He mounted the qilin and they continued upward.
The traversal carried him cleanly through the transition zone between the mid-tier island clusters and the upper atmospheric formations. The shift was immediately visible in the character of the terrain. The islands here were larger, more defined, and far less numerous than the dense, tightly packed clusters below. The spacing between formations widened noticeably, leaving open stretches of air that felt almost deliberate, while the monsters that occupied this layer appeared less frequently but carried significantly higher individual classifications.
