Eastern Wasteland.
Ancient Desolate Holy Land.
This was one of the Eastern Wasteland's three great cultivation holy lands. Countless young Tianjiao took pride in being able to enter the Ancient Desolate Holy Land to cultivate.
At that moment, people streamed to and fro outside the holy land, their voices rising in a deafening clamor.
Today was the day the Ancient Desolate Holy Land opened its gates to recruit disciples. Anyone who passed the assessment could enter the holy land to cultivate.
Ye Xuan squeezed through the crowd, laboriously pushing aside the people around him, his eyes brimming with anticipation.
He was a transmigrator, without father or mother, ordinary in every way.
He had transmigrated here three years ago, thinking he could rely on a system to become invincible, trample the nine heavens and ten lands, and sweep aside the Tianjiao of all ages.
But three years had passed, and the system still had not arrived. That had gradually worn away his lofty ambitions.
Thus, he could only come to the Ancient Desolate Holy Land to try his luck.
On the square ahead stood a raised platform.
An elderly man with the bearing of an immortal sage was already presiding over it, while a young girl was having her spiritual root tested.
The girl placed her palm on a crystal pillar.
The next second, with a hum, the crystal pillar erupted with orange light two zhang high, but a chorus of sighs rose from below.
"Insufficient aptitude. Next."
The elder's voice was cold and merciless, making the girl's pretty face pale slightly and her eyes dim.
Pouting and clenching her teeth, she walked down from the platform, utterly crestfallen.
"The Ancient Desolate Holy Land certainly lives up to its reputation as one of the Eastern Wasteland's three great cultivation holy lands. Its requirements really are strict."
"Tell me about it. Orange light two zhang high already counts as middling aptitude. She'd have absolutely no trouble becoming an inner disciple in an ordinary sect, yet she can't even pass the assessment here."
"Obviously. If their assessments weren't strict, would they still be the three great holy lands?"
After a brief silence, a clamor rose from below.
Many of the youths waiting for their assessments grew even more anxious.
Watching this, Ye Xuan also felt somewhat uneasy.
As a transmigrator without a system, the Ancient Desolate Holy Land was already his only hope of setting foot on the path to invincibility.
If he failed the assessment, he would truly have no chance of becoming a powerhouse and could only fritter away his life.
The assessment continued.
Young men and women stepped onto the platform one after another to be tested, but very few passed.
Finally, it was Ye Xuan's turn.
Led by a lovely, otherworldly senior sister from the holy land, Ye Xuan slowly ascended the platform.
The elder's gaze fell on Ye Xuan. Those deep, weathered eyes seemed capable of seeing all things in the world and piercing through to their very essence.
Soon, he shook his head to himself, sighing inwardly:
Alas, no spiritual root at all, extremely poor aptitude, and somewhat too old as well. Has the fortune of our Eastern Wasteland truly waned? Is it destined to decline?
While the elder was thinking this, Ye Xuan had already walked up to the crystal pillar.
The crystal pillar stood a full ninety-nine meters tall. Standing beneath it, he could not see its top at all.
Ye Xuan felt a peculiar presence flow into his body, and, to his surprise, it felt very comfortable.
Rumor had it that this was a chaos artifact once used by the holy land's founding patriarch.
However, after countless tens of thousands of years, this artifact had long since lost its former spirituality. Now it could only be brought out to test spiritual roots during the disciple recruitment assessment held once every three years.
Buddha, bless me. Heaven, bless me. Gods and immortals everywhere, bless me. Please make sure I pass the test and join the Ancient Desolate Holy Land!
I'm a transmigrator, after all. If I can't command the winds and rain in this world, trample the stars, sun, and moon to pieces, and sweep aside the Tianjiao of all ages, wouldn't I be disgracing all us transmigrators?
Ye Xuan pressed his palms together, muttering inwardly, then took a deep breath and slowly extended his hand.
Seeing this, the elder on the platform could not help frowning slightly.
The crowd below stirred.
"What's that fellow doing?"
"Why do I get the feeling he was reciting Buddhist scriptures just now?"
"Holy crap, are you sure you're taking the Ancient Desolate Holy Land's assessment and not a Buddhist one?"
Countless comments rang out, followed by a wave of snickering.
Yet Ye Xuan stood on the platform in a complete daze, deaf to it all.
"Ding! Chaos Qi detected. System activating." "Ding! System activated successfully. Binding to host." "Ding! System bound successfully. Congratulations, host. You have obtained the Chaos Invincible Sign-In System. Would you like to sign in now?"
A sweet female voice suddenly rang out in his mind.
Ye Xuan was so excited he nearly cried.
Mommy! After three years, had the system finally awakened?
The flowers were practically wilting from all that waiting, weren't they?
Despite those thoughts, Ye Xuan did not hesitate in the slightest. "Sign in!"
After speaking, seemingly feeling that was not emphatic enough, he clenched his fist and added, "Sign in right now!"
"Ding! Chaos Invincible System signing in!" "Ding! Sign-in successful. Congratulations, host. You have obtained the Chaos Sacred Body. Would you like to use it now?"
"Use it!" Ye Xuan clenched his fists, nearly roaring the words.
Even someone who had never eaten pork had seen a pig run. Besides, as a fantasy fan in his previous life, how could he not know what the Chaos Sacred Body represented?
Without a doubt, this was the ultimate cheat that let the protagonist show off and soar, sweeping aside every enemy in the world along the way. Its cool factor was off the charts!
"Ding! Integrating Chaos Sacred Body." "Ding! Chaos Sacred Body integration commencing. Progress: 10%."
The system's sweet female voice sounded again. Ye Xuan immediately discovered a strange power rapidly pouring into him as his body began to transform.
At the same time, streaks of unfathomably profound light swirled around him.
Hum!
Almost simultaneously, a patch of purple suddenly emerged within the chaos crystal pillar before Ye Xuan.
At first, that purple was very faint, but as the Chaos Sacred Body continued to integrate, the dim purple rapidly grew brilliant.
Soon, with a whoosh, the brilliant purple light shot skyward, soaring straight to the top of the chaos crystal pillar.
"Ah! Purple! Th-this... am I seeing things?"
"Holy crap, how is this possible? Purple represents a divine-grade spiritual root, the highest level! That's already beyond the categories of upper, middle, and lower grades!!!"
"H-he's actually that monstrous?!!"
Seeing this, the crowd below was even more astonished.
The crowd erupted into turmoil, the entire square in an uproar!
Some people even began trembling violently despite themselves.
Whether it was from excitement or envy, jealousy, and resentment was anyone's guess.
The elder on the platform had still been heaving sighs and shaking his head.
But upon seeing this, his body abruptly went rigid, his face filled with shock.
"Th-this... how is this possible?"
He gripped his beard with one hand and the platform's side railing with the other.
He yanked out several tufts of his long, narrow beard and crushed the railing with a series of cracks, yet remained completely unaware.
Spiritual root aptitude was divided into seven grades.
From highest to lowest, they were divine grade, sacred grade, heaven grade, special grade, upper grade, middle grade, and lower grade.
Their corresponding colors were also easy to distinguish: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple, in reverse order.
He remembered that in the previous assessment, even the most monstrous aptitude had only been heaven grade.
Even so, it had caused a sensation throughout the Eastern Wasteland.
Yet this time, a divine-grade prodigy had appeared.
The elder simply dared not imagine what an uproar it would cause if word of this got out.
But was it over already?
No, no, no. It was clearly far from over!
As the Chaos Sacred Body's integration deepened, the purple within the chaos crystal pillar continued to surge and rise.
Even reaching the very top seemed not to be its limit.
That dense purple was like an enraged purple divine dragon, repeatedly battering the chaos crystal pillar in a frenzy.
It seemed to have been trapped and wanted to break free of the crystal pillar and soar into the heavens!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Under those impacts, the chaos crystal pillar began to shake, and the entire platform trembled incessantly along with it.
"Look! What's that?!!"
"Ah, th-this... am I dreaming?"
"Aaah! What an astonishing phenomenon of heaven and earth! I can't take it! I'm going to faint!"
Just then, shrieks suddenly rang out, and in the next second, countless people lifted their heads to look at the sky.