The golden Giant Dragon's words left the powerful cultivators prostrating on the ground staring blankly in bewilderment.
"What... did you say?"
"Is there something wrong with my language?" The Giant Dragon sounded somewhat puzzled. "Effective immediately, the Refining Plant will be put back into operation. None of you may approach it. Otherwise, do not say I failed to warn you."
"This!" The powerful cultivator sprang to his feet in horror. "This! Is the High God reclaiming this place?"
"Do not approach again." The Giant Dragon lightly waved a claw, and the cultivators felt the heavens spin and the earth turn. In an instant, the scenery around them had changed drastically.
They had been sent a hundred li away from the Sacred Mountain.
"Look! The Sacred Mountain!" Someone among the cultivators cried out first.
Everyone looked in that direction and discovered that the Sacred Mountain, said to be a place where "not a blade of grass or tree could be harmed," had crumbled into dust as though blown by the wind. Only a pillar that reached from heaven to earth remained. A formation rested atop that pillar. The dragon clan slowly descended onto it, and profound spatial ripples spread out calmly. The dragons seemed to "slide down" and vanished.
"What happened?"
"Could it be a relic? What treasures are in there?"
"Idiot! Even the High God has gone inside. Even if there truly are treasures, how could we possibly lay hands on them?"
Just then, the earth trembled. Vast bands of light slowly emerged from the soil and stone. A boundless presence pressed upon everyone's hearts with neither force nor gentleness.
If the presence of the strongest being they could imagine was a boulder atop a mountain ten thousand fathoms high, swaying on the brink of collapse and unstoppable once it