Ye Fan had already reached his third life just ten thousand years after attaining the Dao. It was astonishing, almost impossible to understand.
The Ancient Emperors and Great Emperors, being outsiders, knew nothing of Ye Fan's progress. But the Dao Realm Emperors knew it perfectly well.
And over those ten thousand years, the Ancient Emperors and Great Emperors were not the only ones to advance. Another of the Emperors had achieved Immortal Ascension.
The former Void Emperor, now Xuanyuan, had entered the True Immortal realm.
The Void Mirror was Xuanyuan's bonded weapon. Though he no longer called himself Void, that bond could not be severed.
The Void Mirror had evolved into an Immortal Artifact long ago, and all this time it had been influencing Xuanyuan.
When a cultivator's bonded weapon evolved ahead of its master and became an Immortal Artifact, its influence on the cultivator was easy to imagine.
After all, every Emperor Weapon in Shrouding the Heavens carried its Great Emperor's own Dao.
For Xuanyuan, this was an advantage as vast as the heavens. It was almost as if a version of himself standing in the Immortal Dao Domain were constantly passing every insight into the Great Dao to the version still in the Human Dao Realm.
Thus, after Amitabha Buddha and Suirenshi, he became the Dao Realm's third True Immortal, and its fifth undying existence if Meng Chuan and the God Emperor were counted.
It was time for Xuanyuan to achieve Immortal Ascension.
Because of Xuanyuan's Immortal Ascension, the Dao Realm Emperors also emerged from seclusion for a while. They watched the Qilin Ancient Emperor face his tribulation, too.
Now, as they watched Ye Fan quietly show off below, the Emperors sighed to themselves.
"He's exactly like the Heavenly Emperor!" the Great Accomplishment Sacred Body said aloud.
"Ye