After being trapped in the Divine Desert for months, Lu Chen finally escaped with the help of the "Hengyu" plaque.
When he entered a town, he learned that the Various Holy Lands had begun their assault on Purple Mountain several days earlier. Naturally, they had failed, but the attempt still shook the world, and all manner of news spread throughout the Eastern Wasteland's cultivation world through Domain Gates.
The Northern Region Holy City had endured through the ages, its origins impossible to trace. At first, the Various Holy Lands and Desolate Ancient Families had all sought to claim it for themselves. After secret negotiations, however, they had agreed to jointly control the Divine City.
Yet no outsider knew the Holy City's core secrets, which the Various Holy Lands and Desolate Ancient Families truly held in their hands. Only a handful of mysteries had been made public.
Within the Heavenly Palace at the center of the Divine City stood a Desolate Antiquity Dao Platform, covered in unfathomably profound Dao Patterns. Even beings as powerful as the Holy Lords struggled to understand their precise function.
Later, scattered passages in ancient records revealed rumors that several Ancient Great Emperors had successfully crossed the void from the platform to reach a land of fortune. Unfortunately, no one had ever truly verified this.
Still, the great powers had discovered one of its wondrous properties. There were nine ancient, unadorned Stone Tokens on the platform. No matter how far away one was, a token could be used to cross the void and return to the platform.
To test the platform's teleportation range, an old Holy Lord had once traveled all the way to the Central Plains, countless hundreds of millions of miles away, and still returned through the void using a Stone Token.
Of course, the