Shen Yang had just arranged the formation, and Chen Yi learned it with a single glance.
He even already envisioned an improved version in his mind.
But there was no need for such trouble.
He simply followed Shen Yang’s example and deployed the formation again with his own hands. The “Empowerment” and “Formation Master” attributes would naturally enhance its effects.
Chen Yi suspected that Shen Yang’s methods hadn’t detected anything unusual because the Ancient Wasteland Secret Realm was hidden too well. Over generations, none of the guardians had ever found the Path to Ascension, which showed how deeply concealed it was.
The Shen family lacked no resources, and Shen Yang casually pulled out another full set of formation materials.
Chen Yi acted with fluid precision, deploying the celestial-grade Heavenly Topography Array even faster than Shen Yang could.
Shen Yang watched, utterly stunned.
“Is that a celestial formation?” Hua Wuyan and the Great Demon also recognized it.
“It truly is a celestial formation,” they said.
Shen Yang was dumbfounded.
“Although I haven’t poured all my effort into formations, I know how much harder it is to reach the celestial level in this path compared to alchemy or artifact crafting. And he’s so young—both a Martial God and a celestial-grade formation master...”
Hua Wuyan smiled kindly.
“Each wave pushes the one before it forward.”
Shen Yang was speechless.
“But this wave defies all reason...”
At that moment, an aura of mystery unconsciously shrouded Chen Yi in everyone’s eyes. His countless inconsistencies made him seem like a visitor from beyond the heavens.
The higher-quality Heavenly Topography Array emitted detection ripples that caused the surrounding space to undulate.
In an instant, the several Martial Gods present all sensed something odd and turned their gazes toward the same direction.
About fifty miles from Chen Yi, there was a region in midair where the evenly spreading detection ripples encountered an obstruction.
It was like water hitting a reef.
The group of flying beings immediately gathered there—Martial Gods in the center, and Martial Saints and Martial Kings arranged around the perimeter.
“This seems to be the place. But how do we open it?” someone asked.
Shen Yang stepped forward again.
“Let me activate a few celestial battle puppets to form a void...”
Before Shen Yang could finish, the Great Demon suddenly let out a roar that startled him.
The mass of pitch-black clouds rapidly condensed into a pale-faced scholar.
The scholar looked handsome and stood tall.
But his expression was twisted, his roars were continuous, and his face was full of murderous intent.
He struck out abruptly. Demonic flames surged, evaporating a layer of seawater below and forming a terrifying eye-shaped depression.
The martial artists on the three islands watched in terror.
“Rumble!!”
The Great Demon punched the juncture between the Ancient Wasteland Secret Realm and reality, sending countless spatial ripples spreading rapidly in all directions.
“Crack, crack, crack...”
Spatial fractures spread uncontrollably, like cracks in a spider web.
With the same power, the Great Demon hammered down another punch without any sign of a skill cooldown.
“Open wide!”
A third punch!
Each strike grew stronger than the last.
The residual shockwaves reached the ground, causing waves to surge and the islands to shake violently. Many martial artists standing on the small island’s shore were thrown into the sea, only to be slammed back onto the land by massive waves, leaving them tossed about.
“Is this the power of a Martial God? Just the aftermath shakes the earth so fiercely—truly terrifying!”
“I heard this lord was a demonic cultivator who died long ago. How terrifying would he be if he were alive?”
“A demonic cultivator? If a demonic cultivator this strong existed while he was alive, wouldn’t the human world have been a hell on earth?”
Someone noticed a blind spot.
The Great Demon was this strong and was a demonic cultivator, yet there were few records of him going on a murderous rampage.
In truth, the Great Demon had killed quite a few people.
But he didn’t slaughter indiscriminately—he only killed those who served his purposes.
This wasn’t because he was kind, but because he was in a hurry.
He had no time to run around causing trouble; he only wanted to rapidly increase his combat power, shatter the void, and ascend to the real world.
As Shen Yang fumbled with his props, he watched the Great Demon tear open the Ancient Wasteland Secret Realm with three punches, dumbfounded.
The Great Demon glanced at him and snorted coldly.
“Waiting for your slow methods with this ‘path’ and that ‘path’ would take forever!”
Shen Yang was good-natured and didn’t argue. In fact, he even complimented the Great Demon’s punch strength.
A spatial vortex appeared at the point of the Great Demon’s attack.
Unlike spatial passages to other planes, small worlds like the Ancient Wasteland Secret Realm or the Stellar Mystic Realm essentially existed in the same dimension as the human world.
So once a gap was opened, a stable channel naturally formed. The world’s laws repaired this very slowly, and closing it required manual intervention.
“The channel is open! All forces, advance!”
Like “Dora Shen,” Shen Yang reached into his storage ring and pulled out a massive jade ladder, spanning it across the spatial gap above the sea.
The 120,000 elite martial artists from various regions of the human world stepped on the waves, weapons in hand, climbed the jade ladder, and charged into the Ancient Wasteland.
“Seize the Path to Ascension!”
“The Path to Ascension belongs to all of us!”
“Kill!!!”
The momentum of the 120,000 martial artists was formidable.
Before joining the battle, their respective leaders had already rallied them. Chen Yi didn’t need to worry about that.
Watching the brave silhouettes of these martial artists, Chen Yi wondered how many of them would survive.
Risk and reward were proportional.
If the Ancient Wasteland Secret Realm could be conquered, the resources within this mysterious region—hidden for countless ages—would naturally belong to these pioneers.
Even the lowest-ranking among them would get a decent share.
As for other forces in the human world, they might not even get a piece of the pie.
Emperor Yongcheng, under the protection of Li Wentian’s forces, slit his wrist, letting his blood drip onto an indescribable fleshy sphere.
The sphere twisted and deformed, taking on the shape of Li Wentian.
Emperor Yongcheng’s lips had turned pale, and his vitality was severely damaged, but he didn’t die.
Li Wentian stared at the gap in the sky and the martial artists rushing in on the jade ladder, his gaze sharp as a torch.
“The Path to Ascension, huh?”
Chen Yi, hearing this, immediately exclaimed.
“What the... No one has even reported anything to you yet, and you already know?”
Li Wentian glanced at Chen Yi, chin held high.
“In the ancient, unverifiable eras, legend says that the Human Ancestor discovered the real world and left behind the Path to Ascension, so future generations could more easily reach that higher world. The Human Ancestor appointed a group of cultivators called the ‘Wasteland Guardians’ to protect the Path to Ascension for generations, preventing other races from coveting it or losing it to some unforeseen problems.
“The original intention was noble. But human nature is greedy and selfish.
“These Wasteland Guardians eventually formed a closed interest group, cast aside the rules the Human Ancestor set for using the Path to Ascension, and claimed it for themselves.
“This seems to have sparked a war of considerable scale.
“All I know is that from the moment these Wasteland Guardians betrayed humanity, the Path to Ascension vanished along with them. I once speculated that the Path to Ascension must have been hidden in some undiscovered small world. And now, it turns out I was right!”
Chen Yi raised a trembling thumb.
“Bro, your knowledge is just too vast. I feel like Old Shen here has wasted his thirty thousand years!”
Meanwhile, Shen Yang had already entered the secret realm and couldn’t help sneezing.
Li Wentian’s eyes blazed with surging battle intent.
“No time to waste. Let’s set out! Today, I will stand in for the Human Ancestor and purge these traitors!”
A gust of wind blew, and Li Wentian vanished without a trace.
Chen Yi looked up, only to see the fading silhouette of Li Wentian at the entrance of the secret realm.
“Now that’s a true master!”
Chen Yi had no doubt that Li Wentian could go toe-to-toe with him at his peak—if he were still alive.
Even among Martial Gods, there were differences in power!
transmigrates into the role of a villainous rich second-generation kid in an urban fantasy novel, and gets bound to a god-tier choice system. Right at the start, he catches the female lead stealing exam papers! This triggers the villain's choice options! [Choice 1: Pretend you didn't see anything] [Choice 2: Loudly call her out, drawing everyone's attention] [Choice 3: ...] And thus, a twisted villain is born. To avoid getting killed by the protagonist, he has no choice but to take down all the protagonists first. Jiang Che: Nobody understands being twisted better than me!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
