Arrival of the Immortal Emperor

Fifteen years later.

In the rear courtyard of the Heavenly Court.

Gu Changyuan lay on a rocking chair, his body swaying gently back and forth with its motion, his gaze fixed on the patch of blue sky above, fragmented by the leaves of the trees overhead.

Over the past fifteen years, the Heavenly Court had expanded greatly in scale.

Listening to the faint sounds of voices drifting from afar, Gu Changyuan felt a sense of contentment—like watching a tree he had planted with his own hands grow into a lush, thriving form.

Just then, a surging power burst forth from deep within him without warning.

The rocking chair stopped moving. His body tensed for a brief moment, then quickly relaxed.

His expression showed no change, but inside him, a cataclysmic transformation was taking place.

The torrential force surging from all directions—like a flood—was violently scouring his meridians, dantian, sea of consciousness, and soul.

Every inch of his flesh was being reshaped; every bone was being tempered; every cell was being infused with a power surpassing all his previous accumulations.

This was not the slow, gradual accumulation day by day and month by month. It was a violent, relentless, leaping ascent like a dam breaking open.

The changes weren’t just internal.

The space around Gu Changyuan began to warp slightly—not because he was deliberately releasing power, but because the immense force of his immortal emperor energy resonated with the laws of the outside world.

A vortex formed with Gu Changyuan at its center, spinning slowly at first, then faster and faster until it became a tornado of spiritual energy hundreds of zhang in diameter.

The spiritual energy within the vortex was so dense it nearly condensed into liquid, emitting a dazzling milky-white light that enveloped the entire Heavenly Court.

The vortex immediately caught the attention of all the disciples in the Heavenly Court.

Their faces bore a mixture of expressions—shock, curiosity, awe, excitement, and an instinctive reaction to something beyond comprehension.

Gu Changyuan still lay on the rocking chair, now fixed firmly to the ground, utterly still.

His eyes were closed, his breathing steady and deep, but the aura around him showed no sign of diminishing.

The vortex of spiritual energy spun above him for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, then gradually contracted layer by layer from the edges toward the center.

When it had shrunk to several zhang in diameter, Gu Changyuan raised his right hand and waved it lightly toward the sky.

With that gesture, the vortex abruptly dispersed.

Once its structure was broken, the energy naturally spread outward.

The dense spiritual energy, freed from its containment, turned into countless tiny, milky-white specks of light, drifting down from the sky and falling upon every corner of the Heavenly Court.

Spiritual rain.

At that moment, the entire Heavenly Court was drenched in spiritual rain.

The concentration of spiritual energy in the air instantly surged severalfold.

No one wasted a single moment.

They immediately sat cross-legged, closed their eyes, focused their minds, and began cultivating at full force, transforming this heavenly bounty into their own power.

Gu Changyuan still lay on the rocking chair, his body slightly reclined, his gaze calm as he watched the falling spiritual rain in the sky.

The aura around him had stabilized—from that violent, uncontrollable state back to an unfathomable calm.

He raised his hand and summoned the system interface.

The words “Immortal King” that had once appeared on the system panel were gone, replaced by two new characters: Immortal Emperor.

Gu Changyuan’s eyes swept over the golden, gleaming characters, then moved downward. Under the source column, he saw a familiar name: Xing Huang.

It was her cultivation feedback that had pushed him from Immortal King to the Immortal Emperor realm.

His gaze lingered on Xing Huang’s name for a moment, then he withdrew it and closed the system interface.

The rocking chair began to sway gently again, and his entire body moved back and forth with it, resuming its previously relaxed posture.

At the entrance to the rear courtyard, a few soft footsteps sounded.

They were not deliberately hushed—only casual steps that close companions didn’t bother to hide.

Gu Changyuan turned his head slightly, scanning the faces of the three women, a lazy smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

He raised his hand and gestured toward them.

“Xiaoxue, Ling’er, Xiao Shi.”

The three women stood around Gu Changyuan’s rocking chair in a loose semicircle, their gazes all fixed on him.

Then they simultaneously sensed the change.

Their Master’s presence felt different from before.

In the past, though unfathomably deep, it could still be perceived as “existing.”

But now—there was nothing.

It wasn’t that it had disappeared—it had “transcended the scope of perception.”

He sat there, lying on the rocking chair, at ease, with a gentle expression, but the moment their spiritual senses touched his aura, they felt as though they had been swallowed by a bottomless ocean.

This gap wasn’t merely about being a single major realm above them—it was more essential, more fundamental, like looking at the same world from a completely different dimension.

Xiao Shi spoke first.

“Master, your aura…”

Gu Changyuan leaned back against the rocking chair, his gaze sweeping over the three women’s faces, warm and calm.

“Mm, I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough.”

The three women fell silent for a moment, their expressions shifting in various ways.

In their eyes, their Master was already on par with those Immortal Emperors—called “Ancestor” and “Court Lord” by them. This meant his cultivation had already matched theirs, perhaps even surpassed some.

And now he had made another breakthrough. Could he be touching the legendary supreme realm?

That realm—beyond the Immortal Emperor—of which only vague records existed in the ancient texts of the Ten Thousand Realms?

……

Another three years passed.

In those three years, everything in the Heavenly Court operated smoothly and steadily.

During this time, the Star Clan, the Five Houses of the Central Continent, the Purple Dawn Immortal Court, the Cloud Desolate Immortal Court, and other forces each channeled their Immortal Emperor cultivation feedback to Gu Changyuan.

Each surge of feedback steadily lifted his cultivation, solidifying his foundation within the Immortal Emperor realm and deepening his accumulated power at this level.

He remained at the Immortal Emperor level, but there were significant distinctions between even Immortal Emperors.

A novice Immortal Emperor and an ancient Immortal Emperor who had honed this realm for tens of thousands of years might both be called Immortal Emperors, but their combat power could differ by several times—or even dozens of times.

And Gu Changyuan was rapidly closing that gap. One by one, the causal threads of Immortal Emperors crossed the void and connected to his destiny, channeling the power of their hundreds of thousands of years into him like trickling streams merging into one great river.