Zhenyuanzi stood at the edge of Penglai Immortal Island. Below his feet, gray Chaos Energy Streams surged and roared like ancient beasts, tearing at the island but never crossing the invisible boundary around it.
Behind him, the Dao rhythms of Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou intertwined. Auspicious light and rosy mist rose through Innate Spiritual Qi so dense it seemed ready to drip, forming a realm of peerless wonder.
His dark robes fluttering, Zhenyuanzi stood with his hands behind his back and looked over the immortal realm he had completely refined and brought under his control. His gaze was fathomless. He had made his decision.
This innate Grotto-Heaven, born from Chaos Fragments, held mysteries and wonders from the dawn of creation. Its value was beyond measure.
Leaving it to drift across the Vast East Sea like rootless duckweed would not only squander a treasure of nature but invite disaster.
Dangerous currents were already stirring throughout the Primordial Wilderness. Without the strength to protect such a blessed land, the islands would become a prize coveted by all sides in the unknown calamities to come. Their splendor could be sullied, or the islands themselves destroyed.
An unprecedented, almost mad idea rose from the depths of his Dao heart. Like a star flaring to life, it illuminated every thought: Take all three islands and place them inside the Book of the Earth!
The Three Immortal Islands were formed from Chaos Fragments. Their foundations ran so deep they were almost connected to part of the Primordial Wilderness's origin. An ordinary mighty cultivator could scarcely budge them, let alone take them away.
Even those at the pinnacle of the Quasi-Saint realm would find it nearly impossible without some extraordinary opportunity and a heaven-shaking treasure.
Perhaps only a Primordial Chaos Saint, untouched by ten thousand calamities, wielding the Heavenly Dao and making words into law, could move them with supreme power.
But Zhenyuanzi was no ordinary mighty cultivator!
As his thoughts raced, a clear and workable method took shape.
He would not wrench the islands free by brute force. Instead, he would use his absolute understanding and control of this world, from its laws to its physical substance, to move a thousand pounds with four ounces of force.
First, he had fully comprehended and mastered the Innate Three Talents Grand Formation enveloping the islands.
The formation had arisen naturally with the islands. Founded on Heaven, Earth, and Man, it echoed the fundamental laws of the Primordial Wilderness. It was the islands' skeleton, veins, and breath, its mysteries without end.
Now it held no secrets from him. He knew the movement of every Rune and every shift in Qi Flow.
To control it was to control the central mechanism governing the islands and the "anchors" that faintly connected them to the Primordial Void.
Second, he had thoroughly refined the treasure at the heart of Penglai Island: the Central Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner.
This banner was a source of Wu Tu Essence from the Primordial Land. Of the highest quality, it offered peerless defense and was Invulnerable to All Magic. It was also the manifestation and core of the Wu Tu foundations of Penglai Island and, by extension, all three islands.
Refining it meant grasping the "root" of the islands on the level of Earth Law and commanding their deepest Origin power. The Apricot Yellow Banner now floated obediently within his dantian, its aura mingled with his own and its power as responsive as his limbs.
Finally, and most crucially, he possessed the Book of the Earth, the Classic of Mountains and Seas!
This treasure encompassed the Primordial Land Veins. It recorded the growth and decline of all things, held boundless space within it, and could regulate Earth Qi and reshape mountains and rivers. Its creative power was endless.
Only a wondrous book that could bear the land and hold a world within itself could contain a Grotto-Heaven the size of the Three Immortal Islands without damaging its origin.
The Book of the Earth contained a world of its own, its laws complete. It could sustain the three islands born of Chaos Fragments, keeping their spiritual vitality from collapsing once they left the main body of the Primordial Wilderness.
The formation would guide them, the banner would hold their roots, and the Book of the Earth would receive them. All three were indispensable!
If any one was missing, forcing the islands inside could damage them, shatter space, or even provoke an unpredictable backlash.
Zhenyuanzi's expression turned solemn, the light in his eyes drawing inward. He took a deep breath, as though pulling even the lingering Chaos Energy Streams into his chest. His Dao rhythm resonated with the spiritual vitality remaining on the islands as he brought his magic power, soul, and Dao Realm to a peak he had never reached before.
He moved.
With a slight shift of thought, his divine sense reached out like invisible threads and linked to the Innate Three Talents Grand Formation already imprinted upon every inch of the islands.
The hazy light that had faintly enveloped them suddenly grew solid. Gold, silver, and jade divine radiance shot into the sky. Countless Great Dao Runes emerged from deep within the void, flowing and interweaving into a web of laws that covered heaven and earth.
The formation's power no longer spread outward. Like the ribs of a closing umbrella, it began to contract inward with meticulous stability.
Its power was not dissipating. It was stripping away and severing, one by one, the islands' Space Connections to the outside world and their invisible "roots" in the Primordial Void.
Under the formation's force, the islands' Qi Flows were bound ever more tightly together. As light flowed over them, they seemed to become an indivisible whole, shifting from physical islands "fixed" at coordinates in the East Sea toward an "independent" Grotto-Heaven treasure.
At the same time, a tremor ran through his Niwan Palace, stirring the supreme treasure nurtured deep within his sea of consciousness: the Book of the Earth, the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Rustle— The sound of unseen pages turning rang out. A phantom scroll of Profound Yellow light slowly appeared above his head. Barely a foot long at first, it expanded until it blotted out the sky, casting its gentle, weighty glow across the empty sea.
The pages turned without wind. The patterns depicting the Primordial Land Veins shone brightly. Mountains rose and rivers rushed as though they had come alive, radiating a vast presence that could embrace and bear all things.
The Book of the Earth's power spread like a vast net, insubstantial yet everywhere at once. It slowly descended over the islands as the formation severed their ties to the outside world, ready to receive them.
The decisive step was to secure their foundations! Dividing his attention three ways, Zhenyuanzi drove the Central Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner in his dantian with all his strength.
He had refined the banner long ago, but only now would it reveal its supreme power as a symbol of Earth Authority and the core of the islands' Wu Tu Origin.
"Wu Tu, return to your source! Ten thousand rivers, flow to the sea! Come!"
Zhenyuanzi's low command carried the force of law. It was not loud, but it pulsed with the rhythm of the earth, its weight and majesty setting the surrounding laws in resonance.
Inside him, the Apricot Yellow Banner snapped in an unseen wind, blazing with Chaos-colored light. Vast quantities of pure Wutu Essence Qi poured from it like a great river. Yet that power did not disperse. Through the Origin Connection he had established with the islands by refining the banner, it crossed the void and reached the Earth Vein cores deep within all three islands, awakening them!
Hum—!
The space around the Three Immortal Islands shook violently!
This was no destructive quake of splitting mountains and crumbling cliffs. It was a resonance rising from the deepest level, touching the islands' very origins.
Every mountain and river, every immortal herb and spiritual root, even the Innate Spiritual Qi that filled the islands so densely it had nearly liquefied, seemed like a wanderer hearing his mother's call. All strained toward the Book of the Earth's Profound Yellow light and the banner's Wu Tu Origin, yearning to gather and return.
The islands' physical structures had not collapsed, but the very state of their existence was changing.
The Book of the Earth's all-embracing Power of Space, the banner's command over the earth's Origin power, and the Innate Three Talents Grand Formation's power to isolate and contract the islands worked together in precise harmony. Under those three supreme forces, the immense Three Immortal Islands, which had stood for untold ages, began to shrink before his eyes!
This was no mere compression of space, nor was it Illusionary Arts. Wrapped, guided, and protected by the three powers, the islands were gradually being "stripped away" from the stable reality of the Main Space of the Primordial Wilderness. They were "sinking" into and merging with the independent space inside the Book of the Earth, a space closer to the laws governing the earth's origin.
The process looked smooth, but it was painfully slow. Transforming each inch of space and moving each thread of spiritual vitality demanded immense magic power and concentration to guide and control. There could be no mistakes.
Zhenyuanzi's face was as stern as ancient ice. His hands formed Mysterious Dharma Seals without pause, his fingers flying as he drew upon the paths of the Great Dao. He adjusted the three powers with painstaking care, keeping them in flawless balance.
Fine beads of sweat had appeared on his brow. The Dao rhythm around him surged to its limit, betraying the tremendous strain.
Time passed in silence. How long, he could not tell. It might have been several hours, or an eternal instant.
The three immense immortal mountains spanning the East Sea drew their rainbow bridges inward, while their seas of cloud rolled back to their source. At last, amid that vast power, they became three dazzling streams of light: one serene and transcendent, belonging to Fangzhang; one pure and ethereal, belonging to Yingzhou; and one weighty and magnificent, belonging to Penglai.
Like rivers returning to the sea, like weary birds returning to their nests, the three streams streaked through the briefly silent void. Every one of them vanished into the Earth Book Phantom suspended in the air, its endless mysteries unfurled!
Boom!
The Book of the Earth gave a deep, satisfied hum. Its Profound Yellow light withdrew, and the phantom pages slowly closed. It returned to the form of an ancient scroll and flew into Zhenyuanzi's hand.
The scroll felt heavy, not with physical weight, but with the weight of laws that came from bearing a vast Grotto-Heaven within it.
Zhenyuanzi sent his divine sense inside. In the boundless Profound Yellow world of the book, three miniature islands now floated quietly in a region that had once been blank. They brimmed with spiritual energy, their Dao rhythms intact. They shone alongside the patterns depicting the land veins of the main continent of the Primordial Wilderness, yet remained a world unto themselves, their veins linked and their spiritual vitality circulating without end.
He had done it!
Even with magic power as deep as an abyss and foundations of extraordinary strength, Zhenyuanzi felt a wave of mental exhaustion. Seventy or eighty percent of his magic power was gone. The cost had been immense.
He returned the Book of the Earth to his sea of consciousness to nurture it. Sensing the vast, complete Grotto-Heaven now inside, he felt a satisfaction and sense of command unlike anything he had known.
From this day on, the Three Immortal Islands would be a retreat he carried with him and a vital part of the Book of the Earth's world. He no longer had to fear calamity finding them as they drifted.
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