Crocodile Ancestor's conjecture

"Do you know where this road leads, fellow Daoist?"

Jiang Zhu shook his head. "I don't know either. The Mythological Era was so long ago that even the Ancient Heavenly Court has been buried in ancient history, let alone a Starry Sky Ancient Road."

"But there's an incredibly ancient Emperor Formation at Hangu Pass, probably left by Emperor Zun. This road must be connected to the Ancient Heavenly Court. Could it be a pilgrimage route?"

Of course, Jiang Zhu would not tell Crocodile Ancestor that this Starry Sky Ancient Road led to the Northern Dipper. He was counting on Crocodile Ancestor to clear out the remnant clans along the way.

"No need to overthink it. We'll know once we've traveled it!"

Whoosh!

Light flashed, and the Bagua Gate atop the Five-Colored Altar burst forth with an everlasting radiance. The eight trigrams upon it looked cast from metal and rang out in unison. After flickering hundreds upon thousands of times, they opened the road ahead.

Then, in an instant, the entire altar dimmed, and the two vanished along with the Bagua Gate.

On this star road, the passage of time was chaotic. Sometimes it dragged on so long that it nearly drove them mad, as though time had stopped; then it suddenly seemed impossibly swift, as though hundreds upon thousands of years had rushed past.

After an unknown length of time, brilliant starlight appeared ahead. They had reached the end of this star road, lending a little substance and color to the darkness and void.

Amid violent tremors, space warped, the ancient road grew mottled, and countless colors flashed. They reached their first stop and tumbled out of the void.

Pop!

With a soft sound, the Starry Sky Ancient Road behind them vanished. They stood on a desolate star, lifeless as far as the eye could see, with thin air and no sign of vitality.

"What is this place?" The two looked up at the starry sky, then surveyed their surroundings.

There was no moon overhead, but the dazzling river of stars spilled vast swathes of pure white light. This star seemed close to every great star around it, as though a single leap could carry them to the other shore.

"The aura of divine source!" Crocodile Ancestor sensed a trace of it.

Crocodile Ancestor had been suppressed by the Demon-Transforming Stake for over two thousand years, continuously bled until his vital essence had long since run dry. Earth was in the age of Dharma's decline, with no divine treasures to replenish him. Sensing the aura of divine source now filled him with joy!

A massive black hand reached out and grasped into the distance. Its shape was no different from a human hand, but it was enormous. Its fingers alone were a hundred meters long, gleaming black and sinister.

When the vast hand that blotted out the sky and sun withdrew, a crystalline pyramid of white bones rested in its palm.

Skulls, arm bones, spinal bones-every kind was there, assembled into this strange bone tower. Though polished smooth and inscribed with laws, it still bore the marks of passing ages. It looked quite old.

Then Crocodile Ancestor's aura pulsed, and the creatures sealed inside the divine source quietly died.

He extracted the divine source. Sealed within it were hundreds of antlike creatures, each enormous, over three meters long, with bodies that looked carved from red coral.

Among them was one much larger than the others, over ten meters long, its entire body translucent crimson.

These antlike creatures were descendants of an Ancient Saint who had attacked Hangu Pass. Trapped here, they had survived on divine source left by their ancestors. So much time had passed that it was nearly exhausted.

"A pity there's so little! Fellow Daoist, you're only a wisp of a divided soul. How about letting me have all the divine source?"

"Give me the ants' corpses, then. I've never seen creatures like these." Jiang Zhu calmly requested the demon beasts' bodies.

With a thought from Crocodile Ancestor, all the divine source turned into vital energy and flowed into his body, leaving only the crimson ant corpses behind.

Jiang Zhu stood on no ceremony either, using the Demon-Refining Pot to gather all the corpses inside.

Since opening a Divine Spring within his body, he had been able to use divine power to draw objects into the world inside the Demon-Refining Pot.

"Refine!"

In an instant, divine chains of Dao laws enveloped every corpse. They gradually dissolved, finally becoming a mass of bright red Origin Blood. At the same time, a humanoid totem appeared on the Demon-Refining Pot, lit up, then faded.

Could this be the Heavenly Horned Ant's totem? Jiang Zhu wondered as he studied the humanoid totem.

The Heavenly Horned Ant, one of the Ten Fiends, was not a true ant but a humanoid creature. Its race was renowned for possessing the greatest strength under heaven. With strength taken to its ultimate limit, it was the strongest creature in recorded history, peerless and boundlessly terrifying. It could shatter heaven and earth through sheer force and overturn the nine layers of heaven. In strength alone, it far surpassed even a true dragon.

As the saying went, one measure of strength could overcome ten measures of skill. It could literally batter its opponents apart, while also possessing incomparably abundant vitality. Its combat prowess ranked among the very best of the Ten Fiends.

I've never seen this humanoid totem on the Demon-Refining Pot before. Has the pot been optimized? Is it better suited to the constitutions of babies from the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands?

Jiang Zhu shook his head and abandoned these thoughts. He would leave them to his future self. As he was now, he was not qualified to ponder such questions. His most important task was to work hard and grow stronger.

Afterward, they found a Five-Colored Altar within a hidden formation and set off once more.

Over the following month or so, they made seventeen or eighteen crossings in total, descending each time upon a barren, silent planet. Yet at every stop, a battle awaited them.

Along the way, Crocodile Ancestor harvested divine source while Jiang Zhu refined corpses and extracted their bloodlines. He had accumulated over half the required True Dragon Source Blood. All five claws on the True Dragon Totem had lit up, along with two-thirds of its torso.

He also gained bloodlines from various other races and amassed a great deal of precious blood, thousands upon tens of thousands of times more than before. He estimated that it would be more than enough to cultivate to Severing the Dao. After all, he had refined the kings of over a dozen planets. Besides, he did not possess a Sacred Body and did not need to consume so many resources.

The greatest surprise came on a dead, silent planet where a surviving race resembled mole crickets. After he refined them, Gu's totem actually appeared on the Demon-Refining Pot.

When they descended upon the nineteenth ancient star, they learned an important piece of information. After defeating a group of powerful cultivators, they discovered in their seas of consciousness the name of that Ancient Life Star deep in the universe-Flying Immortal.

They also learned who those cultivators were: the Kunlun Remnant Clan.

"My heavenly fortune truly soars! Could heaven be making amends to me, delivering so many immortal opportunities!"

Crocodile Ancestor's blood-red eyes brimmed with excitement. In the long millennia before his suppression, he had encountered only one opportunity connected to immortals. Who could have known that, while he was humming a song and pursuing immortal secrets, a monk would suddenly appear and suppress him?

He had only just broken free of his seal, yet immortal secrets were already being delivered into his hands one after another.

He firmly believed that the Flying Immortal star held great opportunities and great fortune. Since an ancient star could bear the name Flying Immortal, it surely had something extraordinary about it.

Moreover, the Flying Immortal star had the Kunlun Remnant Clan, while Earth had Kunlun Mountain, known as the ancestor of all mountains. Then there was Earth being Emperor Zun's ancestral star, the Flying Immortal star, the Kunlun Remnant Clan's assault on Earth, the heavenly-script stone carvings on the Five-Colored Altar, the Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountains...

Everything since his escape from the seal circled through Crocodile Ancestor's mind, yet a veil of mist still seemed to stand in his way.

The more Crocodile Ancestor thought, the more pieces he found missing. Still, he could be certain that Kunlun Mountain and the Kunlun Remnant Clan were connected. Otherwise, why would the Kunlun Remnant Clan cross one Ancient Life Star after another to attack Earth?

Thus, there were two possibilities. First, the Kunlun Remnant Clan might have originated on Earth but been driven out of their ancestral land for some unknown reason.

Second, Kunlun Mountain had originally been a mountain range on the Flying Immortal star, severed and brought back to Earth by someone wielding immense magical power. That was why the Kunlun Remnant Clan wanted to attack Earth.

Having thought this far, Crocodile Ancestor grew even more eager to reach the Flying Immortal star and uncover Kunlun Mountain's secrets through the Kunlun Remnant Clan. There might even be other terrain maps there.

If his second conjecture was true, then Kunlun on Earth might be the site of the Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountains.

Terrain like the Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountains, nurtured naturally by heaven and earth, was rarely seen throughout the ages. If it had been created by someone, that person was very likely Emperor Zun, and Kunlun Mountain might also be an important component of the Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountains.