Deep in the chaos, Zixiao Palace still hung suspended through the ages, its walls and roof tiles flowing with an indifferent radiance of the same origin as the Heavenly Dao.
Within the palace, the Cloud Platform stood vast and lofty. Dao Ancestor Hongjun's figure had grown increasingly faint and transparent, almost completely merging into the void where countless Daoist Runes intertwined and Law Chains stretched across the backdrop.
Only his indifferent eyes, reflecting the Primordial Wilderness's rise and fall across the ages and its endless threads of Karma, still retained the final trace of an independent "observer" Status/Rank.
When the time came to accept disciples, as had been decided three thousand years earlier, in the direction of Kunlun Mountain,
the Mountain Gate opened, Primordial Chaos Dao Rhyme spread, and living beings gathered. The majestic Qi Flow and clamorous thoughts stirred by the activation of the Heart-Questioning Great Formation pierced through layer upon layer of spacetime barriers and were clearly reflected in those eyes of the Heavenly Dao.
Hongjun "saw" the grand scene at the foot of Kunlun Mountain, where all manner of living beings had gathered in a bustling, teeming throng, like ants clustering and dispersing, or sparks setting a prairie ablaze.
He "heard" the fiery longing in their hearts and their anxious, uneasy hopes.
He also "sensed" the subtle disturbances on the level of the laws when the three "Heart-Questioning Formations," each containing the True Meaning of the Great Dao and personally arranged by a Primordial Chaos Saint, were activated.
He perceived, too, the myriad, complex spiritual fluctuations released as the countless living beings within the formations' thoughts rose and fell and their Dao Hearts were put to the test.
Yet none of this stirred the slightest ripple of emotion in his vast consciousness, which had almost entirely merged