Zhou Xuan stared at the distant stone statue that had turned its head, tightening his grip on the Supreme One Token.
He did not retreat.
He had already come this far. The Heavenly Fire Remnant Silk and the Dark Nether Primordial Stone lay in his Storage Ring. Only this last one remained.
He started walking, following the Star Map projected by the Supreme One Token toward the Herb Garden.
His legs felt weak. Half his Divine Power had been spent on the primordial stone, and the darkness had siphoned away another portion just now. He was terribly drained.
With every step, loose stones crunched beneath his feet.
The farther he went, the stranger the surroundings became.
There were no broken walls, no collapsed halls.
Before him lay an immense stretch of level ground.
Things grew all over it.
Zhou Xuan approached for a closer look. They were all stone.
Immortal herbs and divine trees had all been frozen in place, turned into gray-white stone sculptures.
Even the veins on their leaves and the bumps on their fruit remained perfectly distinct.
He stopped beside the path and reached out to touch a petrified lingzhi half as tall as a person.
The instant his fingertips touched it, the entire lingzhi disintegrated into a heap of gray-white powder, trickling through his fingers onto the ground.
Time had been forcibly severed here.
Everything had perished without even undergoing the process of withering, turning straight to stone.
Zhou Xuan raised his head.
At the very center of the Herb Garden stood the stone statue he had seen from afar.
Up close, it was frighteningly large.
It stood a full hundred thousand feet tall, like a mountain thrusting straight into the clouds.
The statue was half kneeling, shaped like a rugged giant clad in garments woven