That had once been Alchemy Dao Square.
Every million years, the Azure Profound Immortal Domain held the Mystic Garden Alchemy Assembly here. When the time came, alchemy cultivators from All Heavens and Myriad Realms gathered in this place, furnace fires burning through the night as medicinal fragrance filled the skies.
It had been the grandest alchemy gathering in the entire Immortal Dao world. Some had said that, on that day, the alchemical aura drifting above the Azure Profound Immortal Domain alone was enough to make ordinary cultivators collapse to the ground and break through on the spot.
Chen Xun had once gone to that assembly as well, playing the pig to eat the tiger.
Now, only an enormous pit remained of that square.
The earth around the pit had been vitrified—black and smooth, traces left behind by unimaginable heat during that calamity. It had fused this land into its present state forever, like a scar that would never heal.
Chen Xun stood at the pit's edge, looking down into the darkness below. He remained silent for a long, long time, utterly motionless, like a stone statue.
Black Bull did not urge him.
It stood behind him in silence as well, its bovine eyes lowered, no one knew toward where.
The wind swept through the pit with a low, mournful moan, like the last lingering breath of this land, slowly, slowly leaking from that wound which would never close.
In the end, Chen Xun said nothing.
He turned around and continued onward.
Farther within lay the former site of the Azure Profound Immortal Domain's Archive Pavilion.
Nothing remained there—not even ruins.
That calamity had completely vaporized the place. Even the ground had sunk inward, forming a deep depression several miles across. At its bottom lay a pool of black water, still