Shi Hao stood behind her, holding his breath, not daring to make the slightest sound.
He could sense the aura around Liu Shen fluctuating violently.
The light of the Three Thousand Worlds flickered uncertainly, as though bearing a tremendous backlash of karma.
A long time passed.
Liu Shen slowly withdrew her finger.
The Immortal Dao Runes at her fingertip shattered and dissipated the instant she withdrew it.
Shi Hao stepped forward and swallowed.
"Liu Shen, just what is this thing?"
"I saw it with my own eyes just now. The Heavenly Human Clan's warship blasted it without leaving so much as a mark, only to be shaken straight into powder."
Liu Shen turned her head.
She looked at Shi Hao, her voice carrying an exceedingly rare trace of dryness.
"It's sleeping."
Shi Hao froze.
"It's alive? This whole enormous mountain is just its body?"
Liu Shen shook her head.
She raised her head and gazed up at the Dark Gold wall that pierced the clouds and stretched a hundred thousand li across.
"This isn't a mountain."
"This is merely the edge of a barb at the very tip of a single scale on its body."
At those words,
Shi Hao felt a thunderous boom inside his head, and his scalp instantly prickled.
The edge of a barb at the tip of a scale?!
Just this tiny bit of an edge spanned a hundred thousand li of land?!
Liu Shen drew a deep breath. Endless stars were reflected in her exquisite eyes, and her voice trembled slightly.
"I probed it with Immortal Dao Laws just now."
"The root of this scale connects to a terrifying body that cannot be measured in dimensions."
"Its lower body coils in the deepest reaches of the Boundary Sea."
"Its main torso pierces through the chaotic realm barriers of the Foreign Realm and the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands."
Liu Shen paused, her gaze sweeping over the world around them.
"This world we're in right now..."
"Is constantly rising and falling with its breathing."
The wind over the wasteland carried a trace of chill.
The moment Liu Shen finished speaking, Shi Hao felt as though all the blood in his body were about to freeze.
But he was, after all, the future Desolate Heavenly Emperor. His Dao heart was firm as a boulder.
After a brief moment of horror, Shi Hao forcibly steadied his mind.
"Liu Shen, do you mean this creature is so huge it can coil around the whole world?"
Shi Hao pointed at the dark-gold mountain range whose end was nowhere in sight, his voice somewhat dry.
Liu Shen looked at Shi Hao and gently shook her head.
"Perfect World is boundless, far beyond anything you can currently imagine."
"Besides the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands where we live, there is also the vast, endless Immortal Domain, the unfathomable Foreign Realm, and that boundless Boundary Sea that has buried countless eras and mighty beings."
"This world is too vast, so vast that even giants among Immortal Kings cannot discover its true boundaries."
The three thousand spheres of light around Liu Shen flickered faintly. Her tone was calm, yet carried the utmost gravity.
"It cannot coil around all of Perfect World."
"But when I traced it to its source with Immortal Dao Laws just now, I found that it dwells in the Chaos Void beyond the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands."
"Its body is so enormous that it can span countless star domains."
"Our broken Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, however, are somewhat insignificant before its coiled body."
Shi Hao drew a deep breath and clenched his fists.
Since this world could give birth to such a terrifying creature, that meant the end of cultivation lay far beyond the realms before him.
"One day, I too will reach that summit overlooking all eternity!" Brilliant light blazed from Shi Hao's eyes.
Liu Shen did not discourage him, merely nodding slightly.
She turned to look at the Ancient Barbarian Tribe members still kowtowing frantically to the Dark Gold scale.
"The Dao resonance flowing naturally over this scale is an immense blessing for them, but for you, it is deadly poison."
Liu Shen warned him.
"You walk the path of invincibility."
"This creature's origin aura is too lofty, so lofty that it can forcibly assimilate your Great Dao."
"Stay away from it. Don't touch it, and certainly don't try to comprehend it."
Shi Hao's heart tightened, and he immediately abandoned the thought of approaching to study it.
Even a single look would assimilate me?
How was this a blessing? It was clearly an impassable abyss.
The Immortal Domain.
This was a sacred greater realm, supreme above all.
Spiritual energy was so dense it turned to rain, and even True Immortals were only ordinary experts here.
The Immortal Domain was boundlessly vast, its territories easily spanning hundreds of millions of li, with countless universes and starry skies scattered throughout.
Pan King’s Residence.
Pan King sat cross-legged deep within the starry universe.
Dense Immortal Dao Laws encircled him. With every breath, hundreds upon thousands of stars were born and extinguished.
Suddenly, Pan King's eyes snapped open.
Two golden beams of Immortal King light pierced through the universe, looking straight toward the boundless chaos outside the Immortal Domain.
"What terrifying blood energy..."
Pan King murmured, his brows tightly knitted.
Just now, he had sensed a fluctuation of blood energy from deep within the chaos, obscure yet so immense that it made the soul tremble.
That was not the aura of an Immortal King.
Though Immortal Kings were powerful, their auras were restrained and aligned with the Great Dao.
That fluctuation, however, was purely the result of physical blood energy accumulating to an inconceivable magnitude and triggering tides of chaos!
Could some prehistoric Chaos Ferocious Beast have awakened deep in the Boundary Sea?
Pan King frantically worked through deductions in his mind.
He had lived too long and knew too many secrets of the changing eras.
Before the Era of Emperor’s Fall, this world had once given birth to some Chaos Behemoths that cultivated no Dao arts, only their physical bodies.
But those monsters should have died out long ago!
Pan King's Divine Sense tried to probe into the chaos, seeking a clear look at the source of that blood energy.
Yet the instant his Divine Sense touched that region, it was like a clay ox entering the sea, vanishing without a trace.
An exceedingly faint recoil even traveled back along his Divine Sense, sending a stab of pain through Pan King's sea of consciousness.
Pan King's expression changed drastically, and he immediately severed his Divine Sense.
"This isn't the work of those fellows from the Foreign Realm."
"These physical fluctuations exceed the understanding of the Immortal Dao domain..."
Pan King's expression shifted uncertainly.
He did not make it public, much less choose to cross realms to investigate.
Having lived to his age, he understood better than anyone that curiosity killed the cat.
Since that unknown being was merely staying within the chaos and had no intention of invading the Immortal Domain, he would pretend he had seen nothing.
"Pass down my command."
Pan King's voice echoed over all of Pan King City.
"Seal every ancient starry path leading outside the realm from Pan King City."
"Without my decree, no one is to take even half a step out of the Immortal Domain without permission!"
The Foreign Realm, Immortal Sacred Mountain.
An Lan's hand was already tightly wrapped in Immortal Gold Cloth.
The domineering rules carried by that recoil were still constantly destroying his vitality, forcing him to divert a great deal of immortal divine power to suppress them.
Inside the great hall, the atmosphere was oppressive to the extreme.
Several Immortals responsible for gathering intelligence from outside the realm knelt below, cold sweat pouring from their bodies.
"Have you found out?" Yu Tuo asked coldly.
One Immortal swallowed, his voice trembling.
"Reporting to the two ancient ancestors... the scouts we dispatched didn't dare approach that region of chaos."
"But..."
"But what?" A trace of irritation flashed in An Lan's eyes.
"But something has gone terribly wrong over at the Boundary Sea!"
The Immortal abruptly raised his head, his eyes filled with terror.
"At the edge of the Boundary Sea, the spatial tsunamis that churned all year round... have stopped!"
At those words, An Lan and Yu Tuo narrowed their eyes simultaneously.
What sort of place was the Boundary Sea?
It was a place formed from the accumulated ruins of countless shattered universes, where spatial storms and dark laws had never ceased for even a moment.
Even Immortal Kings dared not linger in the Boundary Sea for long without good reason.
And now, the tides of the Boundary Sea had stopped?
"The scouts risked their lives to record a stretch of images with a formation."
The Immortal hurriedly presented a Recording Stone with both hands.
The images unfolded, showing the fringes of the Boundary Sea.
The black waves that should have been incomparably violent now seemed forcibly blocked by an invisible wall of sighs.
And at the end of those waves,
A section of an enormous Dark Gold outline could faintly be seen.
That outline was too enormous, so enormous that it cut off a tributary of the Boundary Sea, so enormous that those churning, shattered universes could only scrape against its skin without moving it in the slightest.
It simply lay there quietly.
However the storms of the Boundary Sea raged, it remained utterly unmoving.
The images cut off abruptly there.
The great hall was silent.
An Lan looked at his right hand, wrapped entirely in Immortal Gold Cloth, and the corner of his mouth actually twitched.
He finally understood just how foolish a thing he had done during the day.
What he had struck with his spear had been neither a defensive treasure nor some natural chasm of a realm barrier.
It had merely been a scale inadvertently exposed from the chaos by a terrifying behemoth large enough to cut off the Boundary Sea!
"It didn't attack us."
Yu Tuo drew a deep breath, his tone more solemn than ever before.
"It's sleeping."
"That spear strike during the day didn't even count as scratching an itch for it."
"If it truly wakes and turns over even slightly..."
Yu Tuo did not continue.
But An Lan understood.
If a monster of that size turned over, half the sky over this Foreign Realm would probably collapse on the spot.
Deep within the Chaos Void.
Gray currents flowed slowly.
Gu Xian's enormous body lay coiled in this region.
His head rested on a stretch of abandoned Chaos Star River, his breathing steady and long.
``` [Body fusion status: perfect.]
[Sleeping Task countdown: nine days and ten hours.]
Gu Xian slept deeply.
The origin of the dark-gold Starry Sky Behemoth was constantly transforming this already invincible body, bringing his every breath into harmony with the most primordial rhythms of the Great Dao.
When people were in deep sleep, their bodies would always make small adjustments unconsciously.
Gu Xian was no exception.
He felt as though his back were resting against something rather uncomfortable.
It was a site of Ancient Ruins hidden deep within the chaotic currents.
There was no telling how many eras these ruins had existed.
They were filled with dense Dark Matter and even faintly emanated Immortal King-level formation fluctuations.
This had once been a temporary palace built by an Immortal King to suppress some terrifying Source of Darkness.
But before Gu Xian's enormous body, which was untold tens of millions of li long, these Immortal King Ruins, comparable in size to a galaxy, were like a tiny pebble on a bedsheet.
It dug into his back a little.
Still sound asleep, Gu Xian acted on instinct, exerting a little force through his back and leaning back gently.
He moved by less than one ten-thousandth of his range.
Crack!
A crisp sound of shattering suddenly rang out in the Chaos Void.
That indestructible dark ruin, covered in Immortal King formation patterns.
The instant the scales on Gu Xian's back pressed against it, it failed to hold out for even a second.
The Immortal King formation patterns crumbled inch by inch, and the Dark Matter within the ruin was ground straight into nothingness by that crushing force.
The entire galaxy-sized ruin was instantly pulverized like a biscuit beneath a hydraulic press.
And in the deepest reaches of that ruin.
A dark being who had been suppressed for countless epochs abruptly opened his eyes.
He sensed the collapse of the suppressing formation!
"Hahaha! This king is finally free!"
The dark being threw back his head and howled, unleashing a terrifying aura powerful enough to make true immortals tremble.
He prepared to burst through the wreckage, descend upon the world once more, and drink his fill of the blood of billions of living beings.
But before his laughter had even faded.
An indescribably enormous Dark Gold scale, carrying world-destroying kinetic force, slammed squarely into him.
Squelch.
A muffled sound rang out. That dark being, powerful enough to unleash a torrential rain of blood across the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, failed to utter even a single scream.
That lean as Gu Xian turned over crushed him into a puddle of bloody pulp, before even the pulp was ground into cosmic dust.
His death was even more casual than crushing an ant underfoot.
Gu Xian felt much more comfortable in his back and continued sleeping soundly.
In the deepest part of the Celestial God Academy.
This was a stretch of Immortal Family Ruins that had been sealed for endless ages.
All around, chaotic mist hung so thick it would not disperse, and the spiritual energy was so dense it almost dripped with moisture.
At the very center of the ruin floated the phantom of an ancient round cauldron with three legs and two handles.
Though the phantom was indistinct, strands of incomparably heavy mother qi of all things hung down from its mouth, pressing upon the surrounding space until it continually warped.
It was a projection of the Origin Mother Cauldron.
Even as a mere projection, it radiated a supreme pressure that could suppress all ages.
Beside the immortal pool.
Meng Tianzheng sat cross-legged.
He held a purple fishing rod made from some unknown material, its line dangling into the immortal pool.
On the hook hung a fragment of an immortal-path pill that gave off an extraordinary fragrance.
A disciple crouched beside him, chin propped in both hands, eyes moving back and forth between Meng Tianzheng and the fishing rod.
"Grand Elder, you've been sitting here doing nothing for three days now."
The disciple could not help speaking up.
"Could there be some peerless immortal fish in this ruin?"
Meng Tianzheng did not turn around, his gaze still fixed on the tranquil water.
"I'm not fishing for fish."
Meng Tianzheng's voice was very even.
"Beneath these Immortal Family Ruins lie countless folded spatial rifts."
"There's a little fellow hiding inside."
"I'm waiting for him to take the bait himself."
Meanwhile.
Within a folded space less than a thousand zhang from the immortal pool.
A golden-haired youth with bulging, knotted muscles was hiding behind an enormous Chaos Origin Stone.
Little Skyhorned Ant.
He stared at the immortal pill fragment giving off an enticing fragrance in the pool, a drop of drool slipping treacherously from the corner of his mouth.
"It smells so good..."
Little Skyhorned Ant wrestled furiously with himself.
He could sense the tremendous power of origin contained within that fragment. As long as he ate it, his physical body would definitely rise another level.
But he did not dare go out.
The old man sitting beside the immortal pool felt far too dangerous to him.
Although Little Skyhorned Ant had extreme confidence in his own strength, he was no fool.
The blood energy and Laws lying dormant within that old man were like an abyss that could erupt at any moment.
If he really went out to snatch the bait, he would probably be suppressed by the other party in an instant.
That crafty old bastard is clearly fishing for yours truly.
Little Skyhorned Ant resentfully wiped away his drool.
He decided to wait a little longer.
Before you continue