The Sahara Desert was no longer a wasteland of sand. It had become the navel of the world.
Above the shimmering heat haze, a colossal tear in reality hung suspended in the sky, shaped like a vertical pupil forged from jagged obsidian and raw starlight.
The rupture pulsed slowly, rhythmically, emitting a deep, low-frequency hum that resonated through bone and marrow. Every cultivator within ten miles felt it in their teeth, a dull ache that warned of something far beyond mortal scale.
This was the entrance to the Trial Ground of the Supreme.
The Federation's forces were assembled in a massive semicircle along the western edge of the gate. Thousands of students from Central Martial University and other elite academies stood in rigid formations, backs straight, breaths shallow.
They were the New Generation, the pride of Earth. Yet beneath the crushing presence of the gate, they looked less like warriors and more like children standing before a storm.
