"Those seeking opportunities may do as they please. Those harvesting living beings will be killed. Will you all remember that?" the Willow Deity said calmly.
"Yes!"
"We obey your decree, Senior!"
"Your wisdom is boundless, Senior!"
"Amitabha, amitabha. Such mercy, such compassion."
"This junior has drifted through half his life, lamenting only that he never met an enlightened master..."
Amid the jumble of responses, the sect leaders shuffled forward in trembling fear, cautiously exploring the lower realm.
"Immortal Mountain Heavenly Venerable! And those bald donkeys from the Western Heaven, Sword Valley, and the Immortal Palace! Where are you?" Kunpeng Son appeared in midair, his aura at the peak of the Self-Severing Realm sweeping across the sky as he eyed them like a tiger watching its prey.
The Immortal Mountain Heavenly Venerable's avatar, sent down as an advance scout, sighed and revealed himself. News had previously been cut off, leaving him unaware of the upheaval. Now that he had descended and seen the state of the Immortal Mountain, together with the aura lingering on the seal, it was not hard to deduce that the Willow Deity had intervened and rescued Kunpeng Son.
"Suppressing you was also a form of protection. I knew there was treachery involved, but the Immortal Palace was powerful. Suppression was already the best outcome you could hope for. Otherwise, you would certainly have died. Even your primary-and-secondary-body technique would have struggled to save your life," the Immortal Mountain Heavenly Venerable said.
"I know, but what's done is done. You could easily have watched from the sidelines back then. Wasn't it because you coveted the Kunpeng Method that you joined the encirclement to kill her?" Kunpeng Son sneered.
"Alas..." The Immortal Mountain Heavenly Venerable sighed, glanced at the Willow Deity, who remained motionless in the distance, and joined the surviving sect leaders involved in that affair to face the Undying Being.
Some time later, Kunpeng Son returned from beyond the sky, looking thoroughly refreshed.
As a descendant of the Ten Fiends, when no one could suppress him through a superior cultivation realm, not a single one of those sect leaders was his match. Even attacking together, their defeat was only a matter of time. Now, he had slain every one of the avatars they had sent into the lower realm.
The Little Pagoda howled with excitement. Its lower bone sections softened and gradually fused with the two recovered levels. As its Dao body recovered and its Dao fruit grew more complete, its aura climbed steadily. It was already no weaker than the Self-Severing Realm, comparable to a Quasi-Supreme Being.
After spending some time consolidating itself again and eliminating hidden dangers, it might be able to recover to the Supreme Realm.
The Reincarnation Disk had also reclaimed two of its own segments, restoring itself to three segments. Its aura grew even more unfathomable.
The Willow Deity, however, had gone out with Sky Desolation and vanished for the time being.
A day later, the Willow Deity returned from the outside world, bringing back a small world.
When the small world opened, dragon qi gushed out, and a True Dragon Horn flew from within, accompanied by half a skull.
They belonged to the True Dragon King and the Cross Yin-Yang Lord of the Forbidden Zone.
"When I acted earlier, I sensed some traces and calls. I never expected to find you two fellow Daoists." The Willow Deity returned to the village entrance and once again took root as a willow tree.
As an emotionless reincarnation workhorse, Chen Yao silently completed the rebirth of these two Immortal Kings.
"To think there would come a day when I could witness reincarnation." The True Dragon King sighed with emotion. His true spirit had already completed its transformation into a newborn soul, which manifested a physical form and became a dragon egg.
"...Many thanks, fellow Daoist," the Lord of the Forbidden Zone transmitted from within a Dao cocoon shrouded in yin-yang two qi.
Now, rather than saying the village was full of the old, young, sick, and disabled, one could only say they were all young. Except for the Willow Deity.
"Karma is wondrous beyond words." The two Immortal Kings shifted to new spots and casually bestowed two precious technique inheritances upon Chen Yao.
The True Dragon Treasure Technique.
The Eight-Nine Heavenly Art.
"Fellow Daoist Ancestral Sacrificial Spirit, do you still intend to take action?" the Lord of the Forbidden Zone asked.
"There are several True Immortals in the Upper Realm who came from the Immortal Domain back then. They once ambushed fellow Daoist Kun Peng. However, she shattered all their Dao fruits, exhausting their immortal foundations and reducing them to Remnant Immortals. Yet they colluded with certain factions surviving from Immortal Ancient to smear the descendants of the Seven Kings of the Border Wasteland. They must be made to answer for it." The Willow Deity gazed toward the horizon, seeing through the barriers of the Upper Realm.
"After suffering grievous wounds and nearly dying back then, the surviving Seven Kings built a city to suppress the Heavenly Abyss. They intended to detonate it when the Foreign Realm next invaded, severing the region where the realms adjoined and using the great reckoning to delay another invasion. I wonder how things stand now. After the realm was destroyed, we clung to life in far-flung corners, and news no longer traveled freely." The True Dragon King sighed.
"Now that I still have strength to spare, I intend to attempt the Mortal World Immortal Path. If I succeed, perhaps I can advance further when I return to the King Realm. After settling accounts in the Upper Realm, I will temper myself in the lower realm. If the results are poor, I can only take the Gate of Origin to the Boundary Sea and seek out a world in the age of Dharma's end." The Willow Deity mapped out the road ahead.
"The Gate of Origin? Is it about to appear?" The Lord of the Forbidden Zone's interest was piqued.
"Before long. Before finding fellow Daoist True Dragon, I discovered traces of a Primordial Treasure Realm. It may be there." Having recovered to this state, the Willow Deity's ability to divine heavenly secrets had improved enormously.
"Then, fellow Daoist, your next move is..." the Lord of the Forbidden Zone asked, seeing that the Willow Deity had no intention of settling down yet.
"The one who brought you back is merely my avatar. My true body is currently sweeping across the Upper Realm with Sky Desolation," the Willow Deity said.
This was nothing like her condition in the original story, where she had only barely recovered to the early Supreme Realm. Some sect leaders could even briefly contend with her using forbidden artifacts such as the Immortal Mountain Heavenly Venerable's Five Elements Mountain, while the Yin-Yang Daoist and the Supreme Being wielding the remains of Endless's bell also interfered. In her state of alternative immortalization, there was not a single worthy opponent beneath the Immortal King level in the Nine Heavens.
"Isn't Sky Desolation Kun Peng's weapon?" Chen Yao muttered.
With this chain reaction, the Upper Realm would probably look entirely different when they went there in the future.
Looking at the Willow Deity's avatar rooted at the village entrance and standing guard, Wu Gensheng, who had inadvertently become the shit-stirring stick of history, silently lit a candle.
Remnant Immortals, farewell.
Looking around Stone Village, he saw a True Dragon, the Lord of the Forbidden Zone, an Immortal Phoenix, and Kun Peng. Before he knew it, a whole gathering of reincarnated Immortal Kings had assembled, and he had acquired several Immortal King-level Dao arts himself.
The True Dragon Method, the Phoenix Method, the Kunpeng Method, the Grass Character Sword Art, the Six Paths of Reincarnation Heavenly Art, the Eight-Nine Heavenly Art, and the Pu Demon Method.
His innate Eight Extraordinary Skills would have fallen out of the meta if several of them had not transformed into divine abilities that suited his Dao fruit exceptionally well and could perform at an extremely high level.
"It's time to sort through what I've learned. The Heaven Communicating Talisman Art at the Inscription Realm, and Feng Hou's Mystic Gate at the Array Formation Realm. The road ahead might not offer any more chances to turn the Eight Extraordinary Skills into divine abilities. I need to find a way."
Chen Yao sat at the village entrance, watching Shi Hao and the others enjoy their rare family time, and shook his head.
He could use his foreknowledge to make the early stages easier and gather powerful backers, but he could hardly stand against the greater tide.
There was no possibility of defeating the Foreign Realm's densely packed ranks of Immortal Kings in a short time. To block the Foreign Realm and make them fear the great reckoning enough not to force their way through the Sea of Order, the Heavenly Abyss would inevitably be detonated. The resulting chain reaction would cause the Sea of Order to drain vast amounts of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths' fundamental essence. The age of Dharma's end was destined to descend. The Immortal Domain would merely sit back and reap the benefits, using the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths as a buffer.
The great reckoning would also descend during the age of Dharma's end. Although the realm barriers of a world in that age could hinder Kings returning from the Boundary Sea to some extent, they would merely be prickly obstacles. If those Kings insisted on descending, the barriers would still be breached.
Unless he could become an Immortal King within a few tens of thousands of years and possess the might of a giant, he would not be able to defend the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths. Even then, he could only withstand the initial onslaught of the great reckoning. When large numbers of giants returned in its middle and later stages, everything would still collapse.
History had crashed headfirst into a ditch, but the greater tide remained hard to change.
"Ah, time to cultivate."
Before you continue