Zou Zi's words were no different from a thunderclap striking level ground—a truly earthshaking opening remark.
It was like a deep spring mountain that had seen no visitors through all four seasons, pine blossoms falling along the path, clouds and mist winding around doors and windows, when a flute suddenly rang out.
None of the Council Members present were fools. They understood perfectly well that the difference between three Fifteen Realm cultivators existing in the world at once and only one Fifteen Realm cultivator remaining in the world was as vast as heaven and earth.
Everyone unconsciously sat up straight. Even Du Shanyin, who had never been timid and had maintained a languid expression throughout, began holding his breath and listening intently.
They had originally believed that after the Three Teachings Patriarch scattered their Dao, the key to the rise of heroes and the race to cross the river over the next thousand years would lie in Immortals proving the Dao ascension—and, even more so, in old Ascension Realm cultivators taking another step atop a hundred-foot pole and unifying with the Dao to reach the Fourteen Realm.
Take the presently insignificant sword cultivator Du Shanyin. He was deeply confident that, among the future mountaintop figures of the world, there would certainly be a place for him. Perhaps he could not sit as an equal with those Old Fourteens, elusive and ever-changing like divine dragons, but he could at least exchange a few words with new Fourteens—or perhaps Ascension Realm cultivators. They would have to listen seriously to what he had to say and consider whether it made sense.
Who could have imagined that within a mere three to five hundred years, the world might see a brand-new Fifteen Realm cultivator? Whoever it was, whichever world they came from, once they