Slaughter Divine Law, the Otherworld's Primordial Realm, and war across the heavens in three thousand years!

Su Linxian stared intently at the Exquisite Chessboard.

Seven golden threads of fate remained on it, three fairly bright and four somewhat dim.

The dim ones probably belonged to Heaven-Destined Protagonists who had yet to fully awaken.

"Manipulating fate..."

"Interesting."

The corners of Su Linxian's lips curved slightly.

He put away the Exquisite Chessboard. The Spirit Boat had already passed through several layers of clouds, and an enormous sect appeared on the horizon ahead.

The sect floated above a river of stars. Its halls and towers were scattered through the starlight like chess pieces, each building engraved with densely packed star patterns that radiated an extraordinarily rich power of astral divination.

The Star-Lattice Divine Sect.

Rumble.

The entire sect shuddered the instant the Spirit Boat landed.

Su Linxian stepped out of the Spirit Boat with Yu Yao and landed on the star platform before the sect.

He did not deliberately release his aura, but the pressure of the peak emperor realm still made the entire sect's formations tremble faintly.

Inside the Star-Lattice Divine Sect, countless disciples looked up at the sky, their faces deathly pale. The elders who had been divining heaven's secrets rushed out of their respective star halls, their expressions changing drastically.

"Which esteemed senior has come to our Star-Lattice Divine Sect?!"

Outside the sect, its sect master had already hurried out to greet him with dozens of elders.

The sect master was a gaunt-faced middle-aged man dressed in a robe patterned with stars, an early quasi-emperor aura swirling around him.

His expression changed when he saw who had arrived.

"The Su Family of the Emperor Clans?!"

"That is..."

"The Su Family's Divine Son!"

The sect master hurried before Su Linxian and bowed respectfully.

"I am the sect master of the Star-Lattice Divine Sect. Greetings, Your Highness, Divine Son! We did not know Your Highness, Imperial Scion, would be visiting and failed to welcome you from afar. Please forgive us!"

The elders behind him also bowed, not daring to breathe too loudly.

Su Linxian swept his gaze over them and spoke evenly.

"Have your supreme elder come out."

"This emperor has some matters to discuss with him."

The Star-Lattice Divine Sect claimed that nothing escaped its calculations, and every generation of supreme elders stood at the pinnacle of divination.

If anyone could know the whereabouts of the order divine laws, it could only be the Star-Lattice Divine Sect's supreme elder.

"The supreme elder...?"

The sect master froze for a moment, then hurriedly agreed.

He turned and transmitted his voice into the depths of the sect, a trace of urgency in his tone.

Before long, a filthy old man ambled out from deep within the sect.

He wore a tattered gray cloth robe, his hair was as messy as a chicken's nest, and several stains of indeterminate age clung to his face.

A string of peculiar astrolabes and divining rods hung from his waist, clinking incessantly as he walked.

Yet when this filthy old man emerged, Yu Yao involuntarily took a step back beside Su Linxian.

Her golden slit pupils contracted slightly as she instinctively sensed a pressure.

The old man released no aura, but his very presence was like a fathomless Star Sea, inspiring dread in anyone who looked at him.

So this is him...

Su Linxian narrowed his eyes slightly.

[Name: Xing Luozi]

[Title: Divine Diviner · Gold]

[Realm: Peak quasi-emperor realm]

"Oh my!"

The old man approached Su Linxian, looked him up and down with cloudy eyes, and grinned, revealing a mouthful of uneven, broken yellow teeth.

"Xing Luozi, the seventeen-hundredth-generation successor of the Star-Lattice Divine Sect, greets Your Highness, Divine Son."

Su Linxian nodded slightly.

His calm gaze rested on Xing Luozi.

"I came to have you divine the whereabouts of the order divine laws."

A sharp gleam flashed through Xing Luozi's cloudy eyes.

He chuckled twice, pulled a battered astrolabe from his waist, and waved it in his hand.

"The order divine laws... Your Highness certainly has quite an appetite..."

Su Linxian said nothing more.

With a flick of his hand, a Storage Ring flew from his fingertips and landed precisely before Xing Luozi, spinning several times in midair.

"Is this enough?"

Xing Luozi paused, then reached out to catch it.

The moment his divine sense probed the ring, his entire body went rigid!

His narrowed eyes grew wider and wider.

Ten million Supreme-Grade Spirit Stones were stacked in neat rows, their spiritual radiance illuminating the space inside the ring.

Beside them were three million-year-old Saint Medicines, two Emperor Essence Pills, origin crystals...

All of this was merely a hair from nine oxen compared to what Su Linxian had gained from annihilating the You Family, a saint clan.

Xing Luozi swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing.

His thin fingers tightened around the Storage Ring as though afraid it might suddenly fly away.

"Enough, enough, more than enough!"

"Your Highness, Divine Son, really, you're far too generous..."

"I'll begin the divination at once. Please wait a moment, Your Highness."

Su Linxian spoke indifferently.

"Begin."

Xing Luozi sat cross-legged on the star platform and placed the battered astrolabe before his knees.

He closed his eyes and slowly moved his bony fingers across the astrolabe. Its densely packed star patterns lit up one after another, forming a miniature starry sky around him.

Hum.

"Heavenly Divination."

Hundreds of divining rods flew from his waist and hung in the air, each spinning madly with a faint, fragmented hum.

Yu Yao crouched behind Su Linxian, her golden slit pupils fixed on the spinning starry sky, and felt a wave of dizziness.

That starry sky contained far too much information. Every star was an anchor of fate, and every stellar trajectory a thread of cause and effect. A single glance made her soul feel swollen, and she hurriedly looked away.

Su Linxian watched silently.

Those stellar trajectories and threads of causality were clearly discernible to him.

Xing Luozi was divining heaven's secrets, sorting, cross-referencing, and locating clues related to the order divine laws throughout the myriad worlds of the heavens. The divining rods constantly rearranged themselves, like keys attempting to unlock the doors of fate.

A moment later.

"Fix!"

Xing Luozi abruptly opened his eyes, a brilliant gleam surging within their cloudy depths.

He waved his hand, and the starry panorama abruptly contracted into a single dazzling point of light.

"Your Highness, Divine Son, I've found it!"

"Oh? So quickly?" Su Linxian raised an eyebrow.

Xing Luozi chuckled.

He extended a finger and pointed east.

"In the Eastern Region of the Heavens, within the Withered Bone Dao Domain, there is a slaughter divine law hidden in an ancient battlefield in the domain's deepest reaches."

"That ancient battlefield is the remnant of a Divine Emperor-level war in primordial times. Its slaughter aura was so intense that it endured for countless epochs without dispersing, eventually condensing into an order divine law. However..."

Su Linxian asked, "However, what?"

Xing Luozi shook his head with a smile. "Someone has already obtained this slaughter divine law."

Su Linxian waved dismissively.

"No matter."

Barring any surprises, a Heaven-Destined Protagonist had probably obtained it.

I'll simply take it.

But this Withered Bone Dao Domain...

Su Linxian pondered.

The name seemed somewhat familiar.

It was a land of chaos, without any unified power, rules, or order. Those entrenched there were all vicious criminals: fugitives wanted by the great Emperor Clans, sinister cultivators practicing forbidden arts, and fiends addicted to slaughter.

People died there every day, and battles raged every moment. The stench of blood was so thick that even the Heavenly Dao was unwilling to set foot there.

"Are there any others?"

Su Linxian asked.

"One isn't enough."

"Well..." Hearing this, Xing Luozi moved several more divining rods.

This time, his divination took longer, and a fine layer of sweat seeped onto his forehead.

"Your Highness."

"There is another order divine law, but it seems to still be forming..."

"The one destined for it seems not to have been born yet."

"How long?"

"Two thousand years."

Su Linxian nodded slightly.

Two thousand years. The rift in the Vast Expanse Forbidden Zone would open in roughly three thousand years, bringing beings from the Otherworld. He had to attain the position of Divine Emperor before then.

Two thousand years for an order divine law to form, with the Otherworld arriving in three thousand years—the time was barely sufficient.

"That's enough."

Su Linxian said.

"Yu Yao, we're leaving."

"To the Withered Bone Dao Domain."

Xing Luozi grinned.

"Are you leaving already, Your Highness?"

"Why not stay a little longer at our Star-Lattice Divine Sect?"

"I'm pressed for time."

With those words spoken.

Su Linxian casually waved his hand, and the Spirit Boat became a streak of light and vanished.

The sect master stood beneath the star platform, watching the white streak disappear into the depths of the clouds. He could not help stroking his beard and sighing.

"This Divine Son truly moves with the force of thunder and the speed of the wind."

He turned to look at Xing Luozi, who was still sitting cross-legged on the star platform.

Xing Luozi had his head lowered, his bony fingers still fiddling unconsciously with the battered astrolabe before his knees.

The smile had faded from his face. His lips still held the curve of his earlier irreverent grin, but something churned deep within his eyes.

"Supreme Elder?" The sect master paused, then stepped closer. "Why are you still divining?"

Xing Luozi did not raise his head.

His fingers brushed gently across the astrolabe, tracing a faint stellar mark.

The mark shone on the astrolabe for an instant, then rapidly dimmed.

"Tsk, tsk."

"This one is truly extraordinary."

His tone had lost its earlier playfulness and gained a rare solemnity.

The sect master froze.

He had cultivated under Xing Luozi for hundreds of thousands of years and had watched this supreme elder divine heaven's secrets countless times.

After every divination, Xing Luozi either boasted animatedly about his flawless calculations or cursed and complained about the obscurity of heaven's secrets.

Never once had he worn such an expression.

"Supreme Elder, what... do you mean?"

Xing Luozi raised his head, his cloudy old eyes turning toward the direction in which Su Linxian had departed.

His gaze pierced the layers of clouds and ten thousand miles of space, as though he could see the astonishing speed at which that white-robed figure was racing toward the Eastern Region of the Heavens.

"A Divine Emperor's destiny."

The sect master nodded slightly.

He could see that much himself.

When Su Linxian had sat on the star platform earlier, his aura had been contained like a deep abyss, its depths impossible to discern. Yet the composure and oppressive presence radiating from his very bones were nothing an ordinary peak emperor realm cultivator could possess!

He was even more terrifying than the rumors suggested!

He had reached the peak emperor realm at barely over a hundred years old, brought his Desolate Ancient Sacred Body to full mastery, and possessed ten Great Daos, with the Su Family of the Emperor Clans and Divine Emperor Su Qi backing him.

Such a fate would have been enough to stir the winds and clouds in any era!

"But..."

Xing Luozi's tone shifted, and an extremely faint shadow suddenly flickered through his cloudy old eyes.

"His Highness seems to have some trouble awaiting him in the future."

"A minor tribulation? No, even this old man cannot fathom it."

The sect master's expression shifted slightly.

He opened his mouth, wanting to ask what tribulation it was, but Xing Luozi had already waved him off, tucked the star chart before his knees into his sleeve, and hopped down from the star platform.

He dusted off his backside, slipping back into his irreverent old ways, and chuckled twice.

"Across all the heavens, His Highness has no equal. His mortal enemy..."

He raised a hand and pointed at the firmament overhead.

"Lies beyond our domain."

The sect master shuddered.

The Otherworld beyond their domain?

"All right, this old man is leaving."

"Don't call me unless there's something important."

Xing Luozi ambled toward the depths of the sect, the counting rods at his waist clinking incessantly.

The Otherworld.

The Primordial Realm.

At the summit of the firmament, an immense black heavenly gate stood in the void.

The gate rose over a hundred thousand feet, cast entirely from pitch-black primordial divine gold. Its lintel was densely carved with ancient Otherworld runes, every line pulsing with an eerie dark-red glow.

On either side of the heavenly gate stood an enormous stone guardian, hideous of face and wielding a giant axe, terrifying pressure swirling around each one.

Figure after figure converged from every direction.

They came in all manner of forms. Some had two horns on their heads, some had wings on their backs, some were covered in pitch-black scales, and some had no fixed shape at all.

Yet their auras were all terrifying to the extreme, every one of them at the peak emperor realm.

The imperial races of the Otherworld!

These were the mightiest races in the Otherworld, supreme beings who had ruled it for countless epochs.

"What did Lord Demon God say?!"

"Three thousand years?!"

An enormous creature covered in dark-red scales, with three curved horns sprouting from its head, spoke first, its voice rumbling like thunder.

An emperor of the Horned Demon Race, with cultivation at the peak emperor realm.

It swung its thick arm, dark-red flames dancing over its knuckles.

"Lord Demon God, isn't that far too long? The warriors of our Horned Demon Race have already sharpened their blades. We can hardly wait to storm the heavens and tear those feeble creatures to pieces!"

"Keh keh keh..." A figure beside it let out a sinister laugh.

It was an otherworldly being with a body as slender as a snake, utterly devoid of scales. Its skin was a sickly, ghastly white, its limbs long and thin, and barbed claws tipped its fingers.

An emperor of the Serpent Ring Race, wreathed in sickly green poison mist.

"I heard our sovereign say that those cultivators have pure souls. They taste far more delicious than the filthy souls here in our Otherworld."

An emperor of the Winged God Race, with two wings on his back, snorted coldly.

His wings were dark gold, the edges of their feathers sharp as blades.

"The resources of the heavens are the real prize. Spirit veins, divine ore, the essence of Dao laws—that is true wealth. With those things, our Winged God Race could produce another Demon God-level being within three thousand years."

A giant composed entirely of pitch-black rock stood three times taller than an ordinary otherworldly being. Every step it took cracked the void beneath its feet into a spiderweb of fissures.

The emperor of the Rock Demon Race rumbled, "One of you wants to kill, one wants to eat, and one wants to plunder. All I want to know is—what do the Heavenly Dao laws of the heavens taste like? I hear the laws of that world are far more complete than those of our Otherworld. If I could swallow one, I might break through the bottleneck that's plagued me for eight hundred thousand years."

The imperial races of the Otherworld gathered before the heavenly gate, talking among themselves, their voices brimming with barely restrained excitement and restlessness.

High in the firmament, a figure stood with its hands behind its back.

"Silence, all of you."

The figure was faint, as though formed from a mass of hazy gray mist, its face obscured and its shape indistinct.

Yet the aura it emanated made the skies of the entire Primordial Domain tremble, filling even those peak emperor realm members of the Otherworld's imperial races with a crushing pressure from the depths of their souls.

This was a being beyond the peak emperor realm, a supreme existence closer to the Divine Emperor level than any other in the Otherworld!

"With our strength," the figure said, its voice quiet yet reaching the ears of every Otherworld creature with perfect clarity, "we can tear through the barrier between the two realms in three thousand years at most."

"When that time comes—"

"We shall wage war upon the heavens!!!"