Time passed, year after year.
Within the Nine Heavens void, You Hong stood outside the hall doors, his back ramrod straight. The vigilance on his face never changed, and his hawk-like gaze remained fixed on another shadowy hall deep within the void.
At the same time,
inside the hall behind him, the young man sat cross-legged, motionless as a frozen statue.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Faint sounds of ice splitting occasionally came from the young man's palm.
Other than a single black jade hairpin that remained completely intact, the Authority Fragments seemed unable to withstand the erosion of time. One after another, they became imprinted with the marks of passing years, gradually cracking and shattering...
In the blink of an eye, five thousand years passed!
Li Qingshan had entered his twentieth thousandth year within the [Ancient Hall], with 980,000 years remaining before the Intercept Heaven Hall opened.
Outside the hall doors, You Hong remained standing still, faithfully performing his duty as though ten thousand years were but a single day.
Within the hall, the young man was still seated cross-legged. The Authority Fragments that had once shimmered with strange light in his palm had long vanished, leaving behind only that final black jade hairpin...
A crisp sound suddenly shattered the silence of the hall.
A crack emerged from the tail end of the jade hairpin and rapidly spread upward.
Wherever it passed, the original "blackness" melted away like spring snow. In the blink of an eye, it vanished, replaced by deep fissures that burst apart the entire jade hairpin...
At the same time, the young man who had been seated for so long slowly opened his eyes.
"It finally... broke!"
Li Qingshan let out a soft sigh and lowered his head to look at his palm, where pieces of jade-like