He had not woken up at all.
In his sea of consciousness, the system countdown kept ticking steadily.
[Countdown to bodily expansion.] [Final six hours.] [Fusion has reached 99.99%.]
As the countdown entered its final stage.
In the real world, out in space, the dark gold dragon that had remained motionless was also undergoing changes.
Its immense draconic body, spanning countless galaxies and measuring untold tens of millions of miles, seemed to have grown much larger.
[Countdown complete.] [Dark Gold Starry Sky Behemoth Origin fusion: 100%.]
As the notification sounded, Gu Xian finally awoke.
In the boundless cosmic void, Gu Xian lifted his eyelids.
In an instant, two blazing suns appeared among the stars.
By their light, the creatures of Douluo Star, sprawled on the continent and still struggling desperately in space, finally saw exactly what they had been facing all along.
Yu Xiaogang sat slumped on the ground, his face filled with disbelief.
He saw it.
An earthcore demonic vine? A plant-type soul beast?
No, neither.
It was a dark gold dragon coiled through the universe, its body so immense that its end could not be seen at a glance.
The mountains and rivers that Douluo Continent took such pride in were incomparably tiny within the gaps between this behemoth's scales.
"A dragon..."
Yu Xiaogang's lips trembled, and for a moment, he even forgot to breathe.
Not far away, Tang San also closed his eyes in despair.
He knew it was all over.
No matter how they struggled or what they imagined, none of it meant anything before something of this size.
Bibi Dong stood at the edge of the shattered Pope's Palace, looking at those slowly opening dark gold eyes, and smiled in acceptance.
"So this was the truth."
At the same time, in the Divine Realm.
The Five Great God Kings, along with the gods who had no idea what had happened, also witnessed this sight.
Then Asura God's legs gave out, and he dropped straight to his knees on the white jade floor.
"It's not an illusion."
"It's awake..."
Meanwhile, Gu Xian had only just woken up, and his mind was still somewhat groggy.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host on completing the first-stage Sleeping Task.] [Calculating your rewards. Rewards have been delivered to your origin.] [Planar passage opened.] [Next world coordinates: Perfect World.] [New mission issued: please proceed to the new world and continue sleeping for ten days.]
Hearing the system's voice, Gu Xian perked up.
"Perfect World?"
"A fine place."
Gu Xian muttered this to himself.
After sleeping for ten days, his body was indeed somewhat stiff.
Before heading to the next world, he instinctively wanted to stretch his limbs.
And so, amid that vast starry expanse, Gu Xian casually stretched his body.
His dark gold dragon tail, spanning countless galaxies, gave a light flick through space with the motion.
Yet that mere flick was a catastrophe that spelled doom for this universe.
"Rumble!!!"
The instant the dragon tail swept past, countless stars exploded!
And on Douluo Star, whether Soul Masters, commoners, or God Kings trying to escape.
All were reduced to drifting ash.
After that stretch, Gu Xian felt much more comfortable.
He glanced at the enormous planar passage the system had opened ahead of him. Without pausing at all, he moved his massive body and plunged straight inside.
An unknown length of time passed.
Perfect World.
Beyond the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, within the endless Chaos Void.
A dark gold dragon head, immense enough to make one's scalp prickle, slowly emerged.
Gu Xian surveyed his surroundings.
Gray, hazy currents of chaos, very quiet, without all sorts of irritating noise.
"The surroundings are decent. Quite suitable for sleeping."
Gu Xian yawned in satisfaction.
Then he dragged his vast, seemingly endless body completely out of the planar rift.
Casually finding a spacious stretch of void, Gu Xian coiled up his body and closed his eyes.
[Host has arrived in the new world.] [Sleeping Task activated.] [Countdown: ten days.]
As the system notification sounded, Gu Xian once again sank into a deep sleep.
Meanwhile, in Perfect World.
Within the Celestial God Academy.
The grand elder, Meng Tianzheng, who had been in seclusion, suddenly opened his eyes and looked toward an unknown region!
In the deepest reaches of the Celestial God Academy.
Meng Tianzheng abruptly rose to his feet.
Within his formerly withered body, the dormant, immense vitality of his blood actually began surging uncontrollably.
Not only his blood's vitality, but even the Supreme Dao Foundation he had painstakingly cultivated over countless epochs was trembling slightly.
It had been far too long since he had experienced this feeling.
The last time he had felt such heart-pounding dread was when facing an Immortal King of the Foreign Realm in the Borderland.
But now, no word of war had come from the Borderland.
This almost suffocating pressure came from the Chaos Void beyond the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
"Grand elder, what happened?"
The anxious voices of several academy elders came from outside the secret chamber.
They too had felt an inexplicable surge of unease, and the Great Dao Laws between heaven and earth seemed to have stopped functioning for an instant.
Meng Tianzheng did not answer.
He took one step, and his figure appeared directly at the highest point of the Celestial God Academy.
Fierce winds whipped his robes.
Within his deep eyes, golden runes interwove madly, instantly erupting with dazzling divine radiance.
Supreme Dharma Eye activated!
Meng Tianzheng's gaze pierced straight through layer upon layer of void, crossed endless star domains, and forcibly reached the edge of that chaos beyond the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
The instant his gaze penetrated through.
Meng Tianzheng froze on the spot.
Deep in the void, untold billions upon billions of miles from the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
There lay a region of chaos that even Supremes were unwilling to enter lightly.
The currents of chaos, which should have raged violently enough to tear apart True Immortals, were now strangely docile.
As though afraid of something, they all frantically retreated in every direction, forcibly clearing a boundless safe zone within that void.
At the very center of that safe zone.
Meng Tianzheng saw a "wall."
An enormous metallic wall of dark red tinged with gold.
Even across hundreds of millions of miles, the ancient, boundless aura emanating from that "wall" still made his soul tremble.
Meng Tianzheng marshaled all his cultivation, trying to see the wall in its entirety.
His gaze climbed upward along its surface.
A hundred thousand miles.
A million miles.
Ten million miles!
Everywhere his gaze reached, there was nothing but that dark gold material covered in profound patterns.
He could not see its edges at all!
Much less find its end!
Only when Meng Tianzheng pushed his Dharma Eye to its utmost limit, until golden traces of blood even seeped from the corners of his eyes from overexertion.
Did he finally understand exactly what that thing was.
It was no enormous metallic wall at all.
It was a scale!
Merely a single dark gold scale clinging to the surface of some creature's body!
"Pfft!"
Meng Tianzheng violently spat out a mouthful of blood.
Golden Supreme Blood splashed onto the Celestial God Academy's white jade plaza, instantly smashing several deep craters into it.
His Dharma Eye was forcibly broken.
The backlash drove this invincible grand elder of the Nine Heavens back three great strides, and only after his final step shattered the void did he barely steady himself.
Below the plaza.
The Celestial God Academy elders and countless genius disciples who had rushed over upon hearing the news were all dumbstruck.
The entire place fell silent as a flock of crows and sparrows struck mute.
Everyone's eyes were wide, and even the sound of swallowing could be heard with perfect clarity.
Who was Meng Tianzheng?
He was one of the few remaining invincible Supremes of the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands!
An unsurpassed titan who could hold up the sun, moon, and stars with a single hand!
Who could injure him like this?
They had not even seen the enemy's face, yet the grand elder had already spat blood and staggered backward on his own?
"Grand elder!"
The second elder roared in terror and hurried forward to support him.
"Stay back!"
Meng Tianzheng swept everyone back with a wave.
Unable to spare a thought for wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth, he heaved his chest violently, his eyes fixed on the heavens above as he gasped for breath.
His mind was utterly blank.
Countless thoughts collided wildly within his sea of consciousness.
What kind of creature was that?
A single scale rivaled a vast star domain!
Even if an Immortal King manifested his true Dharma body, he would be as insignificant as dust before that dark gold scale!
Could some peerless Immortal King from the Immortal Domain have crossed worlds to come here?
No.
He had felt an Immortal King's aura before; it was the supreme Immortal Dao Laws.
Yet the patterns flowing across the scale he had just seen belonged to none of the Great Daos of this world.
It felt as though that behemoth itself was a Great Dao origin that had transcended the River of Time!
"Could it be a taboo existence that survived from the Era of Emperor’s Fall?"
"Or have... those dark titans deep within the Boundary Sea come ashore?"
Meng Tianzheng's lips trembled.
If a monster of that level had truly descended, never mind the Celestial God Academy-even the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Lands combined would not be enough to fill the gaps between its teeth!
At the same time.
In every corner of the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
The ancient beings hidden among famed mountains, great rivers, and forbidden zones of life were all startled awake.
Deep in No-Man's Land, in the Three Thousand Dao Provinces, laughter rang out.
Deep within the Immortal Academy.
Several old ancients sitting cross-legged on Chaos Stones, deducing the Great Dao, opened their eyes at the same time.
The deduction array patterns before them had shattered inch by inch at that very instant, turning into fine dust strewn across the ground.
One of the old ancients rose to his feet, his face filled with horror.
"My spiritual senses are sounding a warning. Something utterly terrifying is lingering beyond our world!"
The Wang Family, an Immortal Family.
Wang Changsheng stood at the edge of a divine island with his hands behind his back, gazing solemnly into the void.
He did not use his Dharma Eyes to peer into it.
His keen intuition told him that if he dared take even one look, his soul would instantly collapse.
"Pressure of this magnitude is simply beyond human strength to withstand."
"Activate the family's highest-tier city-protection array immediately!"
Wang Changsheng immediately issued an absolute order to the clansmen behind him.
That day.
The greatest experts throughout the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands all fell into an inexplicable panic.
They did not know what sort of monster had arrived beyond their world.
They knew only that an indescribably vast will was slowly spreading through the Chaos Void.
It felt like an unarmed mortal standing at the foot of a supervolcano about to erupt.
There was nothing they could do.
They could only wait for death.
Yet Gu Xian, the culprit who had nearly driven all the higher powers of Perfect World frantic with anxiety.
Was sleeping soundly at that very moment.
As far as he was concerned, the sleeping spot he had chosen this time was quite good indeed.
Though the currents of chaos were dense and heavy, against his dark gold scales, they were softer than cotton.
There were no random planets blocking his way, either, and there was plenty of room.
Enough for him to coil his enormous body, tens of millions of miles long, however he pleased.
Within his sea of consciousness.
[Sleeping Task in progress.] [Countdown: nine days and twenty-three two-hour periods.]
Gu Xian slept deeply.
As he slept, his body instinctively began metabolizing.
This was a normal physiological response following the fusion of the Dark Gold Starry Sky Behemoth Origin.
At that very moment.
Gu Xian let out a slight exhalation.
Two visible streams of dark gold air gushed from his nostrils, which were as immense as galaxies!
The void collapsed completely.
Even a phantom of the River of Time manifested under the impact of those air currents, its waters surging, faintly threatening to stop flowing altogether!
The destructive storm did not stop.
With the force of a gale sweeping away rotten wood, it swept toward the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
The Celestial God Academy.
Meng Tianzheng watched helplessly as the world barrier beyond the sky began to twist.
The once-indestructible world barrier, which even Supremes struggled to break, now resembled a tattered rag tugged by fierce winds.
The sound of cracking exploded in every cultivator's ears.
Crack...
The sky split open.
An enormous fissure millions of miles long stretched across the entire firmament of the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
Through that fissure.
Everyone could see the world-destroying chaos storm outside.
A few abandoned stars close to the world barrier were even grazed by the edge of that storm.
Before they could emit even the flash of an explosion, they turned into cosmic dust on the spot.
Despair instantly spread through the hearts of countless living beings.
Meng Tianzheng clenched his teeth, every bone in his body creaking.
He wanted to rush up and repair the world barrier, only to discover that the space around him had been completely sealed by the storm's aftershocks.
A mighty Supreme, and he could not even move a finger!
"What kind of power is this...?"
Meng Tianzheng let out a despairing growl.
Just as the storm, powerful enough to destroy nearly half the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, was about to break through the world barrier completely and descend upon the world.
It stopped.
With less than an inch left between it and the world barrier, the storm eerily came to a halt.
Immediately afterward, an even greater suction came from deep within the Chaos Void.
Gu Xian had begun to inhale.
"Whoosh-"
The wind instantly reversed direction.
The chaos storm that had been about to destroy the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands was dragged by that suction, rolling back into the depths of chaos along with the shattered fragments of Laws outside the world barrier.
Even more than half the vast quantity of spiritual energy within the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands was forcibly sucked away!
With the pressure gone, the enormous fissure in the sky began slowly repairing itself.
He had survived.
Meng Tianzheng slumped to the ground, his entire body drenched in cold sweat.
In that single exhalation and inhalation just now, he had truly felt the terror of death.
That had not been an attack at all.
If it had been an attack, the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands would already have been gone.
Meng Tianzheng raised his head and looked at the healing fissure in the sky. A thought so utterly absurd that even he found it ridiculous surfaced in his mind.
"That disturbance just now..."
"Could it have been nothing more than that being... taking a breath?"
Before you continue