"Let's go."
"Yes, senior."
Yun Tian led Nie Li through the outermost barrier and into the interior.
The space inside resembled a set of ruins, though they appeared to be ancient.
Several stone statues stood in the innermost area, with a few sculptures farther out. Nie Li immediately noticed the innermost statues, simply because he recognized them. Among them were the Patriarch Daozang and a goddess. Nie Li did not recognize the goddess, but he felt as though he had seen her somewhere before.
"Senior, who is that goddess in the stone statue? I don't recognize her, but I feel like I've seen her somewhere before."
"Yes, you know her."
"I know her?"
Nie Li looked at the statue again. I know her? He pondered where he could have seen her. The longer he looked at the sculpture, the more familiar she seemed, until a streak of light flashed through his mind and he suddenly remembered someone.
"Senior, it's Goddess Yu Yan!"
"That's right. She's Yu Yan, only in her previous life."
"Goddess Yu Yan's previous life?"
"Yes. Yu Yan's original name was Heartfire. She was a goddess who lived for tens of thousands of years, in the same era as the Saint Emperor, and was known as the Jin Yan Goddess. When heaven and earth first opened, she joined many powerful cultivators in comprehending the laws and truths of the universe.
"Because the Saint Emperor sparked a great war, she transformed her body into the Heavenly God Ancestral Grounds to suppress one of his Demon Bones. Her life-bound heartfire became a meteor and fell into the Little Exquisite World. Afterward, a married couple adopted her and named her Yu Yan, and she became humanity's Fire Spirit God.
"During the ancient war between humans and Demon Beasts in the Little