Carefully Chosen, the Dao Realm Flourished

In the Chaos Void, Xuandu traveled through surging currents of gray-white mist.

He did not move quickly, yet every step carried him an immense distance, as though he were measuring the breadth of Chaos.

The beam of light Xu had given him marked more than the first group of cultivators stalled at the Hunyuan Taiji Early-Stage and middle-stage bottlenecks. It held several deeper marks as well.

Those marks lay deeply concealed, their auras tightly restrained, like giant beasts sleeping in the depths of the sea.

Without Xu deliberately sensing them with his Half-Step Transcendence cultivation, their presence would have gone unnoticed.

They belonged to cultivators at the Hunyuan Taiji Late-Stage or even the Hunyuan Taiji Peak Stage. They were stuck before the final step, unable to take that last half-step.

Xuandu headed toward the first deep mark, which lay in an extremely remote corner of Chaos.

Chaos Qi was so thin there that the region was nearly a vacuum. Only the faintest gray-white currents drifted through the void, like an unclaimed land forgotten at the end of time.

He crossed the edge of the region and stopped.

A figure floated in the void like a statue frozen for countless ages.

The man had a cool expression and a slender build. Faint gray-white crystals covered his body like a layer of ice.

His aura hovered at the threshold of the Hunyuan Taiji Peak Stage, like an active volcano on the verge of eruption yet somehow held in check.

Xuandu assessed the level of his aura.

He confirmed that the man had one foot in the Peak Stage but had never truly crossed into it.

It was as though he stood on a threshold, too afraid of what lay beyond to take the next step.

After a moment of silence, Xuandu spoke: