Inside a quiet chamber of Azure Stone Palace.
Immortal Qi so dense it was nearly liquid filled the entire space. Simply sitting here, every breath felt like drawing in the purest essence of heaven and earth.
Qin Feng sat cross-legged atop a warm jade cushion, his eyes slightly closed while his mind had long since sunk into his body.
After all that commotion just now—clashing head-on with a Saint and extorting the Chan Sect—he might have looked calm on the surface, but the drain on his mind had been considerable.
More importantly, he needed to take stock of this harvest.
With a slight thought, an azure screen visible only to him quietly unfolded before his eyes.
Sure enough, the task that had been hanging in the system task bar was now marked as completed.
[Task: Repel the Chan Sect's Twelve Golden Immortals and uphold Shi Ji's dignity.] [Task Rating: Super S-rank!] [Rating Description: The host crushed the Chan Sect's Twelve Golden Immortals with thunderous force, then used supreme might to force back a Saint's decree and compel the Chan Sect to empty its coffers in compensation. Not only did the host perfectly uphold Shi Ji's dignity, but he also spread Skeleton Mountain's prestige throughout the Primordial World, greatly enhancing the host's reputation as a "backer." Performance far exceeded expectations. A Super S-rank rating is hereby awarded!]
Seeing that evaluation, Qin Feng's lips curled upward slightly.
Super S-rank. That was fairly fitting.
Immediately afterward, the crisp sound of reward settlement rang out in his mind.
[Ding! Super S-rank task rewards have been issued!] [Congratulations, host, for obtaining: Time Law Fragment ×1!] [Congratulations, host, for obtaining: a massive amount of Merit Golden Light!]
Here it came!
Qin Feng's eyes instantly lit up, and even his breathing grew more hurried.
The massive amount of Merit Golden Light was secondary. That Time Law Fragment was the greatest gain of this venture!
Time was supreme; space was king.
This was one of the most exalted and unfathomable laws among the Three Thousand Great Daos.
Without any hesitation, Qin Feng chose to fuse with it.
Hum!
A strange fragment emitting an illusory glow, as though it did not exist within this time and space, appeared out of thin air in his Purple Mansion Sea of Consciousness.
Upon that fragment seemed to be engraved every mystery of the universe from birth to destruction. Countless bizarre scenes flickered through creation and annihilation within it. A single glance was enough to make even a Grand Unity Golden Immortal's Dao Heart collapse completely and plunge into ruin.
But Qin Feng's Chaos Undying Body possessed an unimaginable affinity for the Three Thousand Great Daos.
The instant the Time Law Fragment appeared, his Primordial Spirit, like a chaotic sea of stars, actively radiated a wave of yearning.
The fragment offered no resistance whatsoever and lightly merged into Qin Feng's Primordial Spirit.
Boom!
At that instant, Qin Feng felt as though his entire understanding of the world had been utterly overturned.
His consciousness seemed to stretch infinitely, breaking free of his body's shackles and leaping beyond the confines of time and space.
He saw the quiet chamber's past. It had once been a jagged boulder, weathering the wind and frost of countless years.
He saw the quiet chamber's present. He was seated cross-legged here, charging toward that supreme realm.
He even saw the quiet chamber's hazy future. It still stood here, except the palace's master seemed to have gained a few more lovely female companions...
Past, present, and future.
The three timelines that had once been clearly distinct now seemed to weave together into a vast net within reach.
Qin Feng's comprehension of time reached an unprecedented new level.
Just as he immersed himself in that profound epiphany, the massive amount of Merit Golden Light finally arrived.
Like the Milky Way pouring down from the nine heavens, hundreds of millions of auspicious golden rays pierced through the quiet chamber's restrictions and cascaded down in a mighty torrent, wrapping Qin Feng entirely within an enormous golden cocoon.
Merit Golden Light was heaven's reward for those who contributed to maintaining the Primordial World's stability, and its uses were inexhaustible.
At this moment, the Merit Golden Light acted like the gentlest catalyst, frantically cleansing Qin Feng's body and Primordial Spirit, causing the speed of his fusion with the Time Law to surge once more.
"Not enough!"
Qin Feng suddenly opened his eyes. Within them, sun, moon, and stars seemed to rise and fall.
A breakthrough in laws alone was not enough to let him cross that threshold in one stroke.
He needed energy—an appalling amount, enough to burst apart an entire Great Thousand World!
With a thought, countless Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures extorted from the Chan Sect surged from his storage space like a landslide and tsunami, instantly piling up throughout the quiet chamber.
Ten-thousand-year Immortal herbs and spiritual roots, divine gold and jade stones containing Innate Dao Rhyme, and even several decent Innate and Acquired Spiritual Treasures.
"Refine!"
Qin Feng spat out a cold word.
The Chaos Undying Body operated at full force, and a terrifying vortex abruptly formed around him.
Within the quiet chamber, those treasures that would drive even Quasi-Saints mad seemed to have encountered the most terrifying furnace in existence.
Whether indestructible Innate divine iron or Immortal herbs and spiritual roots as gentle as jade, the instant they touched that vortex, they were broken down into the most fundamental and purest torrents of energy.
The multicolored torrents of energy became dazzling rivers that rushed into Qin Feng's body, all of them swallowed by his Chaos Dao Body like a bottomless abyss.
Qin Feng's cultivation aura began to soar wildly at an astonishing speed!
The bottleneck at the peak of the Grand Unity Golden Immortal realm—the impassable chasm that had trapped countless Great Powers of the Primordial World for hundreds of millions of years—was as fragile as a sheet of paper before him.
There was not the slightest pause.
There was not the slightest obstruction.
Rumble!
An invisible shackle shattered within his body.
A terrifying pressure far surpassing that of a Grand Unity Golden Immortal, towering above heaven and earth, erupted from Qin Feng!
Quasi-Saint!
He had succeeded!
At the very instant Qin Feng broke through, the heavens above Azure Stone Palace changed color.
The previously clear sky stretching for ten thousand miles was instantly shrouded by endless Chaos Qi.
An illusory yet real River of Time appeared from nothingness, spanning the sky.
Within the river, countless scenes endlessly rose and vanished: the brutal slaughter of the Dragon-Han Calamity, the blood-soaked Primordial World during the conflict between the witches and demons, and even horrifying visions from some future era, where Saints bled and heaven and earth returned to chaos.
Around the River of Time, space constantly appeared and collapsed like shattered mirrors, forming one deep and terrifying black hole after another.
Time and space, two supreme laws, intertwined and danced at this moment, unleashing a terrifying phenomenon enough to make heaven and earth tremble.
This phenomenon instantly alarmed all of Azure Stone Palace.
Outside the palace gates, Shi Ji, who had been sitting cross-legged, abruptly opened her eyes.
She looked up at the sky, her beautiful phoenix eyes filled with incomparable shock and horror.
"Th-this... someone has attained the Quasi-Saint realm?"
Shi Ji's mind trembled wildly.
She had never heard of such a terrifying breakthrough phenomenon!
Even when Daoist Duobao, the eldest disciple under her master Tongtian Jiaozhu, had broken through to the Quasi-Saint realm, the spectacle he caused had been nowhere near one ten-thousandth of what she saw now!
The source of this aura... was in the direction of the quiet chamber!
It was Dao Brother!
Dao Brother had broken through to the Quasi-Saint realm!
The instant that thought arose, indescribable ecstasy and pride overwhelmed Shi Ji's reason.
But she had not forgotten her duty!
If such a heaven-shaking phenomenon were allowed to spread, it would likely alert all the Great Powers of the Primordial World. Then it would inevitably bring endless trouble to Dao Brother, who was in the midst of his breakthrough.
"Rise!"
Shi Ji did not hesitate in the slightest. Her jade hands rapidly formed seals before her.
With her sharp cry, countless mysterious formation patterns across the mountain of Azure Stone Palace suddenly lit up.
Hum—
The mountain-protecting grand formation Qin Feng had casually set up earlier was activated to its utmost limit at this moment.
An enormous invisible curtain of light shot into the sky. Like a giant bowl turned upside down, it concealed Azure Stone Palace and the terrifying Quasi-Saint phenomenon above it.
From the outside, Azure Stone Palace remained as tranquil as ever, wreathed in Immortal Qi, as though nothing had happened.
Only after doing all this did Shi Ji breathe a slight sigh of relief.
But she did not dare relax in the slightest.
With one step, her figure instantly appeared outside the door to the quiet chamber where Qin Feng was cultivating in seclusion.
With a turn of her delicate hand, a treasure sword gleaming with cold light was already in her grasp.
She simply stood there in silence, her posture straight as a pine, like an incomparably beautiful female God of War.
She fulfilled her promise, using herself as a shield to guard him.
Those beautiful eyes that had once shed tears from emotion were now completely filled with unprecedented determination and pride.
Her Dao Brother was the greatest hero in this world.
And she was the first—and final—line of defense protecting that hero.
Before you continue