Ripple Secret Realm, Kui Ox's Birth

Deep in the East Sea, amid ten thousand hectares of rolling waves, a mountain lay hidden within the clouds and mist.

Flowing Wave Mountain.

This mountain was absent from the immortal registers and unrecorded in the Primordial World's gazetteers. Only scattered legends from ancient times remained—of a thunder beast that had once appeared here, its roar shaking a thousand miles and its radiance illuminating the Four Seas, before vanishing without a trace.

Xuan Chuan rode an inconspicuous gray cloud, hovering above the sea three hundred miles southeast of Flowing Wave Mountain.

He concealed every trace of his aura. The One That Escaped slowly rotated within his sea of consciousness, veiling his heavenly secrets, karma, and even his very sense of existence beneath a thin gauze.

Even if a Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal passed by, unless they deliberately investigated, they would take him for nothing more than an ordinary wisp of sea mist.

"This is the place."

Xuan Chuan closed his eyes and sensed. Deep within his sea of consciousness, the dormant Chaos Pearl Fragment emitted a faint yet distinct ripple, echoing something far away.

His Merit-enhanced senses allowed him to pinpoint the direction indicated by that ripple more accurately—not Flowing Wave Mountain's main peak, but an apparently ordinary cluster of reefs on its northeastern side.

His figure moved, transforming into an almost invisible streak of light as he silently swept toward that stretch of sea.

Half the time it took to drink a cup of tea later, Xuan Chuan stood atop a cluster of dark brown reefs.

Before him lay seven or eight reef islets of varying sizes, their grotesque rocks jagged and worn smooth yet sharp by the waves.

Seagulls wheeled overhead, tides boomed in waves, and spiritual qi was sparse. No matter how one looked at it, this was a barren place.

Yet the Chaos Pearl Fragment's ripples had reached their peak here.

"Innate Concealment Formation..." Purple light glimmered in Xuan Chuan's eyes as The One That Escaped operated at full force, his gaze piercing the seemingly ordinary space before him.

Gradually, the scene began to change.

The reefs remained the same reefs, and the seawater remained the same seawater, yet within his "vision," the textures of space showed unnatural distortions and overlapping layers.

One obscure formation pattern after another, nearly fused with the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, blanketed the sea within a radius of ten miles like lurking spiderwebs.

This formation had not been arranged by human hands. It had been born of heaven and earth, drawing upon the terrain, the sea's currents,

and even the force of the stars above to evolve naturally. Without possessing a fragment of a Chaos Supreme Treasure and extraordinary perception, one could never have detected it.

"What an exquisite natural formation." Xuan Chuan silently praised it, yet did not rush to break it.

He extended his right index finger. A nearly imperceptible glimmer of violet-gold light flickered at its tip—the power to break restrictions manifested by The One That Escaped infused with Merit.

He traced through the air, not forcefully attacking the formation patterns, but lightly "disturbing" several crucial nodes in the formation's flow, as though plucking the strings of a zither.

Buzzz...

Ripples like water spread across space.

The reef-filled scene before him swayed and dispersed like flowers in a mirror and moonlight in water, revealing the truth that had been hidden—

A stone mountain no more than a hundred zhang tall, entirely dark azure in color, stood silently upon the sea.

The mountain's surface was covered in naturally formed thunder patterns, with faint currents of lightning moving through them.

No trees grew upon its summit; there was only a level platform of black rock.

At the center of the platform was not an empty hollow, but a violently churning grayish-purple cloud mass that constantly released low rumbles of thunder!

The cloud mass was roughly three zhang in diameter. Lightning serpents danced wildly within it, thunderlight flashing in and out of view.

More astonishingly, at the heart of the cloud mass, a vague silhouette could be seen—it resembled an ox, yet had no horns, standing on one leg in the void, its body wreathed in violent lightning!

"Kai Ox!" Xuan Chuan's pupils contracted slightly.

It truly was one! An ancient thunder beast, born with dominion over lightning. Drums made from its hide could shake the earth for five hundred miles!

In the original course of events, it should have been taken as Master Tongtian's mount only in the later stages of the Investiture of the Gods. Who would have thought that it was still in a prenatal innate state, on the verge of being born!

And that was not all. Beneath that thundercloud mass, several strange ores of varying sizes lay scattered across the black stone platform.

The ores were deep purple, with naturally formed silver-white lightning patterns within. As the thunder patterns on the mountain surface brightened and dimmed, they flickered in tandem, constantly absorbing the dense thunder spiritual qi around them.

"Innate Thunder-Pattern Iron... and companion ore marrow at that!" Xuan Chuan's heart burned.

This was a top-grade innate thunder-element spiritual material. If he could fuse it into his Fate-Cutting Sword, it would surely elevate the true thunder intent within the blade to a new level. There might even be a chance of nurturing genuine Innate Thunderforce!

Opportunity lay before him, yet Xuan Chuan was not dazzled by joy.

His divine sense spread outward like a net as he carefully searched the surroundings. The Chaos Pearl Fragment trembled faintly, sending him a warning—

Other than this natural formation, there seemed to be no further danger here, but... he always felt as though something was vaguely watching him, there and not there.

"Is it spiritual feedback from the formation itself? Or..." Xuan Chuan pondered for a moment, then decided to take the spiritual materials first and claim the Kui Ox afterward.

His body drifted upward, landing at the edge of the black platform while avoiding the thundercloud mass nurturing the Kui Ox at its center.

Those pieces of Innate Thunder-Pattern Iron appeared scattered at random, but were in fact faintly linked to the cloud mass through their qi.

If he forcibly seized them, he might disturb the Kui Ox being nurtured within, or even trigger a counterattack from the formation.

Xuan Chuan held two fingers together like a sword, violet-gold light pulsing at his fingertips—the union of Fate-Cutting Sword Intent and The One That Escaped. He fixed his gaze upon the minute "line of connection" between the spiritual materials and the cloud mass, then lightly slashed!

Sshk!

An almost inaudible sound of severing rang out.

The qi connection between the several pieces of Innate Thunder-Pattern Iron and the thundercloud mass was silently cut off.

With a sweep of his sleeve, a gentle force drew those deep-purple ores into his hand.

They were heavy and icy cold to the touch, yet waves of numbing thunder spiritual fluctuations came from within. Their quality was exceptionally high.

Just as the spiritual materials landed in his hand and Xuan Chuan turned toward the thundercloud mass, considering how to safely subdue this ancient thunder beast on the verge of birth—

A sudden change erupted!

"Crack—!!!"

A gigantic blade light, deathly pale and domineering, as if it could split the sea in two, came slashing down from the sky behind Xuan Chuan's flank without warning!

Before the blade light arrived, its fierce blade intent—enough to tear through space and sever all things—had already pressed a ravine dozens of zhang deep into the sea below, driving the seawater frantically apart to either side!

At the same time, a rough, domineering roar filled with unquestionable authority exploded through this stretch of sea like thunder:

"This beast is fated to be mine! Get the hell away from it!"

The sound waves carried monstrous demonic qi and biting killing intent, instantly shattering the several layers of concealed aura Xuan Chuan had placed around himself!

The pressure of a Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal crashed down upon Xuan Chuan like a ten-thousand-zhang tsunami!

Xuan Chuan whirled around. The Fate-Cutting Sword had already slipped silently into his palm, violet lightning coiling around its blade as it gave a low hum. A cold gleam flashed in his eyes as he looked toward the source of the blade light.

High above, the clouds tore apart. A burly man twelve feet tall, with crimson hair and a tangled beard, clad in black-scaled battle armor and wielding a deathly pale bone saber as broad as a door plank, descended upon the clouds.

Demonic qi billowed around him like wolf smoke. He was unmistakably a Demon Race Great Sage at the early Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal stage!

The demon sage greedily swept his gaze over the Thunder-Pattern Iron in Xuan Chuan's hand, then fixed it upon the vague silhouette of the Kui Ox within the thundercloud mass at the center of the platform. He bared his stark white teeth in a grin.

"And this Innate Thunder Marrow... Good stuff! It all belongs to me!"