Nie Tian’s true form was still transforming his wood domain with the power bestowed upon him by the Tree of Life.

His true soul, on the other hand, continued to shuttle through the starry river between nearby realms, wielding the Spirit Scepter.

Blackscale, Demon, Bonebrute, Fiend, and Birdman grand patriarchs died at his hands one after another.

Without his true form, bloodline power, or power from his spiritual sea, he was able to cast Grand Monarch Heavenly Spirit’s various wondrous soul magics by relying solely on the profound connection between his true soul and the Spirit Scepter.

Not only had he mastered all of the Phantasms’ soul magics within a short time, but his power had been magnified by the Spirit Scepter.

In the Fiends’ domain, Nie Tian’s true soul sat quietly on the scepter like a mysterious soul shadow and muttered, “No wonder Grand Monarch Heavenly Spirit was considered a remarkable talent of many generations.”

Most living beings wouldn’t dare to have their souls leave their fleshly bodies and travel the starry river alone.

He, however, didn’t seem concerned at all.

Unburdened by his fleshly form, his true soul and the Spirit Scepter traveled faster than he had ever imagined.

He could cover millions of kilometers within a breath’s time.

In the boundless Spirit World, he could shuttle among realms that belonged to the Demons, Blackscales, Bonebrutes, and Fiends in a very short time.

Even though he couldn’t travel among realms as fast as spatial power experts could, he was far faster than any known starship.

Though his true soul and true form were separated from each other by boundless space, the connection between them remained incomparably strong and clear. There was no sign of it breaking.

He knew that that was thanks to the Spirit Scepter.

“Hmm?”

All of a sudden, he sensed a vast amount of living beings as he approached a domain.

According to his soul perception, the souls of all those beings appeared to be rather weak.

BOOM!

The Spirit Scepter suddenly burst forth with cyan light, and soul power as immense as the sea immediately spread out.

Soon, what seemed to be billions of glowing spots manifested in Nie Tian’s senses.

After being dumbstruck for a moment, he snapped to a realization. “Humans!”

Not a single outsider race could reproduce as humans could. Even the entire populations of the Ancientspirits, Demons, and Phantasms put together wouldn’t match the number of the beings he was sensing now.

Such a vast population of intelligent beings with weak souls.

There was only one possibility: these were humans.

It was said that humans had also originated in the Spirit World.

The Mortal World hadn’t been discovered until later. After the discovery of the Mortal World, humans had been shipped to these new realms to mine resources as the slaves of the outsiders and Ancientspirits. Only after they had developed a set of methods to practice cultivation by absorbing the spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth had they turned the tide, taking those realms for their own and expelling the Ancientspirits and outsiders that had enslaved them for millennia.

After the humans’ rise in the Mortal World, the four great sects had organized human powers to march into the Dead Star Sea over and over, their goal being to find their ancestral lands and liberate their kind in the Spirit World.

However, so much time had passed, and the four great sects hadn’t succeeded once.

Every time they had been close to success, the outsiders and Ancientspirits would join hands and defeat them together.

Now, the Spirit World was running out of its energy, every realm withering. The outsiders and Ancientspirits were all seeking another place to live. What was the situation with the humans in the Spirit World?

Nie Tian was thrilled upon figuring out to whom those souls belonged. “I can’t believe it’s my own kind!

“For countless years, the four great sects have attempted to enter the Spirit World, find the origin of humanity, and take their suffering fellow humans back to the Mortal World. Who would have thought that I’d be so lucky as to find the origin of humanity?”

With this thought, he immediately withdrew his soul power.

Under the influence of his true soul, even the Spirit Scepter seemed to suddenly lose its physical form.

A sphere of dim light that only powerful experts could detect with their souls enveloped the Spirit Scepter and Nie Tian’s true soul.

SHEW!

They both assumed intangible forms, and sped through the starry river at an unimaginable speed.

It wasn’t long before Nie Tian entered a dim domain.

According to the perception of his true soul, there were a large number of realms in the domain. However, all of them were much smaller than the ones he had seen in the Demon, Fiend, and Floragrim domains.

Not only were they smaller, but they were also rather desolated, as if they had been drained of their energies of heaven and earth a very long time ago.

WHOOSH!

He randomly chose a realm and entered it.

Floating high in the sky with the Spirit Scepter, his true soul scanned the realm with the help of the Spirit Scepter’s power, and found numerous ancient buildings. However, all of the loftiest ones appeared to have been built in the Demons’ style.

He listened to the conversations among the humans.

A large amount of information then poured into his mind.

Soon, he found out that this realm had been controlled by the Bispo Clan, the Demon clan Grand Monarch Bloodlust was from.

Whenever the Bispo Clan had explored new realms, they would come to this realm to muster humans and make them go mine spirit minerals and plant spirit plants in those realms to serve their needs.

The Bispo Clan would only provide the humans here with simple food. The outstanding ones would be given a few tips regarding human cultivation methods, along with some very low-grade spiritual materials.

Of course, whenever the Bispo Clan held a grand sacrificial ceremony for their ancient gods, they would choose the weakest and most useless of their human slaves as the sacrificial offerings.

After listening for a while, Nie Tian learned that the Bispo Clan had pulled their overseers from this realm a long time ago, and had never returned since.

Of course, he knew that the Demons had long since evacuated the withering Spirit World in batches.

Grand Monarch Bloodlust was the Bispo Clan’s current clan chief. Together with Grand Monarch Eternal Purgatory, he had sworn allegiance to the Devils in the Void World. It was only natural that he had evacuated his clan members from the Spirit World.

As for the human slaves here, they wouldn’t care if they died.

However, the fact that the Spirit World was running out of energies hadn’t affected the humans here much.

After all, the vast majority of the humans here were commoners, who didn’t need to practice cultivation with the spiritual energies of heaven and earth or spiritual materials.

They could survive with just the livestock they reared and the plants they grew.

“This is only a regular human realm, not the place where humanity originated.”

Though he was sympathetic towards these humans, Nie Tian didn’t spend more time in this realm. Upon finding out that this wasn’t the place he was looking for, he left with a whoosh.

He and the Spirit Scepter flew to one realm after another.

Almost all of them were realms populated with human slaves that had been abandoned by the Demons, Phantasms, Fiends, Birdmen, and Blackscales.

From the conversations between the humans in them, he gradually learned about the origin of humanity.

It was a place called the Realm of Middle Earth.

“The Realm of Middle Earth!”