Divine Ruins Hall

After the Ancient Teleportation Array's power had persisted for half an incense stick, Xu Yan's hazy vision gradually cleared. He descended through the air and landed steadily atop a moss-covered stone slab.

"Ugh."

Clutching his forehead, Xu Yan frowned and let out a long breath.

A bone-chilling, damp chill swept in from all directions, instantly jolting Xu Yan awake. He immediately came to his senses, shook one hand, and gripped the Green Pattern Sword as he surveyed his surroundings.

They had been sent to different locations.

Xu Yan had previously used the edict text to appraise the power of Dragon Head Mountain's terrain-based teleportation formation. By his estimate, he was roughly three thousand li away, already in the middle section of the Immortal Treasury.

This seemed to be inside a ruined palace. A glance showed it to be towering and broad, roughly a hundred zhang across.

Looking overhead, he saw collapsed beams that exposed hard, earth-colored stone walls.

The yin energy was exceptionally heavy. Everywhere lingered a rotten stench that made one want to cover one's nose, along with an ancient, primordial aura.

Xu Yan spread out his divine sense and probed the surroundings.

He confirmed it: he was beneath the earth veins.

Moreover, he was inside a collapsed palace hall. Looking at the ruined great hall, it resembled the remnants of some ancient immortal dynasty that had been wiped from existence. Broken walls and crumbling ruins lay all around, while enormous stone pillars carved with dragons and painted with phoenixes had collapsed at every angle.

The wind howled like ghosts weeping and wolves howling from outside the hall, making one's scalp tingle.

Only after sensing no living creatures within sixty zhang did Xu Yan sit cross-legged and calm his mind.

The battle had just ended, and he had also activated the Teleportation Array. His mana had long since run dry; he needed to recover his cultivation as soon as possible!

He circulated the Eight-Nine Profound Art.

From every direction, the world's vital energies came whistling in, entering Xu Yan's body and refining into Primordial Chaos Mana, nourishing the turbid veins within him.

During the earlier spell battle, the remaining medicinal power of the Dragon Breath Pill had already dissipated. The bottleneck of the third level of Pulse Opening, Zhongque Pass, lay in the veins below the heart.

Xu Yan looked inward. Visible to the naked eye, his turbid veins had grown ever more refined, resembling uncut jade that had been carved several times over, revealing a faint edge.

This was a process of shedding the mortal. Once Pulse Opening reached perfection, a cultivator's turbid veins would completely transform into spirit veins, and their entire Dao body would become like jade flesh and ice bones.

After sitting quietly for less than half an hour, Xu Yan opened his eyes and exhaled deeply. His Dao body had now returned to its perfect state.

"Much of the vital energy here is extremely cold and yin. Refining it is truly time-consuming and laborious."

Xu Yan thought to himself that fortunately, he possessed the Primordial Spirit Vein, which encompassed all things. If a Daoist with a pure-yang spirit vein were here, they would likely need far longer to refine it, and might even damage their meridians.

Rising to his feet, Xu Yan held the Green Pattern Sword and cautiously headed outside the hall.

The place was utterly dilapidated. Even with the naked eye, he could see skeletal remains buried amid the broken walls and rubble.

As he passed a set of bones, Xu Yan kept his peripheral vision fixed on it. Suddenly, a wisp of ghostly fire flickered in its hollow eye sockets. Xu Yan reacted swiftly, slashing out with his sword as Primordial Chaos Mana wrapped around Sword Qi and swept forth.

Bang!

The bones were instantly reduced to powder.

The same thing happened many more times afterward. Many skeletons creaked and clattered, green flames rising in their eyes as they tried to stand.

These could not truly be considered ghosts or fiends. At most, they had been affected by the yin energy here and were attempting to gather qi into spirit, though the odds of that were exceedingly small.

Xu Yan walked out of the hall.

He raised his head toward the sky, but could not see the slightest glimmer of light. The boundless darkness seemed ready to swallow a person whole, while gusts of yin wind sent chills through his body.

Ahead stood another great hall, even larger than the one Xu Yan had been in!

Though it was already shattered beyond repair and had collapsed within the earth veins, its majestic presence could still be felt. Above its enormous, moss-covered entrance hung an ancient plaque bearing the two words: [Divine Ruins].

"Divine Ruins... what kind of place is this?"

Xu Yan's heart grew heavy. For an ancient immortal dynasty to name a great hall with these two words, what immense audacity must it have possessed? Its overall strength must have been enough to inspire awe from afar.

With his divine sense taut, Xu Yan made his way toward the larger hall in the distance.

He flew several hundred zhang and landed steadily at its entrance.

Just as Xu Yan was about to step inside, terrifying killing intent suddenly surged from the hall. A streak of pitch-black, icy light shot straight at his face—it was a needle, tearing through the air!

"Who goes there?!"

Xu Yan barked sharply and struck at once. The Green Pattern Sword split into ten blades that spread like a fan, blocking the needle for several breaths before all were shattered apart. Xu Yan reacted quickly, twisting his head aside as the black needle grazed past his neck.

From the dark, secluded left side of the hall came the sound of footsteps.

It was a young woman of about eighteen or nineteen. She wore a dark silver Daoist robe, her black hair cascading like a waterfall, her face cool and expressionless.

She held a palm-sized miniature sword case in her hand. The black needle from before had shot out from within it. Most striking of all were her eyes; a faint radiance glimmered deep in her pupils, like two pools of cold water.

Xu Yan froze, feeling that the face looked somewhat familiar.

The woman also looked at Xu Yan, seemingly trying to remember.

They stared at each other for several breaths before speaking almost at the same time.

"Are you Qin Yiren of Heavenly Capital City, Fellow Daoist Qin?"

"You're the one the Dharma King instructed at Dragon Whisker Ravine..."

Xu Yan put away the Green Pattern Sword, then cupped his hands and continued her words. "I am Xu Yan."

This woman had drawn much attention at Dragon Whisker Ravine before. Her status as a direct descendant of Heavenly Capital City alone was enough to make others take notice.

In eastern Cang Province were more than ten immortal city clans, and Tiandu Immortal City was one of them. It shared an allied, symbiotic relationship with the Taiyuan Divine Sect; it was not considered subordinate to it.

Although these immortal city clans had only risen after the primordial age, their overall strength was no weaker than the ancient clans of the divine sects—perhaps even greater.

Qin Yiren's delicate face shifted slightly as her eyes flickered. She nodded in acknowledgment.

She had been the first disciple instructed by the Dharma King, while Xu Yan had been the last. By that logic, if the two of them could cultivate in the Divine Land in the future, they would become true disciples of Purple Star Palace and fellow disciples.

The atmosphere stiffened for a moment. Neither of them was particularly talkative.

Moreover, both were extremely wary and had not fully lowered their guard.

"Fellow Daoist Qin, how did you get here?" Xu Yan asked.

"I was sent in by a Teleportation Array a thousand li away," Qin Yiren replied flatly. "What about you, Fellow Daoist Xu?"

"So was I."

Xu Yan nodded.

The two exchanged a few bland words. Their eyes met, then each quickly looked away, leaving them without anything more to say.

Xu Yan looked around and opened a new topic. "Fellow Daoist Qin, do you know where this place is? Have you found a way out?"

He had already looked upward from outside. He had no idea how high it was, and the yin wind above was sharp as blades. It was simply impossible to use a flight technique to fly out through that opening.

Qin Yiren pursed her lips and considered it. "Divine Ruins Hall. This should be the Dragon City Imperial Palace of the Great Yin Immortal Dynasty from the Recent Antiquity era. I don't know how it came to be inside the Dragon Ridge Immortal Treasury."

The primordial age was too distant for cultivators to determine exactly how long ago it had been.

Thus, the era during which written language had been passed down and transformed was designated the Recent Antiquity era.

The span from two million years ago to one million years ago—a period of one million years—was called [Recent Antiquity] by contemporary cultivators.