Su Qingxue's Difficult Choice

"Then choose the Dragon Race." Hu Liena barely gave it any thought.

She glanced at Qing Xuan, who was leaving the North Sea with Qing Yi in the Firmament, and the faint mockery in her eyes became even more apparent.

"Between a stable, powerful race and a lone sacred being who is voluntarily walking into the East Sea, is that really a difficult choice?"

"Besides..."

She gently set down her teacup.

"Whether he can even survive until the day the passage opens is probably still unknown."

The mentors in the office instinctively looked toward the Firmament, yet none spoke to refute her.

Shen Qinghe was silent for a moment before ultimately retaining a cautious assessment of the Primordial World's power system in her records.

Spirit Hall's official response was swiftly finalized.

The Dragon Race remained their primary contact target.

Su Qingxue and the other members of the Golden Generation were placed in the second-stage Primordial World adaptation sequence.

Su Qingxue was cultivating in an icy training chamber.

The ice-element Soul Douluo responsible for instructing her smiled after reading the notice.

"Being included in the Primordial World adaptation sequence, even if it is only the second stage, already shows how highly the academy values you."

"If the passage is truly established, you may become one of the first people to come into contact with the Primordial Dragon Race."

Su Qingxue should have been happy as well.

Yet attached to the end of the notice was Hu Liena's public assessment of Qing Xuan.

Whether he could even survive until the day the passage opened was probably still unknown.

The chill within the training chamber suddenly fluctuated.

A freshly condensed ice feather slipped from Su Qingxue's fingertips, struck the ground, and shattered into several pieces.

She knew that Dean Hu was not wrong.

Killing a remnant spirit hiding in the Ancient Battlefield did not mean Qing Xuan could contend against the entire Dragon Race.

Moreover, Qing Xuan was heading toward the East Sea.

But for some reason, when those words truly reached her ears, an unease she could not suppress still arose in her heart.

When she had first regarded Qing Xuan as her future partner, she had never imagined there would be such an obstacle between them.

She had thought that all she needed to do was continuously improve her talent, climb higher with Spirit Hall's resources, and wait for the passage to open. Then, she would naturally be qualified to stand before Qing Xuan.

Only now did she realize that when she entered the Primordial World in the future, she might represent Spirit Hall, which intended to cooperate with the Dragon Race.

And Qing Xuan might already be standing against the Dragon Race.

Su Qingxue instinctively wanted to say something for him. He would not die.

But when the words reached her lips, she realized she had no basis for them at all.

She had once dissolved her team with Gu Xuan in favor of a more mature path of cultivation.

Now, the same choice had been placed before her once again.

On one side stood Soul Hall and the Primordial Dragon Race.

On the other was Qing Xuan, whom she had once deemed worthy of becoming her future partner.

If she truly could choose only one, would she still be as resolute as she had been last time?

Su Qingxue gazed at the Firmament, unable to find an answer for a long time.

Time went unrecorded in the Primordial World.

After leaving the North Sea, Qing Xuan and Qing Yi followed the twenty-four faint sensations eastward.

The North Sea and East Sea were separated by far more than countless billions of miles. Even though the two had attained Great Luo and could traverse the Primordial World's Space-Time, the journey still took several thousand years.

Nothing worth lingering over happened along the way.

Only when the water-element spiritual energy in the air grew increasingly dense and the boundless sea appeared once again at the edge of heaven and earth did they truly enter the East Sea's domain.

Compared to the North Sea, which had endured the ravages of Fierce Beasts, the East Sea was undoubtedly far more prosperous.

Beneath the sea's surface, countless aquatic creatures thrived along the Water Veins.

Farther away, enormous Dragon shadows could occasionally be seen passing through the sea of clouds, while the aura of the Dragon Race spread through nearly the entire world.

This was not only the foremost of the Four Seas, but also the Dragon Race's true stronghold.

The two did not approach the center of the East Sea, where the Dragon Race's aura was strongest. Instead, they followed their senses to an ordinary-looking stretch of sea.

There were no spirit islands here, nor were there any astonishing celestial phenomena.

Yet the Chaos aura within Qing Xuan became exceptionally clear at this moment.

The twenty-four sensations lay below, yet they did not belong to the same space. It was as though each aura was hidden within an independent world, constantly shifting with the East Sea's tides.

Qing Xuan did not act at once.

Only after the Taiyin Star rose and its cool moonlight scattered across the sea did the first point of five-colored radiance suddenly light up in the depths of the previously tranquil waters.

Then came the second, the third...

Twenty-four rays of light appeared one after another, circling each other like twenty-four bright moons sunk beneath the sea.

"Found them."

Qing Xuan and Qing Yi stepped into the sea at the same time.

The seawater parted on its own before them.

The farther down they went, the more dazzling the twenty-four lights became.

After passing through the final layer of overlapping Space-Time, an underwater expanse concealed by an Innate Grand Formation finally appeared before them.

Twenty-four luminous pearls floated above a pitch-black Sea Eye, breathing in Taiyin moonlight and the water-element essence of the East Sea.

Each was no larger than a fist, yet it seemed to contain an as-yet-unformed world within.

The auras of the twenty-four pearls were interconnected, and the descending five-colored radiance firmly suppressed the entire Sea Eye.

They were different from the Chaos Pearl Fragment in the North Sea.

Although these pearls had likewise originated from the Chaos Pearl, they had already evolved into complete Innate Spirit Treasures after the creation of heaven and earth.

The restrictions within them were naturally formed, each possessing its own Great Dao. There was no longer any sign that they could rejoin Qing Xuan's origin.

Their shared origin merely allowed Qing Xuan to sense their existence.

Now, they were simply a complete set of spirit treasures.

Twenty-four Sea-Calming Divine Pearls!

Qing Xuan stepped forward.

The twenty-four pearls, which had been quietly absorbing moonlight, erupted with brilliant divine radiance at the same instant.

Boom!

The entire underwater space suddenly froze.

Boundless seawater, overlapping Space-Time, and even the Great Dao auras flowing around them were all suppressed by an incomparably heavy force.

The twenty-four Sea-Calming Divine Pearls rose one after another, and behind each pearl emerged a hazy world.

Twenty-four layers of power stacked upon one another, as if the entire East Sea were crashing down at once!

Just as the world behind Qing Xuan began to unfold, Qing Yi had already appeared in front of him.

The young woman in green raised her hand and gently curled her fingers.

The Creation Great Dao descended abruptly.

She neither used the power of creation to nourish all things nor passively resisted the twenty-four layers of suppression.

Under her palm, the spirit treasure patterns that had already intertwined and taken shape were forcibly dismantled, returning to a state before they had connected with one another.

Creation could grant form to all things, and it could likewise shatter their original forms, allowing everything to evolve anew.

The twenty-four layers of suppressive force had only just taken shape when her palm separated them.

The twenty-four Sea-Calming Divine Pearls scattered in different directions.

The vast world behind Qing Xuan completely unfolded at that moment, enveloping every pearl at once.

Chaos aura rose from the edges of that world.

The Sea-Calming Divine Pearls, which had still been struggling violently, seemed to finally recognize Qing Xuan's aura, and their resistance gradually subsided.

A moment later, the twenty-four pearls simultaneously shrank and slowly revolved around Qing Xuan's palm.

Five-colored radiance reflected off one another, while the twenty-four unformed worlds within the pearls continuously formed and perished as the pearls turned.

A Supreme Innate Spirit Treasure: twenty-four Sea-Calming Divine Pearls.

A single pearl could suppress Water Veins and disrupt the five senses. When all twenty-four were combined, they could use the power of the worlds contained within to suppress an opponent.

Qing Xuan studied them for a moment before suddenly presenting the entire set of spirit treasures to Qing Yi.

"Try them."

Qing Yi did not take them, merely looking at Qing Xuan with confusion in her eyes.