Oh crap The sky is falling

The eastern foothills of Qingyun Mountain, a mile and a half up from the base, stood a broken cliff.

Covered in vines year-round and slick with moss, it was a place even wild beasts avoided.

Li Tianxing brushed aside the final layer of shrubs, and the cliff face appeared before his eyes.

The cliff, over a hundred feet tall, jutted at an angle into the mountain. Its surface was so impossibly smooth that it seemed less like a natural formation and more like it had been sheared off by a single sword strike.

Ancient vines as thick as a man's arm crawled across the rock, weaving together so densely that not a breath of wind could pass through.

Li Tianxing drew the longsword at his waist. With two flashes of sword light, the vines rustled to the ground, revealing the true face hidden behind them.

Embedded in the cliff was a stone door.

No, to call it a door was not entirely accurate. It had no frame, no lintel, no knocker, and not even a seam.

It was merely a rectangular depression in the cliff face, within which sat a solid slab of dark cyan stone.

The surface of the stone was covered in a dense network of lines, resembling some ancient seal.

Li Tianxing took a deep breath.

He walked up to the stone door and unrolled the yellowed, ancient beast-skin map.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves and fell upon the map. Backlit by the rays, three arcs of cinnabar slowly seemed to float, like three living ripples.

Li Tianxing raised the map above his head, letting the sunlight pierce straight down through the hide, casting a blurry projection onto the ground.

He then looked down at his feet. Through this framed bird's-eye view, the three cinnabar arcs were no longer flat representations of mountains and rivers, but precise markers pinpointing the exact spot where he stood.

This was the spot.

Li Tianxing put the map away, paced back and forth three times in front of the stone door, and finally stopped at the tangled roots of three dead pine trees.

He used the tip of his sword to clear away decades of rotting leaves and loose soil until the blade struck something solid.

Crouching down, he dug through the last layer of dirt with his hands, his fingertips brushing against a cold stone slab.

The slab was small, about the size of a palm. Carved into it was a simple groove shaped like a key.

No, it was shaped like a falling drop of blood.

Li Tianxing suddenly understood.

Without hesitation, he bit down on his thumb and let a drop of blood fall into the groove.

The moment the blood hit the groove, there was no sound, but the entire cliff face lit up.

Across the surface of the cyan stone slab that had lain dead and silent for ten thousand years, runes lit up one after another. They spread from the edges toward the center, as fast as a raging wildfire. Wherever they passed, a cyan radiance surged, bathing the entire mountain forest in an eerie blue-green glow.

Three massive cinnabar arcs flew out from the map, transforming into wheels of light that hovered behind him, spinning slowly.

With every rotation, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth surged toward this spot.

Soon after, the ground began to tremble, as if something buried deep beneath the earth was slowly awakening.

The runes on the stone door burned brighter and brighter until they formed a blinding wall of light. A thin crack appeared in the center of the light wall, slowly widening, like an eye that had been shut for ten thousand years finally opening.

The spiritual energy that had accumulated within the seal over ten millennia rushed out frantically from the crack. Li Tianxing was pushed back seven or eight steps by the blast of air, his back slamming into a dead pine tree.

At the same time, the sky overhead abruptly changed color.

A pillar of cyan light, over hundreds of feet in diameter, erupted from the groove at his feet, shooting straight up along the sheared cliff face and piercing deep into the firmament.

Then, with a resounding crack...

The sky... tore open!

The phantom image of a nine-story ancient wooden tower slowly materialized.

...

On Qingyun Mountain.

Lin Yan sprang up from his rocking chair like a coiled spring.

"No way—"

"Did you really just pierce a hole in the sky?"

Lin Yan took a deep breath.

Alright then.

He was just wondering how badass this Emperor Cangwu could possibly be, and now, merely opening the door to his tomb had shattered the sky over the entire Cangwu Commandery.

The real problem was that with a commotion this massive, everyone within a hundred miles had surely seen it.

That cyan pillar of light, that nine-story ancient tower suspended in the rift in the sky—even a blind man could sense that violently raging spiritual pressure.

The Great Qian Dynasty, the Four Great Noble Clans, rogue cultivators from all walks of life, and even those reclusive old monsters who never showed their faces...

It wouldn't be long before Cangwu Commandery became the focal point of the entire Great Qian Dynasty.

And his Tianyan Sect, as luck would have it, was right on this very mountain.

Less than thirty miles from the ruins' entrance.

"Things just got interesting," Lin Yan muttered.

...

Cangwu Commandery City.

Inside an old teahouse in the south of the city, a storyteller was spitting everywhere as he passionately recounted the tale of how the Tianyan Sect Master repelled a lightning tribulation with just three sentences. The room was packed with patrons listening with great relish.

Suddenly, fine ripples began to form in the tea cups, expanding outward in wider and wider circles.

Immediately after, the entire teahouse shook slightly, and dust rained down from the rafters.

Before the patrons could even react, a blinding cyan light flooded in through the windows, casting an eerie blue-green hue over everyone's faces.

"Earthquake! It's an earthquake!"

Some screamed and dove under tables, while others bolted for the door.

Outside the teahouse, pedestrians on the street stopped in their tracks, looking up in unison toward the eastern horizon.

There, a pillar of cyan light connecting heaven and earth was piercing straight into the depths of the firmament. The pillar was terrifyingly thick, visible as clear as day even from a hundred miles away.

"What is that?"

"Why did the sky turn green?"

"Look at the sky! There's a pillar of light! And a tower!"

Cries of alarm rang out one after another.

Everyone saw it: in the direction of Qingyun Mountain, a cyan light pillar over hundreds of feet wide pierced through heaven and earth.

At the top of the pillar, the phantom of a nine-story ancient wooden tower slowly rotated, exuding a vast, majestic coercion that left everyone in the commandery city breathless.

The entire street exploded into an uproar.

Some dropped to their knees and kowtowed, some ran around screaming, while others stared at the cyan light with flashing eyes, their breathing growing heavier by the second.

At the same time, across the entirety of Cangwu Commandery, all cultivators—whether rogue cultivators or sect disciples, whether in secluded meditation or just drinking—stopped what they were doing, their expressions changing collectively.

...

Black Wind Valley, Biluo Sect.

Ever since the Biluo Sect was robbed of its spirit vein, anxiety and unrest had plagued the entire sect.

The moment the cyan pillar of light shot into the sky, the Biluo Sect Master stood up abruptly. Staring at the light piercing the eastern horizon, his pupils shrank violently.

"Cangwu..."

"It's Emperor Cangwu! Emperor Cangwu's tomb! The legendary tomb of the Emperor is actually in Cangwu Commandery!"

As the former guarding sect of Cangwu Commandery, the Biluo Sect possessed some intelligence regarding this matter.

It was worth mentioning that three years ago, when the son of the Biluo Sect's Great Elder heard that Li Tianxing had obtained the map, he wanted to hoard the treasure for himself and thus told no one.

After he was subsequently counter-killed by Li Tianxing, the Biluo Sect remained completely unaware that Li Tianxing held the burial map of Emperor Cangwu.

Now, the Biluo Sect Master's eyes had shifted from shock to pure fanaticism.

Emperor Cangwu was a titled almighty expert who dominated the Eastern Region ten thousand years ago; his lifelong legacy was absolutely extraordinary.

If they could obtain the Emperor's legacy, never mind a mere Tianyan Sect, even the Great Qian Dynasty would have to show the Biluo Sect some respect.

This was the Biluo Sect's one and only chance to turn the tables.

The Biluo Sect Master spun around and barked at the Vice Sect Master behind him, "Gather all disciples at the Foundation Establishment realm and above! We move out immediately!"

"Sect Master, what about the Tianyan Sect..."

"Ignore them!"

A cold glint flashed across the Biluo Sect Master's eyes. "The Sovereign's legacy belongs to the capable! No matter how powerful the Tianyan Sect may be, can they truly hold back all the heroes under heaven?"