Meanwhile, the scene in the Sky Screen shifted again.
At the edge of the martial training plaza in the Great Desolation Divine Realm.
Qian Renxue followed Yun Gugu, continuing along the white jade steps deeper into the outer hall.
Even after walking a long way, she could still feel her heart pounding despite herself.
A Heavenly Sovereign in their twenties-this nightmare-like concept left her unable to recover for a long while.
She lowered her head and looked at the jade steps beneath her feet, which glowed with a warm luster, feeling her throat go dry.
"Walk faster."
Yun Gugu kept walking ahead, her even voice drifting back on the breeze.
"There are as many chores in this outer hall as hairs on an ox. Once we finish watering the Medicine Garden, we still have to visit the Discarded Items Pavilion."
"The Discarded Items Pavilion?" Qian Renxue hurriedly gathered her thoughts and quickened her pace to catch up.
Yun Gugu nodded slightly.
"The disciples in the Divine Realm cultivate, refine medicine, and forge artifacts every day, so they inevitably produce plenty of defective goods and waste materials."
"Although these things are no longer of much use, we cannot simply discard them and pollute the Divine Realm's Spiritual Energy. They are all piled in the Discarded Items Pavilion, where we outer hall maids clear them out regularly and throw them into the Spirit Transformation Array for destruction."
Hearing that they were only going to clean up rubbish and waste materials, Qian Renxue secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
After the shocks delivered by the Primordial Chaos Ancestral Dragon and those two young Heavenly Sovereigns, she felt her nerves were stretched to their limit, terrified of seeing another monster beyond her understanding.
Surely cleaning up some rubbish would not bring any more shocks.
Yet, half an hour later.
When the two passed through a sea of clouds and arrived before the enormous valley called the "Discarded Items Pavilion."
Qian Renxue's newly relaxed nerves instantly tightened to their limit again.
How was this a rubbish heap!
As far as she could see, multicolored treasure light shot into the heavens throughout the enormous valley, almost piercing the clouds above.
All sorts of objects lay casually piled like small mountains across the valley floor.
There were ancient bronze cauldrons with only half remaining, jade-colored swords broken into several pieces, and compasses and scrolls that had lost their luster, their surfaces covered in cracks.
Yet even these battered scraps, tossed here like rubbish.
Any single one of them, with the formation patterns flowing across its surface and its lingering energy fluctuations, made Qian Renxue's chest tighten and left her short of breath.
"What are you standing there for? Take the broom and sweep those scattered fragments along the edges into the array at the bottom of the valley."
Yun Gugu casually handed her a specially made broom, then headed to the other side herself.
Not daring to delay, Qian Renxue quickly gripped the broom and began sweeping diligently.
As she swept, her movements involuntarily stopped.
Among a pile of scrap metal ahead, half of a broken golden blade caught her attention.
The half blade looked utterly unremarkable. It did not even have a hilt, and its broken edge was extremely rough.
But the instant Qian Renxue approached.
The incomparably pure light spiritual root that had just been remolded within her began trembling uncontrollably!
Qian Renxue instinctively released a trace of light aura, attempting to sense that half blade.
"Hum!"
Yet at the very instant of contact, Qian Renxue's vision suddenly blurred.
In her perception, that was no broken sword-it was clearly a blazing sun!
The trace of Light Sword Intent lingering on the blade was vast and sacred, as though it could utterly purify all evil and darkness in the world.
Compared with it, the Six-Winged Angel Martial Soul she had once taken pride in, and the Angel God she had believed in since childhood.
Were like a firefly before the sun, so dim they were not even worthy of shining!
"This..."
Qian Renxue staggered back two steps, the broom slipping from her hands as she fell onto her backside.
The loud commotion brought Yun Gugu over from afar.
"Why are you so clumsy?"
Yun Gugu walked over, followed Qian Renxue's gaze, and shook her head somewhat helplessly.
"That was merely a paper knife an elder at the Great Perfection Earthly Sovereign level casually molded from star essence gold a few days ago when he had nothing to do."
"The material was too poor to withstand the trace of Light Sword Intent infused into it, so it snapped outright and was thrown here."
"Your cultivation is too low. Do not recklessly probe things left by the masters with your spiritual sense."
Spirit City, the Worship Hall.
The hundred-meter-tall Six-Winged Angel God Statue, which symbolized Spirit Hall's highest faith, was actually trembling slightly.
Qian Daoliu knelt before the statue, his aged face ashen.
He had heard it perfectly clearly: it was merely a paper knife an elder had casually molded.
It did not even qualify as a Sword Embryo. It had simply broken because its material was too poor and been thrown onto a scrap heap as rubbish.
Yet the trace of sword intent lingering on such an incomplete piece of scrap metal.
Actually pressed down on him, a level ninety-nine Peerless Douluo, until he could scarcely breathe!
Even the Angel God Statue in the Worship Hall had reacted the same way. How terrifying was that?
As for a god's inheritance?
The faith of the Douluo Continent?
Before the rubbish discarded by their elder, they were not even worth a fart!
Within the Sky Screen's scene.
Qian Renxue struggled to get up, brushed the dust from her skirt, respectfully thanked Yun Gugu, and picked up the specially made broom again.
Now she truly understood that in this Great Desolation Divine Realm, even a pile of rubbish nobody cared about was not something a person from the lower realm like her could casually probe.
The two silently cleared away the debris along the edges of the scrap-filled valley.
Just as they put away their tools and prepared to turn and leave.
"Dong-"
"Dong-"
A distant, majestic tolling, seemingly coming from the ancient Primordial Chaos, suddenly echoed among all the mountains of the Great Desolation Divine Realm.
The bells were not harsh; instead, they carried a strange fluctuation that cleansed the Divine Soul.
The instant she heard the bells.
Yun Gugu, who had remained composed all along, abruptly stopped in her tracks.
And she was not alone. Qian Renxue saw countless streaks of light in the distant sea of clouds, each radiating powerful Spiritual Energy fluctuations and rarely seen in ordinary times, frantically converging on the tallest peak in the outer hall.
"Gugu, this is..." Qian Renxue was somewhat at a loss.
Yun Gugu did not turn around. She simply crossed her hands over her chest and made an extremely devout gesture of worship toward that peak.
Her usually placid face was now filled with irrepressible excitement.
"It is the Great Dao Transmitting Bell..."
"The outer hall's Punishment Elder, the master who reached the Great Perfection Earthly Sovereign realm, has emerged from seclusion."
A trace of trembling entered Yun Gugu's voice.
"The command bell has sounded. The elder will open a teaching session on the Dao-Seeking Cliff in the outer hall tomorrow!"
A teaching session on the Dao!
Those words not only sent the outer hall disciples of the Great Desolation Divine Realm into an uproar.
Yun Gugu also turned to look at Qian Renxue, a strong trace of envy flashing through her eyes.
"You girl from the lower realm truly are fortunate."
"When an elder at the Great Perfection Earthly Sovereign level teaches the Dao, even the sect masters of the second-rate sects affiliated with our Divine Realm cannot secure permission to listen, no matter how desperately they try."
"For tomorrow's teaching, although we outer hall maids are not qualified to ascend the cliff, we will be sent to sweep the white jade steps at the foot of the mountain."
"When the time comes, if you can hear even one or two indistinct words of the Dao from afar and comprehend the slightest bit, it will be enough to benefit you for the rest of your life!"
Early the next morning.
The Great Desolation Divine Realm, the outer hall, the Dao-Seeking Cliff.
The cliff thrust into the clouds like a sharp sword, its face smooth as a mirror and exuding an ancient, weathered aura.
The view in the Sky Screen slowly pulled back.
Only then did the people of the Douluo Continent see that no fewer than tens of thousands of Outer Sect disciples from the Great Desolation Divine Realm sat cross-legged, densely packed across the teaching grounds below the Dao-Seeking Cliff.
And what left the people of Douluo feeling even more suffocated was this.
Among these tens of thousands of utterly ordinary Outer Sect disciples, even the youngest, a teenage boy seated at the very edge.
Radiated energy fluctuations several degrees stronger than those of the Douluo Continent's Titled Douluos!
"Tens of thousands of... disciples above the Titled Douluo level?"
Inside the Star Luo Empire's imperial palace, Dai Tianfeng, who had only just regained consciousness, looked at the scene in the Sky Screen, and his legs went weak again.
The Star Luo imperial knights he took such pride in were like a group of three-year-olds playing house with wooden sticks before these so-called Outer Sect teaching grounds.
Meanwhile, Qian Renxue held a broom and stood quietly with several hundred maids at the edge of the white jade steps at the very bottom of the Dao-Seeking Cliff, not even daring to breathe loudly.
"Hum!"
At the very moment the sun rose.
The space above the Dao-Seeking Cliff suddenly rippled like water.
An old man dressed in gray robes, with graying hair and an utterly ordinary face, appeared out of thin air.
There were no dazzling lights, no earth-shaking pressure, and certainly none of the nine Soul Rings that had to blind everyone with brilliance every time someone made an appearance on the Douluo Continent.
The old man merely held his hands behind his back and stood lightly in the air, as though his entire being had already merged with this world.
Yet this seemingly ordinary old man.
Made the tens of thousands of Outer Sect disciples below bow their proud heads in unison the instant he appeared.
"We respectfully welcome the Punishment Elder!"
Their mighty voices gathered together, scattering the clouds in the sky.
The gray-robed elder nodded slightly, then sat cross-legged on a green lotus that condensed out of thin air.
"In today's teaching, I will not discuss profound Spiritual Arts or formations."
The old man's voice was not loud, yet it reached everyone's ears clearly, even traveling through the Sky Screen and spreading throughout the Douluo Continent.
"I just emerged from seclusion and sensed some faint auras from the lower planes, so I shall casually explain to you Outer Sect disciples what the true great Dao of cultivation is."
Hearing this, Yu Xiaogang, Tang San, and the others on the Douluo Continent involuntarily straightened up and pricked their ears.
The gray-robed elder casually beckoned.
A long-dead, withered branch beside the cliff floated gently into his palm.
"Beneath the Great Thousand World are countless lower planes, as numerous as the sands of the Ganges."
"I once roamed the boundless heavens in spirit and saw some lower-realm beings who were like barbarians. Their methods of cultivation were truly laughable."
The old man stroked his beard, a trace of undisguised contempt flashing through his eyes.
"They do not understand how to comprehend the Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth, nor how to seize the creative power of heaven and earth."
"Instead, they pin their hopes for cultivation on wild beasts."
"Indeed, the most ridiculous method I have seen relies on hunting those unenlightened beasts, stripping away the inherent energy left after their deaths, and attaching it to oneself, using it as a stepping stone to break through bottlenecks."
At these words, the entire Douluo Continent froze once again.
At Shrek Academy, Yu Xiaogang's already bloodless face turned livid.
Hunting beasts?
Was that not describing something like the Martial Soul system their Douluo Continent took such pride in!
In the mouth of this Great Perfection Earthly Sovereign elder, the cultivation principles they depended on for survival had actually been belittled as barbaric practices?
"No, this is not barbarism!"
"Soul Rings are gifts bestowed by the laws of heaven and earth!"
"They are the foundation of a Soul Master's strength!"
"What does he know? He does not understand the greatness of Martial Souls at all!"
But whatever he said, and however unconvinced he remained, he still looked over curiously, wanting to see what the other man would say.
Meanwhile, within the Sky Screen.
He merely held the dead branch between two withered fingers and continued preaching in an even voice.
"True cultivation means cultivating oneself, drawing upon all things in heaven and earth to nourish one's own Divine Soul and flesh."
"Blindly scavenging the remains left by beasts will only make your Spiritual Energy hopelessly impure. You can spend your entire life at it and never hope to touch the threshold of the laws."
At this point, the old man opened his mouth slightly and gently blew on the dead branch in his hand.
"Whoosh."
It was only this seemingly casual breath of life.
The next second, beneath the gazes of the billions of living beings across the Douluo Continent, whose eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.
The withered branch, which had been thoroughly dead and utterly devoid of moisture, actually sprouted tender green buds at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Then the buds grew rapidly into vines, and a pure white flower bloomed upon them.
The petals withered, and a crystalline red fruit, giving off a rich, unusual fragrance, hung heavily from the branch.
"Fall."
The old man flicked a finger.
The red fruit fell onto the bluestone paving of the Dao-Seeking Cliff.
With a soft thud.
The fruit burst apart, and a Huo Yun Lion wreathed in scarlet flames, its body as massive as a small mountain, actually sprang out of it, alive and whole!
The Huo Yun Lion threw back its head and let out a deafening roar. The ferocious might radiating from its body was actually no weaker than that of a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast on the Douluo Continent!
Dead wood returned to spring, bore fruit, and the fruit transformed into a hundred-thousand-year-level ferocious beast!
All of this happened in the span of a single breath.
There was no glow of a soul skill, no elaborate ritual, only a breath that could not have been more ordinary.
Thud.
Inside Shrek Academy.
Having seen the scene clearly, Tang San's legs also gave way, and he dropped straight to the ground.
The Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges at his waist was filled with all the hidden weapons and poisons he took such pride in.
In his previous life, he had been a genius of the Tang Sect's Outer Sect, priding himself on having mastered the world's most exquisite mechanisms and killing techniques.
But at this very moment, as he watched the gray-robed elder in the Sky Screen casually create a hundred-thousand-year ferocious beast.
He felt that he had taken the wrong path for the entire first half of his life.
"Scavenging the remains left behind by beasts..."
Tang San lowered his head and looked at the four soul rings at his feet, yellow and purple.
Once, he had felt that these soul rings were the foundation of his confidence in challenging those above his level, proof of his genius.
But now, in his eyes, these soul rings had become chunks of rotting flesh that reeked of blood.
Before you continue