When Feng Jun regained consciousness again, he was already surrounded by a white fog, and vaguely, there was a small path ahead, leading who knew where.

He thought for a moment, raised his hand and cupped his fists toward the front, speaking in a clear voice, "Greetings, Senior. I still haven’t thanked you for guiding me out of the Void just now."

A moment later, a voice rang out in his mind. "Come over, then. You really have decent comprehension—dare to randomly guess about anything..."

Once he heard he’d been granted permission, Feng Jun finally lifted his feet and walked forward. After walking over a hundred zhang, the thick fog thinned, and he couldn’t help being stunned. "This is actually... Luohua Manor?"

Right in front of him was a vivid Luohua Manor, and he was currently standing at Luohua’s mountain gate.

However, it was obvious this was definitely not the real Luohua, just an illusion.

The voice did not respond. Feng Jun paused for a moment, then quickly strode forward—in fact, he had already started using his Shrinking-Ground-into-Inches body technique.

It took him less than three minutes to arrive at the villa, and then he confirmed: this really was only an illusion. Many things only imitated the outer form, and very crudely at that. The key point was... there wasn’t a single person in this manor, not even one.

It was as if the owner was saying, "It’s just an illusion anyway, why bother making it so detailed?"

Immediately after, that voice rang out in his mind again. "You don’t like it? I constructed this by mimicking your residence. I just wanted to have an open and honest talk with you. Or... should I switch to another scene?"

Feng Jun nodded repeatedly. "Then let’s change the scene. Pick one Senior is familiar with. With this one, it feels like my home’s been taken over by an outsider. Really uncomfortable."

As soon as he finished speaking, the scenery around him shifted again. Then he found himself standing in a small courtyard, about half a mu in size, with two unremarkable thatched huts beside him, and two waist-high bamboo fences tied along the courtyard’s edge.

Outside the courtyard were large tracts of shrubs, with forests in the distance, and even further away were steep mountain peaks, their summits capped with gleaming white snow.

Feng Jun looked up at the sky—well, there was nothing to see, just a stretch of hazy gray. But when he looked toward the distant peaks, he could see a deep blue sky there, and even white clouds that set off the snow on the mountaintops quite nicely.

"This scene that Senior is familiar with... is it from ancient times?"

"Ancient times or whatever, I’m not too sure myself," the voice answered. "What, you don’t like this scene?"

"I like it a lot," Feng Jun nodded. "Such a blue sky is really rare nowadays."

"Isn’t the sky supposed to be blue?" The voice was clearly a bit surprised, and then it went straight to the point. "Let’s put it this way: your return from the Void was not my doing. Strictly speaking, the disturbance you caused when you came back is what woke me up."

"I’m deeply unsettled by that!" Feng Jun hurriedly cupped his fists, speaking with great respect. "This junior did not do it intentionally." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"I’m not blaming you," the voice still sounded quite amiable. "In fact, I should thank you. You’ve been doing pretty well all along—there are even some signs of Spiritual Energy revival. That means my duties as a Guardian have been reduced quite a bit."

"Guardian?" Feng Jun repeated in surprise. "May I be so bold as to ask, what exactly is Senior guarding?"

"Guarding this world," the Guardian replied leisurely. "Crises that might inflict great damage on this world—I eliminate them... and precisely because of that, the Void Breath on you is what startled me awake."

"That is... far too great a deed," little Xingxing practically sparkled in Feng Jun’s eyes. "What else counts as a relatively major crisis?"

The Guardian answered slowly, "Collisions with small asteroids, or... a strange fiery explosive. It appeared in the north. Even a Nascent Soul Cultivator likely couldn’t escape it, but I resolved them all."

A fiery explosion that even a Nascent Soul wouldn’t escape? Feng Jun tilted his head and thought for a moment, then probed, "Da Yiwan?"

"Maybe," the other party had no real interest in this topic. "That’s roughly the situation... A Guardian, strictly speaking, shouldn’t interfere with your affairs, and I’ve been abiding by that. But with the appearance of a Swallowed Star Demon, I cannot sit idly by. Do you understand?"

Previously, it had been paying considerable attention to Feng Jun, but had never shown any intention of intervening. The other had hidden beneath the clouds for many days; as for what he was doing, it wasn’t particularly interested. But once the dark clouds dispersed, it was truly shocked.

"I understand." Feng Jun nodded readily. He wasn’t sure whether what the other said was true, but without a doubt, since it styled itself a Guardian, it would be strange if it didn’t care about the Tunxing Clan. "The Tunxing Clan is practically the natural enemy of all races."

"Since you understand that, our communication will go smoothly," the voice also relaxed a bit. "Now you can tell me—where did you get that thing from? How did you come into contact with them?"

Feng Jun had always disliked being interrogated by others, but this time there was no helping it. Leaving aside the other’s cultivation level, just the reasoning was overwhelmingly solid. So he answered honestly, "I got the corpse from the Void."

"This..." After thinking it over, the Guardian said, "That possibility is actually quite high. But when you got hold of the corpse, it wasn’t just half a lung, was it? Were there other parts as well?"

"I only managed to get some internal organs," Feng Jun answered very honestly. "The rest of the corpse was taken by cultivators from another plane."

He could actually have said more, but he didn’t really know where this Guardian came from. Being a bit cautious was never a bad thing.

"A plane?" The Guardian was clearly not very familiar with the term. "Not from our world?"

"Right," Feng Jun nodded. "Let me put it this way: you can’t get there using mundane transportation."

"Got it," the Guardian understood. "You reached it through the Realm-Breaking Ring on your left hand, didn’t you?"

Feng Jun was instantly speechless. His biggest trump card had been spotted—just what kind of existence was this?

The Guardian ignored his reaction. "Last time, you were carrying a Remnant Soul with you. Is that the normal form of the cultivators over there?"

"No," Feng Jun hastily shook his head. "The cultivators there look almost exactly the same as people here. It’s just that their Spiritual Energy is abundant—Emergence Stage cultivators are everywhere, Nascent Souls are... Nascent Souls are all over the place too, and they even have people in the Body Integration Realm and the like."

"In that case, that world must have quite a lot of Spirit Mechanism," the Guardian’s voice didn’t change. "Why didn’t you transport some Spiritual Energy over here? You have a Realm-Breaking Ring; that should be easy for you, shouldn’t it?"

"I’ve been transporting it all along," Feng Jun said helplessly. "It’s just that I’m only a small Golden Core; I can’t get my hands on many resources. And I’m worried they’ll discover this world, so I can only act carefully."

"You could inform an Emergence Stage cultivator," the Guardian said blandly. "Tell them there’s another world here. Even if there were no Spiritual Energy, could they really not be tempted?"

This one truly lived up to being a Domain Guardian; all it cared about was Earth’s survival, and it had no aversion to outsiders. Judging from its words, as long as outsiders could bring in enough Spiritual Energy, it didn’t care whether they ended up ruling Earth.

But Feng Jun did care. In Kunhao, the hierarchy was rigid and killing was commonplace. Once he brought them to Earth, Earth’s people would definitely sink to the very bottom. Huaxia Citizens might fare a little better because of language and skin color, but not by much—they’d still be no stronger than the Mortal Realm.

Feng Jun was unwilling to subject his own people to that kind of life without dignity.

More importantly, even if the Kunhao Realm discovered this world, they’d be unlikely to throw Spirit Stones into it. "I think that once they find this place, they’re far more likely to strip-mine the resources here. I don’t want my people to live in misery."

"That’s true," the Guardian understood that point very well. "As expected, it’s easy to add flowers to brocade, but hard to send charcoal in the snow... However, you’re not refusing to open this place just because you want to monopolize its resources, are you?"

"Is it wrong for me to want to monopolize them?" Feng Jun retorted with perfect assurance. "It’s precisely because I treat this place as my own that I manage it seriously and bring back so many Spirit Stones and energy... Besides, if I let those people come over, what if they draw a Swallowed Star Demon here?"

Sure enough, the Guardian didn’t care about Feng Jun monopolizing the resources of this world. It merely asked in surprise, "Swallowed Star Demon... that side actually has contact with Swallowed Star Demons?"

"’Contact’ is a bit much," Feng Jun replied casually. "It’s just that a Swallowed Star Demon once tried to invade and ended up being beaten back."

"That’s normal," the Guardian said. Given there were people in the Body Integration Realm over there, it would be strange if a Swallowed Star Demon didn’t suffer a defeat. Then it finally remembered something. "I see you’re setting up a Formation. Is it to increase the Domain’s Spirit Mechanism?"

Feng Jun answered solemnly, "The Swallowed Star Demon’s lung can raise the Domain’s Spirit Mechanism even without activation. But natural conversion is too slow, and the efficiency is low. My Formation can raise the efficiency and also reduce the chances of it being discovered, protecting it better."

"You can leave the protection to me," the Guardian said offhandedly, without the slightest hesitation. "Now that we finally have a bit more Spirit Mechanism, I won’t tolerate anyone coming here to sabotage it."

Of course Feng Jun appreciated its stance. Its protection was out of responsibility for the entire Earth, not an attempt to seize his right to use the Spiritual Energy. That lined up perfectly with both his principles and his personal interests.

But he had his worries as well. "Thank you, but if you’re the one protecting it, could your movements end up being too large and actually have negative effects instead? How about we leave it to me first, and if I can’t handle it, then you make a move?"

"All right," the Guardian agreed very readily, which made Feng Jun a bit suspicious. Were you planning to pass the buck from the very beginning?

Right after that, it asked curiously, "This method you’re using to enhance the Spirit Mechanism—did you also learn it from that... plane?"

"Yes," Feng Jun nodded. "I don’t know if you, Senior, have any similar secret techniques?"

There was a hint of probing in his words, but the Guardian’s response was impeccable. "Your method is already quite good... Mm, some of the materials are indeed not produced in this world. Still, as long as it can raise the Spirit Mechanism, it’s fine."

Then it thought of another question. "Right, you just said you obtained ’some’ internal organs. That means there are others?"