The next day.
Ye Chuan opened his eyes to find Bai Qianshuang lying quietly beside him, while Luo Xi was sleeping on the other side, hugging the blanket with one leg boldly draped over him.
Perfect.
They had both recovered quite well after drinking plenty of spirit liquid the night before.
Ye Chuan moved Luo Xi’s leg aside and was just about to get out of bed when she drowsily opened her eyes and grabbed the hem of his clothes.
“Chuan Chuan, where are you going so early?”
“It’s already noon.”
“Cultivators don’t need to worry about things like that.”
After saying this, Luo Xi closed her eyes again and scooted toward Bai Qianshuang. The latter seemed to sense something, expressionlessly turned over, and pushed her back toward Ye Chuan.
Luo Xi: “?”
Ye Chuan paid no attention to their little antics. He got dressed and walked out of the room, but the phone in his pocket suddenly began to vibrate.
The Myriad Realms Landlord app had opened on its own at some point. The world passage to New Tianxuan was flickering constantly, and the world coordinates that had previously remained stable were now covered by a layer of black mist.
[An anomaly has appeared in the New Tianxuan world.]
[The current world passage is being affected by an unknown force.]
Hmm?
How strange.
Had something happened over in New Tianxuan?
Ye Chuan stared at the screen for a while. Although the world passage had been affected, it had not been completely severed. At the very least, he could still enter normally for now.
Bai Qianshuang and Luo Xi emerged from the room at that moment. Their clothes were slightly disheveled, and neither had had time to fix her long hair.
Luo Xi yawned and asked, “Chuan Chuan, what are you staring at your phone for so early in the morning?”
“It’s already noon.”
“Close enough.”
Ye Chuan found the remark strangely familiar. “There’s a problem with the passage to Tianxuan. I’m going over to take a look.”
Bai Qianshuang stared at the black mist slowly spreading across the screen. “I’m coming with you.”
“I’ll go over and confirm the situation first.”
Ye Chuan put away his phone. “If there really is a problem, I’ll come back for you.”
Bai Qianshuang did not insist. She merely raised a hand to straighten his crooked collar, then nodded lightly.
Luo Xi leaned against the doorway with a beaming smile. “Then come back soon, Chuan Chuan. Otherwise, Qian Shuang will put on that cold face while worrying about you again.”
“I’m not.”
“Fine, fine. You’re not.”
Ye Chuan did not stay to listen to them argue. He directly opened the world passage to New Tianxuan, and familiar spatial energy quickly spread out beneath his feet.
The scenery around him blurred.
When his vision cleared, Ye Chuan was already standing on the continent of New Tianxuan. This time, however, his arrival point was far from peaceful.
Dozens of formations covered the nearby valley, their spiritual radiance illuminating almost the entire sky. More than a dozen elders from the Holy Land stood guard at various points around the formations, all of them wearing solemn expressions.
The moment Ye Chuan stepped out of the passage, everyone nearby turned their eyes toward him.
The person standing at the very front turned around, allowing Ye Chuan to see his face clearly.
It was the Holy Son, Ji Lingxuan.
The moment Ji Lingxuan saw Ye Chuan, he visibly relaxed and hurried over.
“Brother Ye, you’re finally back.”
Ye Chuan glanced at the formations operating continuously around them. “Why are all of you guarding this place?”
“For an entire day and night.”
The usual ease had vanished from Ji Lingxuan’s face. He turned to look into the distance. “All we could do was stay near the passage and hope you would discover the anomaly yourself.”
Ye Chuan followed his gaze.
In the distance, where there should have been a range of rolling mountains, a vast expanse of darkness now churned and surged.
The space at the edge of the darkness twisted constantly. Mountains, trees, and the spiritual energy in the surrounding area were slowly vanishing, as though some force were forcibly erasing them from New Tianxuan.
“The Forbidden Zone?”
“Yes.”
Ji Lingxuan raised a hand and pointed into the depths of the darkness. “Since last night, the Forbidden Zone’s outer perimeter has been expanding outward. The three nearest mountain ranges have already disappeared completely.”
At first, the Holy Land had assumed that someone had triggered the seal on the Forbidden Zone, so they immediately sent several elders to investigate. Yet after entering less than a hundred li, those people forgot why they had come there in the first place.
Later, two experts from the Ascension Realm personally led a team inside.
They did manage to come back out, but they insisted that the people inside had already been replaced by something from the Forbidden Zone. The moment they emerged from the darkness, they attacked each other.
If Ji Lingxuan had not activated the outer formations in time, the two Ascension Realm experts would likely have died at each other’s hands.
The Ascension Realm was the strongest realm in New Tianxuan, yet even its experts were helpless against the Forbidden Zone.
“How are they now?”
“They’re under control for the moment.”
Ji Lingxuan paused briefly. “But neither of them has fully regained consciousness. Quite a few of the cultivators who entered the Forbidden Zone are in the same condition.”
Ye Chuan did not remain near the passage. He headed directly toward the Forbidden Zone, and Ji Lingxuan immediately followed beside him.
After passing through several formations, they began to encounter more and more cultivators.
Ji Lingxuan did not have everyone stop to greet Ye Chuan. Instead, he led him straight to a stone hall that had been hastily constructed nearby.
Inside the hall lay more than a dozen cultivators who had just been rescued from the Forbidden Zone. The two Ascension Realm experts were confined separately in the center, each bound by dozens of golden chains.
The moment Ye Chuan entered the stone hall, one of the old men suddenly opened his eyes and glared at the man trapped on the opposite side.
“He isn’t Chen Xuan!”
“Chen Xuan died in there long ago!”
Upon hearing this, the other Ascension Realm expert abruptly raised his head as well. “You’re the fake one! You killed all of them!”
The spiritual energy within both men erupted at the same time, making the chains around them rattle violently. Several nearby elders hurriedly poured their power into the formation, preventing the two men from breaking free.
Ji Lingxuan frowned. “They’ve been like this ever since they came out of the Forbidden Zone. Every so often, they regain consciousness for a brief moment, but soon afterward they start treating everyone around them as enemies.”
Ye Chuan walked between the two men and raised a hand to press it against one of their foreheads. Chaotic power flowed through his fingertip and directly into the man’s sea of consciousness.
The once-intact sea of consciousness was already filled with vast quantities of dark-red mist. Dozens of tiny eyes floated within it, continuously forcing false memories into his soul.
Ye Chuan was familiar with these things.
Outer God corruption.
His chaotic power instantly gathered, forcibly tearing all the dark-red mist out from the depths of the man’s sea of consciousness. He then slowly dragged it out through the old man’s forehead.
The dozens of eyes opened simultaneously. Just as they tried to burrow into Ye Chuan’s arm, he crushed them into ash with a single motion.
The old man’s body shuddered violently. The confusion in his eyes gradually faded, and he looked around in bewilderment.
“Where is this…?”
“The Holy Land’s camp.”
Ji Lingxuan came over to him. “Do you remember what happened inside the Forbidden Zone?”
The old man remained silent for a long time before pressing a hand to his forehead in pain.
“I don’t remember. I only remember that we kept moving deeper inside. Later, we heard someone speaking.”
“What did they say?”
“I couldn’t make it out.”
The old man closed his eyes and struggled to recall what had happened. But in the next moment, his face suddenly went deathly pale.
“No… That thing wasn’t speaking to us.”
Ji Lingxuan frowned. “Then who was it speaking to?”
The old man did not answer. He merely lifted his head and suddenly looked toward Ye Chuan.
Ye Chuan cleansed the contamination from another Ascendant Realm cultivator’s sea of consciousness. Although both their memories remained fragmented, they had each mentioned the same thing.
A road had appeared deep within the forbidden grounds.
A road paved from the Great Dao of Chaos.
It did not lead out of the forbidden grounds. Instead, it extended all the way into the deepest reaches of the darkness, as though something were waiting for its true master.
“The Great Dao of Chaos…”
Ji Lingxuan repeated the words softly, then turned to Ye Chuan. “Brother Ye, this should have something to do with you, right?”
“Let’s go take a look.”
Ye Chuan did not answer directly. He turned and left the stone hall, continuing toward the outskirts of the forbidden grounds.
Ji Lingxuan ordered the other elders to remain at the camp, then followed with several old ancestors from the Ascendant Realm.
The closer they drew to the forbidden grounds, the quieter the surrounding world became.
The scene ahead gradually came into focus.
At the very edge of the darkness floated half of a ruined Imperial Palace. Several stone pillars lay suspended in midair, while behind the palace stretched a star sea that had long since gone dark.
A colossal skeleton floated silently within that star sea. Its remaining half a skull faced the group, and a dim crimson light continued to flicker in its hollow eye socket.
Though it had perished countless eons ago, the aura lingering from the corpse still caused the surrounding space to collapse without end.
The moment several Ascendant Realm cultivators saw the skeleton, their souls were wracked with tearing pain. They immediately lowered their heads, not daring to look at it any longer.
“Is that… human?”
Ji Lingxuan gazed at the skeleton, which was larger than a mountain range. His voice had clearly dropped to a whisper.
“An Immortal Emperor.”
Ye Chuan’s answer was calm.
Ji Lingxuan turned to look at him. His lips moved slightly, but he did not immediately ask what realm an Immortal Emperor actually represented.
Because beneath the Imperial Palace, a gray, shadowy road was slowly extending from the depths of the darkness.
Ji Lingxuan had once seen Ye Chuan wield the power of chaos.
The aura of the road before him was almost exactly the same as Ye Chuan’s, yet it was countless times more vast than the power of chaos he had witnessed before.
“Brother Ye.”
Ji Lingxuan tightened his grip on his weapon, his gaze still fixed on the road. “Why is this power so similar to yours?”
Ye Chuan did not answer.
“Return—”
Several Ascendant Realm cultivators instinctively took half a step backward, while Ji Lingxuan abruptly turned to look at Ye Chuan beside him.
“Who is it calling?”
Ye Chuan stared at the indistinct imperial figure at the end of the darkness and fell silent for a moment.
“Me.”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nto another world, I bought a slave for the first time, never expecting the silver wolf girl to be so cute... Lin Feng: I know it's cold, but you don't have to sneak into my bed! Yuna: Just sharing body warmth, if you dare do anything naughty, I'll definitely...
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
