"Temporary Guest Elders don't have to go through the procedures for the main register." Su Yunshang's voice steadied. "A Guest Elder can be entered in the Dao Domain's supplementary register with the endorsement of a grand elder from any peak. But there's one condition: the candidate must enter the Abyssal Eye and come back out."
"The Abyssal Eye?"
"Yes." Su Yunshang took an old jade scroll from her sleeve, set it on the table, and gently unfurled it.
The jade scroll held a damaged map. A huge vortex marked its center, surrounded by dense Dao Patterns, laws, and annotations. The handwriting varied widely; most of it was probably left by those who had entered the Abyssal Eye over the generations.
"The Abyssal Eye is one of the Dao Domain's nine forbidden grounds, and one of only three not located on the Dao Domain Continent."
Su Yunshang traced a circle around the vortex on the map. "According to the account left by the last person to emerge ten thousand years ago, it's a fractured region of space that fell deep into the Dao Domain's earth veins tens of thousands of years ago and connected with the Dao Domain's grand array. The fragment contains a small world of its own, where the Heavenly Dao Laws are exceptionally advanced and immortal spiritual energy is abundant. Anyone in the Tower-Ascending Realm dies upon entry. At minimum, an entrant must be in the late Celestial Being Realm, unless their Divine Embryo can already resonate with the Dao Essence of an Immortal City."
"The last person came out ten thousand years ago?" I repeated.
"Yes." Su Yunshang nodded. "Seven went in. One emerged after reaching Void Treading. The Soul Tokens of the other six went dark one by one over the following thousand years, which means