Still, the youth had to admit that once this eternal divine prohibition emerged, it truly gave its wielder the right to look down on everyone in the same realm.
Strictly speaking, only those who entered the domain of divine prohibition had earned a ticket to contend on the imperial path!
Entering divine prohibition while still in the second heaven of the Immortal Platform, in particular, was truly the bearing of a Great Emperor!
This era might have seemed a golden age, with kingly physiques as plentiful as clouds and practitioners of the eight prohibitions falling like rain.
Yet the moment divine prohibition appeared, all of them lost their luster.
After all, a barrier of divine prohibition existed in this world. No matter how heaven-defying one's physique or how peerless one's kingly body, without entering divine prohibition, combat strength spanning eight minor realms was the limit!
And divine prohibition surpassed the eight prohibitions!
Anyone who accomplished this could dominate an entire lifetime even with an ordinary physique, trampling countless special constitutions beneath their feet.
All beneath divine prohibition were ants. That was no idle saying.
People argued endlessly over the strengths of different physiques. Some claimed the Sacred Body's golden form was imperishable, while others boasted that the Tyrant Body was unrivaled beneath the heavens... the husband had his reasons, and the wife had hers.
But once divine prohibition appeared, all those arguments lost their meaning.
The Yaoguang Holy Land's Candidate Saint Son seemed to understand this principle too. He lay amid shattered mountains and rivers stained red with his own blood, laughing desolately.
"Divine prohibition... to think it was divine prohibition..."
He coughed up blood and spoke in broken fragments. His injuries seemed so severe that every word consumed the last of his vitality, his breathing growing steadily weaker.
With death upon him, he was leaving his final words.
"It shouldn't have been like this..."
"Born into this age, the finest... of eras, I should have soared into the heavens, my sacred light illuminating the sea of stars, carrying on the wondrous legend that our Yaoguang Holy Land has sustained for fifty thousand years... even if I couldn't become an emperor, I should have become a Saint, the twenty-ninth Saint, or perhaps the thirtieth..."
The Candidate Saint Son's voice held profound regret and sorrow, along with a deeply buried pride.
Anyone who heard him could hardly avoid being shaken, reminded of the Yaoguang Holy Land's glorious, resplendent history.
Perhaps it meant little in the depths of the starry sky, but confined to the Big Dipper Ancient Star, to the lands of the Eastern Wasteland, it was practically a legend compared with the many other holy lands!
For over fifty thousand uninterrupted years, the Yaoguang Holy Land had produced twenty-eight Saints and sages in succession!
What did that mean?
On average, a Saint had been born in less than two thousand years, while Saints generally lived for five or six thousand years!
Before the old Saint died, a new Saint was born!
In any given era, at least two Saints stood together in the Yaoguang Holy Land. At times, there were even four or five!
Those fifty thousand years could also be divided roughly into two equal periods... the first twenty-five thousand years had been relatively normal, but the latter twenty-five thousand had been utterly outrageous. More than one Great Saint had even been born.
That was precisely the era in which the Chaotic Ancient Great Emperor attained the Dao.
This Great Emperor had attained the Dao twenty-five thousand years ago. He lived only a single lifetime, yet survived for fifteen thousand years.
After all, although he had become an emperor after a hundred defeats and endured a bitter life, he had also undergone an astonishing transformation. He obtained some of the Ruthless Great Emperor's Dao arts, formed a demonic fetus, and was reborn through nirvana, transforming his origin. From then on, he swept aside everything in his path and attained the Dao as an emperor.
It was as though he had lived a new lifetime. Though it could not compare to an immortal fetus transforming into a chaos body, it still allowed him to live longer than an ordinary human Great Emperor.
Yet this Great Emperor's life had held too much sorrow and despair. Even after attaining the Dao, he had little attachment to the mortal world. Thus, he chose not to seek an Immortal Divine Medicine to live another lifetime, and peacefully passed away in meditation in his twilight years.
Ten thousand years later, the suppression of the Great Dao dispersed, ushering in an unprecedented golden age!
During this period, the Yaoguang Holy Land's glory reached its peak, nearly rivaling an Extreme Dao Holy Land.
Against many ordinary holy lands, it was a blow delivered from an entirely higher dimension.
Except that everyone in this holy land shared a peculiar, utterly absurd obsession. For fifty thousand uninterrupted years, they had enshrined a single cauldron. Twenty-eight Saints and countless elders and disciples had worked together, exhausting the prime years of their lives to refine one sacred object-Dragon-Mark Black Gold!
The cauldron forged from Dragon-Mark Black Gold stood atop the Yaoguang Sacred Mountain and had never been moved. It endured wind, rain, thunder, and lightning, absorbed the essence of the sun and moon and the power of the stars throughout the heavens, and imprinted the Dao's rhythms of heaven and earth upon itself, while countless disciples prayed and bowed before it day and night.
Before passing away in meditation, every Saint and sage would even imprint a lifetime's insights into it, relinquishing everything to bring it to fruition!
What kind of perseverance and dedication was that?
It surpassed the world's imagination, as though some incomprehensible conviction supported the entire holy land in this undertaking.
The sage who obtained this sacred object had not refined it into his own weapon, nor had any succeeding Saint harbored the selfish desire to claim it. Passed down like a relay from generation to generation, it had become an enduring source of gossip throughout the Eastern Wasteland.
Some speculated that the Yaoguang Holy Land was gambling on a stroke of extraordinary luck, hoping to produce a mighty weapon that surpassed Saint Weapons.
Although an Emperor Weapon was nearly impossible for anyone but an Ancient Great Emperor to forge, there was still a sliver of hope for a Quasi-Emperor weapon.
People were deeply curious whether the Yaoguang Holy Land would ultimately get its wish.
"They're basking in the Void Emperor's reflected glory..." some cultivators remarked with a sigh. "Before the Void Emperor's time, the great Life Forbidden Zones were all extremely active. They unleashed Dark Turmoil at the slightest provocation, and beings of unimaginable terror emerged to wash the mountains and rivers in blood."
"The Void Emperor fought throughout his life. Who knows how many brutal battles he endured before finally curbing that situation... after the Void Emperor, there was almost no major Dark Turmoil."
"That's why the Yaoguang Holy Land can brazenly fuss over their cauldron like this... otherwise, with such a huge piece of Dragon-Mark Black Gold sitting there, one of those terrifying beings in the forbidden zones might simply have taken it in passing..."
A child carrying gold through a bustling marketplace!
Saints were powerful, but not powerful enough to protect such a huge piece of Dragon-Mark Black Gold.
Yet with the forbidden zones dormant and Saints reigning supreme, the Yaoguang Holy Land could strut a little.
The Saintly Dao remained unbroken, and Saints and sages were always present, each contributing a lifetime's Dao Fruit for nothing more than a sliver of hope and possibility.
The world could not understand it, but that did not stop people from waiting curiously for the outcome... perhaps, with one Saint after another making such sacrifices, they really could create a legend after endless ages and bring forth a Quasi-Emperor divine weapon?
How inspiring!
Unfortunately.
The dazzling glare of blood dragged the Saint City's cultivators back to reality. Before their very eyes, a seedling of a future sage was swept aside and ruthlessly slain by a cold-blooded assassin whose single hand blotted out the sky. It left them wringing their hands in regret.
The Yaoguang Holy Land's Candidate Saint Son lamented, his voice gradually fading until no life remained.
Grief filled the onlookers. The shock of witnessing a prodigy fall upon the imperial path was simply too intense.
Yet amid the crowd, a youth frowned. At that moment, the Great Dao of heaven and earth seemed to serve as his eyes and ears, helping him catch some anomaly. He grew thoughtful, as though he had learned something.
At the same moment, the sword-wielding assassin sneered.
Rather than stepping forward to retrieve the corpse, he slashed his sword down, seemingly intent on hacking it into ten thousand pieces!
"Killing should end when the head hits the ground... desecrating a corpse? That's going too far," someone murmured, only for their words to cut off abruptly a moment later.
The Candidate Saint Son, who had already become a corpse, suddenly opened his eyes wide. His aura erupted, blazing like a divine sun!