Even the man closest to godhood on Douluo Continent had admitted he was powerless. That meant the gray-robed man's strength had already far surpassed anything they could comprehend.
"Great Enshrined, are you saying that man sitting in the woodcarving shop is even stronger than a god?" Bibi Dong took a deep breath and voiced the question on her mind.
Qian Daoliu shook his head, his eyes filled with awe.
"I don't know whether he's a god."
"But I can say for certain that the realm he's reached is something no one on Douluo Continent could ever touch, even after a lifetime of striving."
Qian Daoliu walked to the edge of the hall and gazed outside at the towering Angel Statue.
"That old scoundrel Yue Guan is usually so arrogant. This time, he's finally kicked an iron plate."
"Still, this could have been much worse."
Qian Daoliu turned around, his expression growing solemn.
"That senior was clearly only punishing Yue Guan for his disrespect. He had no intention of killing him."
"Otherwise, with his strength, he'd only need to glance at Yue Guan, and not even ashes would be left."
"For someone like Yue Guan to be able to sweep the floor and serve tea to such an unfathomable senior—that's Yue Guan's good fortune, and the good fortune of our Spirit Hall as well."
Qian Daoliu's words might have sounded like they were building up others while tearing down their own side.
But everyone present knew this was the wisest judgment.
In front of an expert of that level, what the hell was dignity?
The greatest opportunity was simply to survive and bask in a little of his reflected glory.
Bibi Dong nodded, and the anger in her heart slowly subsided.
"Great Enshrined, you're right."
"Pass down my order. Everyone in Spirit Hall is to carefully observe everything Yue Guan does in that woodcarving shop."
"In particular, record every detail of that gray-robed man's carving technique, along with every single thing he says, word for word."
A glimmer of ambition reignited in Bibi Dong's eyes.
"Even a casual word or two from an expert of that level would be an invaluable treasure to us."
At the northernmost edge of Douluo Continent lay the Far North.
It was a forbidden zone for humans, blanketed in thick snow all year round. The temperature was so low that steel could freeze brittle.
Across the boundless snowfield, howling winds whipped up a blizzard of snow and sand.
Atop the highest ice peak,
two peerlessly beautiful figures stood.
The woman on the left wore a pure white gown. Her skin was fair as snow, and her long silver-white hair danced in the wind, making her seem like a spirit born of this frozen world.
She was Snow Empress, ruler of the Far North, with a cultivation base approaching seven hundred thousand years.
Beside Snow Empress stood a petite woman dressed in a jade-green gown.
Her eyes were a crystalline green, and behind her, the faint shadow of a scorpion's tail swayed.
She was the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion, Ice Empress, with a cultivation base of four hundred thousand years.
These two overlords of the Far North rarely paid attention to the human world.
But today, they too stood atop the ice peak, gazing up at the images on the Sky Screen.
Ice Empress rubbed her little hands, reddened by the cold, her eyes filled with shock.
"Big Sister, that human old man can actually reverse time?"
Her voice was thick with disbelief.
"We Soul Beasts have struggled to cultivate for hundreds of thousands of years, always on edge, dreading the arrival of heavenly tribulations."
"Put simply, a heavenly tribulation is the heavens refusing to let us live that long and coming to take our time away."
Ice Empress turned to look at Snow Empress, her voice tinged with bitterness.
"But that man can control time as if it belonged to him, as if it were his to command."
"If he came to the Far North, would one wave of his hand wipe out our hundreds of thousands of years of cultivation?"
Snow Empress watched the Sky Screen in silence.
The usual lofty, icy expression had disappeared from her cold, beautiful face.
She reached out a pale hand and caught a snowflake drifting down from the sky.
The snowflake slowly melted in her palm, becoming a drop of icy water.
"Time is the most merciless blade."
Snow Empress sighed softly, her voice seeming to drift away in the freezing wind.
"We think ourselves invincible here in the Far North, able to command the wind and snow and freeze all things."
"But before the true laws of heaven and earth, how are we any different from the wild grass along the roadside?"
Snow Empress lowered her hand, her gaze fixed on the gray-robed man in the image, his head bowed as he carved wood.
"That world is too vast."
"That man is merely sitting in a remote little city, yet he can leave a human expert at level ninety-five utterly helpless."
"What kind of splendor would belong to the true overlords who emerged from that world?"
For the first time, Snow Empress's eyes held awe for the unknown, along with the faintest trace of longing.
For Ferocious Beasts who had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, witnessing a higher level of power was itself a profound shock.
The images on the Sky Screen continued to play.
In the Renegade Immortal World, in a mortal city battered by wind and snow,
Yue Guan gripped a worn-out broom and diligently swept the wood shavings from the corners of the shop.
He worked meticulously, not daring to leave behind even a speck of dust, afraid of displeasing the senior seated behind the counter.
After sweeping the floor, Yue Guan found a rag and carefully wiped the woodcarvings on the shelves.
When he reached the wooden chrysanthemum he had once mocked,
Yue Guan stopped.
He swallowed, then nervously fixed his gaze on the patterns in the wooden petals.
Earlier, he'd only taken a cursory glance. He hadn't looked closely.
Now that he was examining it up close, Yue Guan suddenly noticed something strange about the carved wooden chrysanthemum.
The wood's surface looked utterly dull, almost lifeless.
But after Yue Guan's gaze lingered on the flower's center for a moment,
his pupils suddenly contracted.
He felt as if the wooden flower had suddenly come to life.
An indescribably ancient aura followed the grain of the wood and surged straight into Yue Guan's mind.
In that instant, Yue Guan seemed to see a seed fall into the earth, slowly sprout, grow leaves and branches, and finally bloom into a brilliant flower.
Then the autumn wind blew. Its petals withered one by one, fell away, and at last turned to soil.
Life and death, reincarnating in an endless cycle.
Withering and flourishing, taking turns.
The Great Dao laws that pointed straight to the source of life were laid bare before Yue Guan.
His hands began to tremble violently.
He felt his very soul quivering along with the carved flower.
"This... this is..."
Yue Guan sucked in a sharp breath. In an instant, cold sweat soaked his back.
At last, he understood how terribly wrong he had been.
He had mocked the man for carving a piece of wood without a soul.
Yet a dead wooden flower, carved casually by that man, contained such a terrifying insight into life and death.
If he really had foolishly destroyed the carving with his Soul Power just now,
he feared he wouldn't even have had the chance to be reborn. His soul would have been ground to nothing by that insight.
Trembling, Yue Guan set down the rag, his legs giving way as he dropped to his knees before the shelf once more.
This time, he didn't beg for mercy.
Instead, he stared at the carved chrysanthemum with the reverence of a pilgrim, not daring to blink.
Inside the woodcarving shop, the howling wind and snow outside seemed to fade into the distance.
Kneeling on the ground, Yue Guan was as still as a stone statue, not daring to blink.
The most fundamental laws of nature transformed into an indescribably profound insight. Through Yue Guan's eyes, it surged straight into the depths of his mind.
Yue Guan's body began to tremble uncontrollably.
He had spent his whole life studying flowers and plants. His Martial Soul was the Singular Velvet Sky Chrysanthemum.
He had always believed that raising his Soul Power and making his Martial Soul harder and sharper was the best way to develop a Plant-type Martial Soul.
Only now did he understand just how narrow the path he had followed really was.
A true flower lived through the cycle of life!
The instant he grasped that truth,
the level-ninety-five Soul Power that had stagnated within him for more than a decade suddenly churned like boiling water.
"Pop."
A faint, muffled sound that only he could hear came from deep within his dantian.
The cultivation bottleneck that had tormented him through countless sleepless nights, the one he'd thought he could never overcome in this lifetime, shattered in that very moment!
A vast, pure, and entirely new power instantly flowed through every limb and bone in his body.
Level ninety-six!
He had merely stared at a piece of wood for a little while, yet in this mortal shop, devoid of even a trace of spiritual energy, he had broken through the bottleneck of a Titled Douluo!
Yue Guan forcibly suppressed the Soul Power surging within him, afraid of disturbing the senior behind the counter.
His eyes were completely red, and large tears rolled down his cheeks.
At that moment, on Douluo Continent,
the Pope Palace in Spirit City was so quiet that a pin could have dropped.
Bibi Dong abruptly rose from her throne. The sudden movement made the purple-and-gold crown on her head sway.
Her beautiful eyes were wide, her face full of disbelief.
"He broke through?"
Her voice trembled slightly.
As an expert of the same rank, she knew all too well how difficult it was for a Titled Douluo to advance by even one level.
It required not only an ocean of accumulated Soul Power, but also sudden enlightenment.
Many people exhausted their entire lives and still could not advance from level ninety-five to level ninety-six.
Yet Yue Guan on the Sky Screen had only just been through a brush with death. Then he turned around, glanced at a scrap of wood a few times, and advanced?
Qian Daoliu, standing in the middle of the hall, also sucked in a sharp breath.
His hands, clasped behind his back, clenched into fists.
"That's the passing on of an insight."
Qian Daoliu took a deep breath, his voice filled with profound awe.
"The gray-robed man wasn't carving wood at all. He was carving his understanding of the laws of heaven and earth."
"That old Yue Guan has turned disaster into fortune. He's stumbled into an incredible opportunity!"
Qian Daoliu sighed and looked up at the Sky Screen.
"One random handmade trinket left in a corner can help a Titled Douluo break through."
"The foundation of the Renegade Immortal World is truly despairing."
Inside the woodcarving shop,
Yue Guan came back to himself, turned to the gray-robed man behind the counter with his face streaked with tears, and kowtowed three times.
His forehead struck the stone floor with three loud thuds.
"Thank you, Senior, for showing me the way!"
"This foolish junior has received a great boon from you today. I will never forget your kindness for as long as I live!"
Yue Guan was now utterly, completely in awe of the man before him.
He even felt that being able to sweep the floor in this shop was the greatest blessing he could have earned in his entire life.
The gray-robed man set down his carving knife.
He gently blew the wood shavings off the piece of wood, raised his head, and looked calmly at Yue Guan, still kneeling on the floor.
"You've mistaken me for someone else."
The man's voice was calm, devoid of the slightest hint of emotion.
"I'm just a mortal who runs a shop in this city."
"I don't understand the Dao, and I haven't shown you the way."
"I only use my carving knife to record what my eyes see."
Yue Guan was stunned at first.
Then his clever mind began to race.
Senior is hiding his identity!
In the cultivation world, many peerless experts enjoyed traveling incognito and savoring the lives of ordinary people.
If Yue Guan foolishly insisted on exposing the senior's identity and angered him, the opportunity he'd just received could become a death warrant.
Thinking this, Yue Guan quickly went along with what Wang Lin had said.
"Yes, yes, you're right, Shopkeeper. I deserved that."
Yue Guan wiped the tears from his face and put on a fawning smile.
"I was being foolish. The shopkeeper is just a craftsman who carves wood, but his skill is truly a work of heavenly craftsmanship."
"I'll go clean the back courtyard, too!"
Wang Lin looked at Yue Guan's obsequious expression and said nothing more. He lowered his head again and continued carving the block of wood in his hands.
Just then, someone flung open the thick, padded curtain that kept the wind out of the woodcarving shop.
A cold gust mixed with snowflakes rushed inside.
A little boy ran in from outside.
He looked about five or six, sturdy and bright-eyed, wearing a thick floral quilted jacket and a tiger-head hat.
His little face was red from the cold, and he was carefully holding a small clay jar in his hands.
"Grandpa Wang!"
The moment he came in, the boy called out in a clear, bright voice.
"I secretly brought you the wine you wanted!"
Seeing the little fellow burst in, Yue Guan hurriedly stepped aside with his broom, afraid of getting in the way.
He wouldn't dare underestimate this mortal child. In this shop, even a piece of wood was not to be trifled with—let alone someone the shopkeeper knew.
At the sound of the boy's voice, Wang Lin stopped what he was doing.
He looked up at the boy as he ran to the counter. The face that had been as still as an ancient well now wore a warm smile that came straight from the heart.
It was utterly unlike the cold disdain with which he had looked down on all living things moments earlier; this smile brimmed with human warmth.
"Little Niu, what a good boy."
Wang Lin stood up, took the small clay jar, still giving off heat, and set it beside the charcoal brazier.
He reached out his slightly rough hand and gently rubbed the tiger-head hat on Little Niu's head.
"Such a heavy snowstorm outside. You must be freezing, huh?"
Little Niu sniffed and shook his head with a simple grin.
"I'm not cold! I ran really fast!"
Wang Lin looked at the boy's little hands, purple from the cold, and a flash of affection passed through his eyes.
He slipped his hand into his gray sleeve and felt around.
When he brought it out again, a pill the size of a soybean lay in his palm.
It was a faint milky white all over, with a rough surface. It looked just like an ordinary malt-sugar candy.
"Here, Grandpa Wang will give you a piece of candy to warm you up."
Wang Lin smiled and held the pill out to Little Niu.
Little Niu's eyes lit up, and he cheered. "Thank you, Grandpa Wang!"
He took the pill with his little hand and, without a second thought, popped it into his mouth. He crunched it twice and swallowed.