"What do we do, then?"
Yuan fell silent for a moment before speaking.
"There's only one thing to do."
"Accept reality."
Jiang Ding remained silent for a long time.
"I've missed the first step on the path to immortality—the step at the Void Refining stage. In this cramped world, the material foundation needed to produce someone approaching a True Immortal Heir simply doesn't exist."
"That is the helplessness we cultivators must endure."
"Perhaps there will still be a chance at the Dao Integration stage..."
He spoke with a wistful sigh.
That long road to immortality had barred countless heroes since ancient times. How many supreme prodigies, unmatched across hundreds of millions of years, had finally reached the end of their lifespans and died? Now there was one more.
So it was with all things in the world. There was not a trace of novelty in it.
The two stopped discussing the matter and turned to questions of immortal science.
"This is called the Solar True-Fire Shield."
Yuan pointed to the transparent shield enveloping the Solar System. "It was completed and put into use more than a thousand years ago. Its raw materials included those thirty-six dragons of stellar light and many rare treasures. Drawing on technologies such as the former Dyson Solar Fortress, we ultimately produced an entirely new eighth-rank treasure."
"The Solar True-Fire Shield is now the Immortal Sect's most powerful magical treasure."
"Refined with multiple stars as its energy source, it can be deployed at a critical moment to draw a celestial being inside, shrink to the size of a fist, and reduce the captive to ash with its terrifying heat."
An animation appeared in Yuan's hand.
It showed a fist-sized transparent shield. Thirty-six dragons of stellar light swam across its surface, lifelike in every detail. A celestial