After receiving the Memory Stone left behind by the Old Sage, Shi Yan left the River of Time and Space of the First Ancestor.
Amid the boundless starry sky on the Guardian Tower's first floor.
Rivers crisscrossed one another, while black holes and planets each followed their own paths.
"The inheritances of the Path of Time and the Path of Space could be useful references, too."
After glancing at the "Primordial Black Hole" and "Star of Worlds" in the starry sky, Shi Yan found himself thinking this.
That was only natural. For practitioners of the Path of Space-Time, inheritances focused solely on time or space were just as precious.
But as the Old Sage had said, trying to take in too much would only leave him with a superficial grasp. He was still some distance from the True God Limit, so he could wait until he hit a bottleneck before seeking inspiration from those inheritances.
As he thought, Shi Yan controlled the Guardian Tower and transported himself to the second floor.
If the first floor of the Guardian Tower was dedicated to the successive founders of the Three Saints Palace leaving behind their Core Inheritance, then the second floor was notable for its sheer variety.
The second floor of the Guardian Tower was divided into many different areas.
There were places specifically for crafting treasures.
There were areas containing vast stores of knowledge.
There were regions dedicated to guiding the creation of Secret Techniques.
There were spaces for honing combat skills.
There were even sections specifically for tempering the mind...
And that was far from all. The tower offered every function imaginable. Having only just gained complete control of it, Shi Yan was dazzled. Many of the methods it used to train the younger disciples were things he had never seen before.
It could be said that the second floor of the Guardian Tower was what truly lived up to the words "Guardian Tower."
Inheritors trained here could guide an entire faction to rise to prominence as easily as eating or drinking, especially a force with foundations as deep as the Three Saints Palace.
"...The successive founders really did think of everything," Shi Yan couldn't help remarking.
There was the Core Inheritance, a vast wealth of knowledge, and a complete range of facilities to aid cultivation. On top of that, the Three Saints Palace was extremely strict in its selection of inheritors, and those chosen were all exceptionally gifted.
The inheritors' own talents, combined with ideal conditions for their training.
It was no exaggeration to say that with the Guardian Tower, it was unlikely for any inheritor of the Three Saints Palace not to rise to prominence. Their rise was only to be expected.
"No wonder it's a superpower." Shi Yan marveled inwardly as he made his way to the "Sea of Memories" on the second floor of the Guardian Tower.
"According to the Memory Stone the senior left behind, is the Sea of Memories a place every inheritor of the Three Saints Palace must visit first?"
Floating in midair, Shi Yan gazed curiously at the seemingly endless black sea below.
With control of the Guardian Tower, Shi Yan could easily sense countless black stones bobbing in the dark sea—hundreds of millions of them. They were all Memory Stones.
The Memory Stones stored here recorded the Secret Technique guides of countless other factions, gathered by the Three Saints Palace over endless ages. Some had been acquired through trade, but most had come from wars and adventures over the years.
According to the Memory Stone left by the Old Sage, one didn't need to learn every inheritance and Secret Technique in the Sea of Memories, but one did need to know about them all.
The vast array of Secret Techniques covered bloodlines, treasure crafting, puppets, insect beasts, formations, illusions, Supreme Treasure control, and countless other fields. It even included many highly obscure techniques.
There were two reasons for learning about them. First, it broadened one's knowledge. Since all paths were interconnected, a broader understanding could lead to unexpected insights and shed light on one's own path.
Second, it taught the inheritors of the Three Saints Palace about the combat styles and methods of different schools.
Even if they couldn't use those methods themselves, they would know how to counter them if they encountered such an enemy in battle.
Shi Yan wholeheartedly agreed with the Old Sage's advice.
In general, when experts of comparable strength fought, knowing the other's methods was crucial.
Even against a far stronger opponent, knowing their techniques and fighting style well could greatly improve one's chances of escape.
In short, the Sea of Memories was like an exhaustive encyclopedia of the Origin Continent. Learning its contents could greatly reduce the chances of an inheritor falling in battle, and make it much easier to establish a faction in the future.
"Let's begin. I'll memorize everything in these Memory Stones first." Shi Yan controlled the Guardian Tower, and hundreds of millions of Memory Stones shot up from the dark sea like a dense barrage, soon blotting out the sky.
"And time acceleration, too."
At Shi Yan's command, time on the second floor of the Guardian Tower began to speed up, soon reaching 130,000 times its normal rate.
This was a function built into the Guardian Tower itself.
As long as there was enough energy, the Cultivation Space's time acceleration could reach over a million times—far beyond the fixed maximum of Ten Thousand Times Time Acceleration in the Inheritance Space of the Duan Donghe Lineage.
That was only natural. Though the Duan Donghe Lineage had produced a God King in its history—the Third Generation Ancestor of the Duan Donghe Lineage—he clearly hadn't specialized in the Path of Time or the Path of Space-Time.
As the saying went, every field had its own specialty. The successive predecessors of the Three Saints Palace were evidently more skilled at time acceleration.
There was another advantage: the Source Treasures fixed inside the Guardian Tower continuously converted energy from the outside world and stored divine power, allowing them to supply some of the energy on behalf of the inheritors.
In fact, until the time acceleration reached a certain level, the inheritor didn't need to provide any divine power at all.
This was somewhat like the Black-Veined Stone Pillar Space in the Universe Boat, which was also powered entirely by the Universe Boat to sustain its Will Impact and time acceleration.
But the Universe Boat was enormous, and its fixed Source Treasures were naturally far larger than those in the Guardian Tower, which stood only two stories tall. That was why most of the Universe Boat's functions could still operate normally after so many ages.
The Source Treasures fixed inside the Guardian Tower were nowhere near as immense as those of the Universe Boat, so they couldn't provide much energy for time acceleration. Since the cost of time acceleration varied depending on a powerful being's life level, the specific limit depended on the user's strength.
According to the information left in the Guardian Tower, those below True God could accelerate time up to 500,000 times without supplying additional divine power, while True Gods could do so up to 100,000 times. As for those above them, Shi Yan couldn't know, given the restrictions of the Universe Ocean.
Even so, this was a pleasant surprise for Shi Yan.
His divine power spread out, and streams of information soon poured into his mind.
Unlike the inheritances left by the First Ancestor, many of these Memory Stones were extremely brief, and the information they contained was far less extensive than that in the Memory Stones the First Ancestor had left behind.
Even so, with his Void Level Soul Will, Shi Yan needed more than five years to absorb the contents of hundreds of millions of Memory Stones—nearly seventy eras with time acceleration—and that was only enough to skim through them. Studying them carefully would take far longer.
Of course, for the Three Saints Palace, which focused on the Path of Space-Time, these hundreds of millions of Memory Stones were merely a collection, intended to broaden the knowledge and enrich the skills of its disciples and inheritors.
But in the Universe Ocean as it was now, any one of these inheritances would be enough to make its inhabitants scramble for it.
After committing all these Secret Techniques to memory, Shi Yan didn't rush to study them in detail. Instead, he headed for another area of the Guardian Tower: the Hall of Myriad Treasures.
The "Hall of Myriad Treasures" on the second floor of the Guardian Tower was where a vast variety of Supreme Treasures were stored.
The Hall of Myriad Treasures was divided into numerous areas, each storing different types of Supreme Treasures.
They ranged from common close-combat weapons such as blades, swords, spears, and clubs to long-range telekinetic weapons like beads, chains, blades, and nets, and then to large-scale Mechanical Path Supreme Treasures, including battleships, fortresses, and war beasts.
There were also some unusual, specialized treasures, such as the Alchemy Factory, Puppet Kingdom, and Insect Beast Nest. For experts skilled in alchemy, puppetry, or insect beasts, they were priceless treasures.
Every imaginable kind of treasure could be found there.
Unlike the Duan Donghe Lineage, the Three Saints Palace was an independent sect.
The Origin Continent was rife with conflict, and as an independent force, the Three Saints Palace was inevitably drawn into wars time and again.
At its peak, the Three Saints Palace ruled over a region and maintained a large army. Naturally, building an army required a great variety of Supreme Treasures in large numbers.
Unfortunately, in the battle that brought down both Wu Kingdom and the Three Saints Palace, more than 99 percent of the treasures originally in the Hall of Myriad Treasures were destroyed or abandoned along with the army. The large-scale treasures were almost entirely lost.
Even so, the few "scraps" remaining in the Hall of Myriad Treasures were a huge surprise to Shi Yan.
"Whoosh!"
His form shifted, and Shi Yan appeared in the area for close-combat Supreme Treasures.
More than a dozen Supreme Treasures were still stored there. They were leftovers that hadn't been assigned to the army before that battle, and most were True God Level treasures.
Besides those, there was an oddly shaped Void Level curved blade and a finely crafted one-handed sword. The latter was an Eternal True God Level Supreme Treasure.
Even for a force like the Three Saints Palace, Void True Gods were elite fighters in the army, while Eternal True Gods could be considered commanders.
That was why there were far fewer unassigned Void Level and Eternal Grade Supreme Treasures.
But...
"This is the Universe Ocean. A True God Level Supreme Treasure is already a Supreme True Treasure here, and these two are even more..." Shi Yan's eyes burned with excitement. He felt like a pauper who had suddenly won a fortune of tens of millions.
Compared with this collection of treasures worthy of being called "Supreme True Treasures," Shi Yan—who had only possessed a single Peak Supreme Treasure—could no longer be called a pauper. He was a beggar.
And besides the close-combat treasures, Shi Yan could sense more Supreme Treasures left behind in the areas for long-range weapons and auxiliary combat gear.
Most importantly, there were also treasures specially prepared by the Three Saints Palace for its inheritors.
"I've struck it rich! I've really struck it rich!"
Shi Yan was bursting with excitement.
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