these thoughts that Leonardo stopped in the center of the mountain range on a medium-sized peak—he could view the entire mountain range in all directions, the borders of which a vast stretch of greenery in three directions, the fourth a vast clearance meant for the Blackrain city.

"Very soon," Leonardo muttered while immersing himself in his thoughts, a probing sensation rippling through space to feel the presence of Rosaline nearby and Ingrid very, very far away.

The signal was very dim and illusory, but it was still there.

She was still in the same region as his last probing attempt, clearly adhering to his instructions and laying low in wait.

That was good, he wouldn't want to run around the mainland looking for them just as depicted in many dramatic novels on Earth.

From high divinity to zero rebirth—the process didn't require much ether but had to do with the alignment of laws as they descended together with the sub-dimension trapped between the corporeal and ethereal planes into the corporeal plane, fusing into the cultivator's domain, body, essence, and spirit.

Without hesitation, Leonardo began to release his slumbering domains one after the other, their stacks overlapping and enshrouding the entire mountain range slowly yet gradually.

The sky dimmed as clouds from seemingly nowhere and everywhere began to congregate high above—the laws of heaven passively rejecting the advent of a sub-dimension as it pushed past the borders of space to enter this world.

Leonardo could feel the clouds pressure heavily against his domain like falling mountains, cracks webbing the surface of it.

Every time the domain is about to crack open, the second domain would follow not to substitute for the deficiencies but to reinforce, establishing yet a new and more resilient domain.

If the clouds of the tribulation tore apart his domain and allowed the laws of the world to flood in, they would immediately reject the advent of the sub-dimension and one needn't explain Leonardo's end if this situation was to come about.

Disembodied chants in the ancient infernal tongue began to echo within the borders of Leonardo's domain, and with the guide of his innate martial intent and its domain, the remaining domains began to blend beautifully into an intricate net stubbornly thwarting the intrusion of the tribulation clouds.

…

"What's that?!"

Far from the borders of Blackrain City, the divinities that have yet to leave and the rebirth realm cultivator dispatched by the Magistrate Manor looked in the direction of the beast claw mountain range, flabbergasted.

"Someone is going through their rebirth tribulation!"

People quickly realized the situation for what it was, thinking that a high divinity was bold enough to attempt this dangerous step.

If one's martial intent and domain weren't strong enough, the tribulation clouds would steamroll both them and their pitiful domains in no time, leaving nothing behind but a crippled fool at best while leaving absolutely nothing behind at worst.

This hurdle that is both a chance and a curse to divinities stumped many aspiring cultivators—this was a great divide between powers and a shifting point in one's destiny.

Rosaline passed it easily as the sub-dimension she made into her personal dimension was already prepared for her, immersed in the laws of this world for millions of years.

Leonardo on the other hand—he had to pull down an external, borderline alien sub-dimension into a xenophobic, jealous, and lawfully hostile environment.

This was never meant to be easy.

Just as everyone was waiting to watch a good show, their expressions changed.

"Hey… Aren't the clouds growing too dense and too wide?"

"Now that you've mentioned it, they're indeed expanding rapidly, that's twice the size of a standard tribulation already, yet that domain has yet to budge."

"Idiot! Is it time to admire?! I mean that if we don't hurry back already, we will get caught up too!"

Many people also noticed this, and unless they were in a rebirth realm or had the help of a rebirth realm, they started dashing away frantically while cursing.

Unfortunately, a lot of them were too close and hence ended up consumed by the aura of the tribulation, thin streaks of lightning shooting down like divine judgment to snipe off at the fleeing divinities like ants.

Leonardo's expression was serious as he could sense that his sub-dimension was facing some trouble—it was very far from this place's spatial nodes and even though it was shuttling through space at the speed of light, it would still take some time to appear.

While all of this was happening, the tribulation clouds kept piling up as thunderstorms rumbled in the sky, pressing heavily against his domain.

His eyes opened to the extreme as black blood spilled out, the eternal night martial intent almost substantiated into physical form as black streams of light began to dance across the surface of his domain, continually mending, fixing, and perfecting the fusion of four domains into a solid dome.

Leonardo always knew that the technique of merging all of his domains into one would come helpful the moment he advanced to the rebirth realm—it was a solid intuition that came to fruition at this moment.

Hence, he didn't hold back as his deductions and calculations spun like crazy in his mind.

Luckily he had a split soul in the form of a soul pearl that focused on guiding the sub-dimension through the space nodes—he wouldn't have been able to focus on both ends at the same time if it weren't for that.