Three years passed in the blink of an eye.
It had been exactly three years since Lin Yi withdrew from the entrance to the Heavenly Palace Secret Realm and returned to Starfall City.
Over those three years, the Source Realm's attention had remained fixed on the Heavenly Palace Secret Realm.
As the major main cities and top factions repeatedly dispatched Emperor Realm cultivators to probe its depths, the Heavenly Palace Secret Realm—which should have closed and vanished according to precedent—was instead locked in place by an invisible, majestic force. Breaking the law that had endured since time immemorial, it became a permanent secret realm, floating in the gap between the Source Realm's Tidal Spirit Sea and an unknown domain.
At the secret realm's entrance, the Black Stone Bridge, thirty thousand zhang long, still stretched across the void. The ancient runes carved across its surface shimmered with a faint glow, resisting the battering of spatial cracks and thunderstorms.
Cultivators below the Emperor Realm, no matter how gifted they were or how powerful their protective treasures, would suffer the ruthless slaughter of the secret realm's rules the moment they stepped onto the stone bridge.
Either their protective talismans would shatter instantly, and they would be swept away and devoured by spatial turbulence, or they would be precisely targeted by purple thunderstorms and blasted into ash.
Over the past three years, countless prodigy disciples from major factions had fallen upon the stone bridge. Their blood stained its surface red, yet not a single person had crossed beyond the bridge's midpoint.
As for cultivators above the Emperor Realm, while they could barely pass through the bridge and enter the secret realm, not one had ever emerged alive.
They could only rely on Life-Bound Talismans, Soul Marks left in the outside world, or Message Transmission