From Yin's Extremity to Yang, Ascending to Immortality

This era of the Mountain Sea Realm had already spanned a hundred thousand years.

The beings of heaven and earth had long forgotten the previous era. Even events from a few centuries ago had become history. Only the vast, ancient dynasties and those deathless ghosts and gods seemed unchanged since time immemorial.

The beings of heaven and earth could not know that before this mortal world's present age of declining magic, throughout the long million years encompassing the previous era, the one before it, and even earlier times, Immortal Deities had always ruled the Mountain-Sea Three Realms.

In those days, the Star Sea had the Heavenly Palace. It governed the turning of the seasons and the patterns of the stars, bringing favorable winds and timely rain to a peaceful mortal world.

In those days, the Netherworld had the Underworld. It governed reincarnation and rebirth, rewarded good and punished evil, held sway over ghosts and monsters, and cleansed filth and corruption.

Alas, the age of Immortal Deities had ended. The Immortal Deities of old had long since perished without a trace. Those who remained had lost their former clarity and grandeur, their dignity and upright bearing. They could only cling to life in the Mountain Sea Realm and, like this world on the verge of ruin, move helplessly toward their end.

In the Netherworld, the Xuanming Senluo Celestial Emperor of Heaven-Answered, Fortune-Borne, Everlasting Mandate—or rather, Rahu, Lord of the Netherworld in the previous era—stood before the main hall of his palace, gazing south.

Though hundreds of millions of miles separated him from it, though Calamity Aura, turbid vapors, and nether energy mingled across the Netherworld in a boundless haze that obscured every direction, Rahu clearly saw the savage battle.

The ghosts and gods he had spent ninety thousand years preparing for