And at that same moment, in the Myriad Realms Ruins.
Over in the True God Realm, a second anomaly appeared almost at the very same time.
The undersea ruins recorded in the archives of the Myriad Realms Ruins as the "sword-tomb cluster left behind at the end of the Azure Sword Epoch" lay buried deep beneath the southern seas of the True God Realm, originally covered in full by mineral layers deposited over endless years.
At this moment, the mineral layer split cleanly down the middle.
The cross-section of the crack was smooth as a mirror, as if it had been cut open from within by an extremely sharp force. Yet until the very instant it split, the surface of the water had still maintained its original, steady curve.
What the crack released was not mud and stone, but Sword Intent.
Countless strands of Sword Intent surged out from the fissures in the seabed at once, each one coming from a different era's sword cultivator who had fallen in the Myriad Realms Ruins—some were blazing like fire, and before the Sword Intent even reached the surface, it had already steamed the seawater along its path into a vertical vacuum channel; some were cold as ice, and wherever the Sword Intent passed, a thin layer of frost formed over the surface of the seabed silt, with fine, dense sword patterns carving themselves into the frost.
Sword Intents from different epochs, different schools, and different inheritances were awakened from within at this moment by the same will, surging from the bottom of the sea toward the heavens at the same time.
Water vapor and Sword Intent clashed violently, and the vast southern sea of the True God Realm was stabbed into a gigantic sieve.
All the sword shadows intertwined in midair into