Calling it an ascension passageway was too arbitrary. Xiang Yuan had passed through one before; he could only say that the aura emitted by the Phoenix Cry Mirror was remarkably similar to it.
But if it was not...
The laws of heaven and earth within Miro Purple Palace, distinct from those outside, also emanated from the Phoenix Cry Mirror. How strikingly similar was that to the ascension passageway's style of forcibly rewriting the laws of heaven and earth?
Xiang Yuan hypothesized that the Phoenix Cry Mirror was the ascension passageway itself—enter it, and one ascended to the upper realm. From this, he inferred that the Great Void Realm had been captured by some upper-realm Heavenly Court and was working its fingers to the bone for them. That was why Zhu Jianbai worshipped neither Buddha nor Dao, but only the Heavenly Court.
The question was, if the upper-realm Heavenly Court had captured the Great Void Realm, why had it not simply opened the ascension passageway? Why was it instead dividing the world three ways with the forces behind Hundred-Eyed Devil Cavern and Blood Lotus Fortress?
They did not even dare to draw their weapons. Since when had the Heavenly Court become this pathetic?
Oh, the Heavenly Court had always been pretty pathetic. The Heavenly Court of the Heavenly God Realm was nothing more than a ramshackle troupe; that shameless Heavenly Emperor had patched and cobbled together the cast list of Journey to the West.
Long ago, Xiang Yuan had learned that there was more than one upper-realm Heavenly Court. He wondered whether the Heavenly Court above the Great Void Realm was one he already knew.
The Heavenly God Realm was certainly impossible—there was not the slightest trace of True Warrior Great Emperor's divine power. The Heavenly Court of the Dry Abyss