Jiang Ding stood motionless.
A long time passed.
"Forget it. This much risk is worth taking."
Jiang Ding sighed softly. "An eighth-tier treasure has been worn down for hundreds of thousands of years, then attacked and restrained in turn by dozens of Dao Integration cultivators. Much of its formation has already been broken."
"If it still has power beyond Dao Integration after all that, then there's nothing more to say."
He hesitated no longer and stepped inside.
The light around him shifted and flickered. He was in another realm.
The sky and earth were shrouded in darkness. The wind was cold, the sky hung low and black, and dark mist blanketed the ground, obscuring what lay ahead.
Jiang Ding's gaze went straight to the center.
There stood a spirit tablet like a pillar of black stone, spanning heaven and earth and rising into the clouds. A line of writing marked its surface, and a deep sense of grief radiated from it, undiminished after hundreds of thousands of years.
Spirit Tablet of the Ancient God Patriarch.
This was the spirit tablet of the Ancient God Celestial, founder of the Ancient God Path—a great man who had carved out a place for humanity to survive among the cluster of worlds.
Jiang Ding bowed slightly.
Beneath the Ancient God Patriarch's tablet stood many smaller ones, all commemorating forebears of the Ancient God Path. Among them were Dao Integration cultivators, while the strongest auras belonged to the second- and third-generation Path Masters.
There was no tablet for the fourth Path Master.
The Ancient God Path must have fallen too suddenly back then. There had been no time for anything.
As Jiang Ding stared at the Ancient God Patriarch's spirit tablet, his vision blurred, and a scene appeared before him.
A short, dwarfish cultivator with