Another brief silence fell over the Secret Chamber.
The Alliance Leader was the first to react.
"You want to draw everyone in Central Province here?"
"Didn't Great Hua call on everyone to demand the sacred relic from me?"
Zhou Xuan lifted his chin slightly.
"Then I'll throw the doors wide open and welcome them to look, inspect, and appraise it."
"You'll make a bigger spectacle than Great Hua, act more openly than him, and let everyone see it with their own eyes. Then what pretext will the Grand Hua Old Ancestor have left to seize it?"
A sharp gleam suddenly flashed in Emperor Jiang Wu's eyes.
He understood.
The core of Great Hua's Open Conspiracy lay in one word: "stolen."
Once Zhou Xuan voluntarily displayed it for public appraisal, the accusation of theft would collapse on its own.
Great Hua would either have to prove before everyone that it belonged to him, or watch helplessly as his carefully fabricated campaign of public opinion dissolved into nothing.
But immediately afterward, Emperor Jiang Wu frowned again.
"The approach is right, but there's one problem."
"Although Great Hua's claim is false, you did bring a World-Origin Fragment out of the Return to Void. If they have a way to sense Origin Source power..."
"He won't sense it."
Zhou Xuan calmly interrupted. "The Origin Source fragment was completely consumed in the Return-to-Origin Formation. Not even a scrap remains. The four of you here can testify to that."
The four Longevity Realm cultivators all froze, then exchanged glances.
Indeed.
The Origin Source fragment had burned away completely when the Return-to-Origin Formation activated. They had witnessed that with their own eyes.
"Then what will you put on display?" The Alliance Leader's brow remained tightly furrowed as he asked the most crucial question.
"An appraisal? What are