Return to the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands

(Day One of Returning to the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands)

With that, a full moon emerged behind Taiyin's head, its phases cycling without pause until it condensed into a lightless, pure black—the extreme yin and extreme dark of Dark Night itself.

At the same time, the Taiyin Moon Blade at his waist slid from its sheath. He gripped it with both hands, pouring the abyssal, vast Extreme Yin Power into the weapon.

In utter silence, the Myriad Daos retreated. The remnants of Immortal Domain laws lingering in the void of the Immortal Ascension Road, along with the traces of the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands' laws, were torn apart together.

Within this stretch of void located inside the Realm Barrier of the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, a massive rift was forcibly ripped open, spewing endless immortal light and lightning.

Taiyin simply stepped forward and walked inside.

Within the spacetime passage, boundless chaotic energy surged and roiled. Immeasurable radiance bloomed. Endless immortal light and heavenly punishment thunder roared wildly.

This was akin to a foreign object entering a body, triggering the immune system's counterattack.

It was the instinctive rejection reaction of the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands' Realm Barrier.

What was called the Immortal Ascension Road was something like an external organ—forged from fragments of both the Immortal Domain's Realm Barrier and the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands' Realm Barrier, blending their laws together.

Before the Immortal Ascension Road officially opened at the correct time and place, whether one tried to forcefully break through from the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands into the road, or advanced from within the road toward the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands—

It was like a pathogen invading from outside the body, or flesh and blood trying to burrow out from within.

Either way, it would summon the instinctive rejection of the cosmic Realm Barrier, triggering a catastrophic calamity.

Even for a Supreme Being, this required full-force effort to survive.

Back then, the Taiyin Human Emperor had been gravely wounded by the colossal force of the Boundary Sea. With his Primordial Spirit and physical body shattered, and after encountering some bizarre, deathly phenomenon, his injuries were so severe that he could no longer withstand this rejection force. He was forced to abandon half of his crippled body on the Immortal Ascension Road.

As a result, when he returned home, not even a complete corpse remained.

At the end of the surging chaotic energy, a faint glimmer of light appeared. Taiyin raised his eyes and could vaguely sense the familiar scent of his homeland's laws. His gaze complex, he murmured:

"My homeland, which I have not returned to for hundreds of thousands of years... I am back!"

He raised his hand and struck another blade.

In the universe called the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, where the stars were dim and lifeless, devoid of any vitality or Spiritual Energy, where even time and space had nearly ground to a halt—and where continuing forward led only to endless chaotic energy—

A place that should have been the dark, lightless border of the cosmos suddenly blazed with brilliant light.

Along with tribulation clouds covering dozens of light-years, endless lightning danced, phantom images of ascending immortals appeared, and a massive hole erupted in the void, exuding a destructive aura.

Within the endless heavenly punishment lightning, an overwhelmingly powerful pressure—one strand of which could crush a galaxy—radiated outward, forcibly grinding away the tribulation clouds spanning dozens of light-years. The Myriad Daos sang in the void, and the laws of all heavens manifested.

From the ancient times of hundreds of thousands of years ago, when Taiyin had attained the Dao, the imprints he had carved into the heavens and the Myriad Daos—gradually fading with the passage of time—suddenly resonated.

As if injected with a powerful stimulant, they rose up with overwhelming force, pressing all other heavenly Daos beneath them.

Across the entire universe, in one forbidden zone after another, the ancient supreme beings who, in the days prior, had divided the Law Cubes surging with endless immortal energy among themselves in the starry sky, each retreating to their own forbidden zones to absorb the Immortal Substance within the immortal energy and restore their condition—all opened their eyes.

The universe was vast. For the weak, even traveling at light speed for tens of billions of years could not reach its end.

But for the strong, the universe was small. When acting at full power, they could cross from one end of the universe to the other in almost an instant.

For supreme beings standing at the peak of a realm, any anomaly caused by a peer-level powerhouse—unless they had laid down powerful Heaven-Deceiving Formation Patterns in advance—could hardly escape their perception.

Whether it was the Primordial Ancient Mine, Undying Mountain, the Immortal Mausoleum, the Sea of Reincarnation, the Underworld...

In every forbidden zone across the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, every supreme being, as well as those above the quasi-emperor level, sensed a faint leak of law-like energy resembling the Immortal Domain, along with the resonance of the Myriad Heavens' Laws.

As for the weak who had not yet become emperors, they were already numb.

They no longer had the energy to wail and rage as they had days before—(Heaven is unjust! Why, when the golden age has only just begun, has someone already attained the Dao and become a Great Emperor?)

Just a few days ago, they had been shocked by dozens of Extreme Dao Pressures spreading across the universe. Now, there was merely one more.

Deep within the Primordial Ancient Mine, endless immortal energy permeated the air.

The many ancient imperial clans, who had sealed themselves in slumber since ancient times, waiting only for the opening of the Immortal Ascension Road on the Big Dipper Star, had all awakened.

Inside one of the grand ancient mine caverns, space had been carved into a chaotic secret realm. In ages long past, the Dark Nether Clan and the Bright Clan had been mortal enemies, but later reconciled due to a Forbidden Child. Now, they dwelled together.

All the great saints and quasi-emperor-level experts of both clans had fully awakened, bowing in worship toward a mysterious figure at the center—one who bore traits of both clans, with light and darkness interwoven.

There, chaotic energy surged. Extreme light and extreme darkness flickered and intertwined in turns.

There, with every instant, power equivalent to a supreme being's full-force strike—enough to wipe out an entire starfield—surged and roiled.

Dao chains woven from White Tiger and Vermilion Bird laws continuously poured out of a golden-red cube, only to be violently suppressed by a massive hand.

This hand, like a black hole, steadily decomposed the Law Chains—which would otherwise have spread across hundreds of thousands of light-years, causing catastrophic destruction—into dense, rich immortal energy that filled the entire mine cavern.

From it, it extracted a faint but unending stream of Immortal Substance, enough to seal cracks in the Immortal Platform.

The owner of this hand, an ancient emperor known as the Light-Dark Supreme, suddenly frowned. Divine light flickered in his pupils as he fixed his gaze on the cosmic borderlands: "What?"

He recalled a battle from the ancient era, when he had awakened to hunt and devour living beings—a fight that had left him feeling humiliated. His expression turned somewhat ugly.

"This aura? It's the Taiyin Human Emperor! How is that possible?"

"Wasn't he on the verge of death after failing to break through the Immortal Ascension Road, dragging half a crippled body down from it? I personally dealt him the final blow and plundered his essence!"

"Why? Why has he suddenly come back to life? Did he truly become an immortal?"

The Light-Dark Supreme's expression shifted between gloom and uncertainty. A faint wisp of Extreme Dao Pressure radiated with his emotions, pressing down on the Bright Clan and Dark Nether Clan quasi-emperor-level experts prostrating around him, forcing their bones to creak and blood to seep from the corners of their mouths.

"Hmph!" With a cold snort, the Light-Dark Supreme opened his mouth and swallowed the Law Cubes within his grasp into his body, using his Ancient Emperor Weapons—the Light Staff and the Dark Shield—to suppress and refine them.

Meanwhile, he himself walked outward.

He was going to visit those ancient emperors and heavenly sovereigns who had once joined him in launching the Dark Turmoil, who had fought fiercely against the Taiyin Human Emperor back then, and with whom he had forged deep grudges.

Faintly, a cold snort rang out: "Hmph! Taiyin, even if you truly achieve immortality, so what? The past is no more. We have all obtained the treasures fallen from the Immortal Realm and recovered our peak condition. Even if we undergo extreme sublimation, we will not suffer much damage."

"So what if you become an immortal? We shall slay an immortal! The grudges of the past—it is time to end them once and for all..."