As Shi Hao and the other young powerhouses returned from the Nine Heavens, the entire Three Thousand Dao Provinces bustled with excitement.
Even the weakest of the returning geniuses had become Sect Masters in the Void Dao Realm. Most had already entered the Self-Severing Realm, or even the Escape One Realm.
People were utterly shocked. They had only gone to cultivate in the Nine Heavens for a few decades, yet their cultivation had advanced by such leaps and bounds.
In the past, even the most outstanding geniuses would struggle to break through to the Void Dao Realm without the tempering of time and hundreds or thousands of years of accumulation.
Yet now, that group of geniuses had all become Sect Master-level figures in just a few decades. How could that not be astonishing?
"How does this look anything like the end of an epoch? I'd believe you if you called it a golden age! They're all Sect Masters, with even more in the Self-Severing and Escape One Realms. It's like a dream!"
Even the powerhouses of the various orthodoxies found it unbelievable, yet the sight of their disciples returning from cultivation in the Nine Heavens filled them with delighted surprise.
Beyond that, as the disciples returned, some explosive news began to spread as well.
For instance, the war in the Border Wasteland had ended, and the threat from the Foreign Realm had been lifted. There would be no further worries for several hundred years.
Of course, the most explosive news was still that this epoch had given rise to an Immortal King and a True Immortal.
As word spread that Yun Ying had become an Immortal King and slain An Lan, an Undying King of the Foreign Realm, the entire world fell silent.
"Holy shit... I must be dreaming. The