Starlight is the dust of the universe, and also the messenger of time.
When Li Qingshan looked back for the last time, the Big Dipper Ancient Star had transformed into a speck of dust with a faint halo at the edge of his vision, suspended against the dark velvet background, serene and ancient.
It bears the marks of his fierce battles, the people he knew and was close to, the lingering pain of the seven forbidden zones, and the image of that pure white figure on the Jade Pool Lotus Lake and the warm jade light around his neck.
He turned away, temporarily storing all of this in a soft corner of his heart.
His body emanated a Daoist aura, achieving a strange harmony with the desolate and lifeless environment.
The Nine Secrets: Xing has become an instinct, a rhythm as natural as breathing.
Coupled with his understanding of the laws of space, he took a step forward.
The space in front of him bent and folded on its own, "delivering" him to a very far place, while the space behind him, like a smoothed-out water surface, quickly returned to its original state.
This process is incredibly mysterious. If compared to the science we learned and understood in our previous lives, it does indeed have some resemblance to warp drive. Its speed far surpasses the concept of "speed of light," exceeding even the speed of Saint King, and not far behind that of Great Saint.
In just one day, he found himself in a completely unfamiliar star system.
Looking back, not only the Big Dipper, but even the ancient star cluster to which Big Dipper belongs has been hidden among countless twinkling points of light, making it impossible to distinguish.
Even if the distance traversed in a single day were measured in billions of kilometers, it would seem pale in comparison.
The scale of the universe is large enough to render any specific number meaningless.
The journey has begun.
Eternal silence became the dominant theme.
The "stillness" here describes a state of being where matter is extremely scarce, energy fluctuations are so weak as to be almost nonexistent, and even the light of stars, after a long journey, has become cold and distant. Occasionally, it catches the eye, but only for a moment, before being swallowed up by deeper darkness.
This is the real universe beyond the Ancient Life Star, vast, cold, and possessing a cruel beauty that disregards everything.
Walking alone in such a vast and boundless place, an indescribable sense of insignificance and loneliness enveloped me, as if the universe itself were enveloping me.
The road ahead is uncertain; star chart coordinates are merely theoretical guides, and the real journey is full of unknowns.
Why did the ancients expend tremendous effort to carve out relatively fixed "roads" in the boundless Void? Was it for conquest? For exploration? Or to escape something? The starting point may be recorded, but the end point may never have been reached even by the original pioneers.
Goodbye, Big Dipper.
He let out a soft sigh, which disappeared into the absolute vacuum, and even he himself could not hear it.
Only the fluctuations of divine thoughts caused slight ripples, which were then soothed by the stillness of the universe.
go home.
The thought seemed both clear and unreal at this moment.
The coordinates of the Earth are imprinted in my heart, and the relay point originating from the ancient Five-Colored Altar system is also being calculated.
However, the vastness of the cosmos is full of uncertainties.
An unexpected spatial turbulence, an unrecorded ancient array, or even a mistaken coordinate jump could lead to Eternal disorientation, aimlessly drifting in the dark Void until life and traces of the Dao are obliterated by time.
The insignificance of the individual is magnified infinitely at this moment.
Humanity's proud civilization and immense power are but a drop in the ocean compared to an ancient star that has nurtured life for billions of years.
Such a magnificent ancient star, placed in this boundless star field, is not even a speck of dust.
Galaxyes are measured in light-years in diameter, while star fields are an even grander structure composed of countless galaxies. What he must cross is the Void void between star fields, a place of utter despair.
Crossing the galaxy on one's own, without special means, even if one exhausts one's entire lifespan, one might not be able to traverse even a medium-sized star system.
What kind of earth-shattering power did the Ancient Great Emperor possess to be able to freely roam the galaxy? Even Ancient Saint mostly needed to rely on interstellar nodes like the Five-Colored Altar to travel on relatively safe ancient paths.
There are probably very few people like him who, with the status of King, dare to cross the river in their physical body solely based on coordinates and calculations.
Loneliness did not bring fear; instead, it made my Daoist mind even clearer.
Everything in the past—the ordinariness of Earth, the conquests of Big Dipper, the warmth of Jade Pool —seems like a grand and vivid dream.
Now, as he awakens from his dream, he walks on his way home, which in itself seems to form a new part of the dream.
Li Qingshan's gaze was deep and calm. Within the Bitter Sea, golden waves surged, and the source of his supreme physique flowed with golden radiance.
However, he did not immediately trigger the Saint Tribulation.
Although this place is far from the Big Dipper, it is still on the edge of its broad gravitational and Daoist influence, and is not an ideal place to undergo tribulation.
The Saint Tribulation is no small matter; a sufficiently remote star field with relatively stable energy that will not attract unpredictable prying eyes must be found.
"Earth," he murmured the word, as if savoring the long-faded scent of his homeland.
As his divine sense sank into his heart, the four sets of star coordinates, described by the Bagua trigrams of Qian, Kun, Zhen, and Xun, and accompanied by unique Daoist rhymes, clearly emerged.
The group representing the " Primordial Ancient Star " subtly resonated with a point deep within a distant star field as the hexagrams shifted, indicating the general direction for him.
Having selected a location and confirmed the first calculated relay point area of Five-Colored Altar, Li Qingshan took another step.
The dark robe remained motionless in the vacuum, yet it exuded a Daoist aura, forming a faint, almost invisible glow on its surface.
This radiance not only isolated the ubiquitous high-energy rays, particle streams, and near-absolute-zero cold that could instantly annihilate low-level cultivators, but also distorted light and spatial fluctuations to a certain extent, making him seem to blend into the darkness of the background, making him extremely difficult to detect by ordinary means of detection.
He pushed the profound meaning of the Nine Secrets: Xing) to a sublime level.
Enter a highly efficient, sustained, and energy-optimized "Star Chaser" state.
His figure transformed into a nearly transparent, blurry streak of light, silently traversing the absolute darkness. Only when passing through certain nebulae or magnetic field regions would he leave a brief but dazzling trail of light before disappearing without a trace.
The journey was both tedious and breathtaking.
Most of the time, he was accompanied only by boundless darkness and the unchanging, cold gaze of distant stars.
Many of those points of light may have already perished by the time he saw them.
Light became the belated messenger of cosmic history.
I have also passed by magnificent nebulae.
Not all nebulae are as serene as a painting.
He once saw a huge dust cloud in the distance, like a "pillar of creation," within which the birth and death of stars were taking place, and the violent energy tides and chaotic primordial laws were enough to pulverize any cultivator below the Saint.
He cautiously circled around, the Nine Secrets: Qian" hanging high on his spiritual platform, avoiding risks amidst the chaos of deduction, while simultaneously comprehending the primordial Daoist rhythm of destruction and rebirth.
The concept of time has become blurred.
He measures it by the rhythm of his own life.
About two months after leaving Big Dipper, he found the first ancient Five-Colored Altar ruins he had anticipated, guided by the coordinates.
That was on the far side of a long-dead planet, covered in craters.
Most of the altar had collapsed and the stone carvings were blurred, but the core array pattern still retained a faint trace of activity. The strange crystals embedded in the five corners had long since exhausted their energy and turned into stubborn rocks.
Li Qingshan carefully studied the remaining Dao patterns, corroborating them with his own calculations. He repaired some key nodes and invested a large amount of Divine Source to painstakingly activate this one-time one-way teleportation.
The sensation of violent spatial distortion was overwhelming, a hundred times stronger than when using Domain Gate for teleportation in the Big Dipper.
It was as if the entire body and soul were stretched, crushed, and then reassembled.
After an unknown amount of time—perhaps a moment, perhaps ten thousand years—he was "spit out" from the twisted passage.
The moment his feet touched solid ground, a vast and powerful divine consciousness spread out like a tide.
A new star field, an unfamiliar constellation arrangement.
Based on star chart comparison and his own vague perception of the distance traversed in space, he judged that this teleportation had sent him to a distant Void at least several light-years away from the Big Dipper.
The scene before us is a cosmic spectacle, but it also foreshadows danger.
A once glorious star has come to an end, its core collapsing into a tiny, incredibly dense neutron star, like a dark primordial point that devours everything, its existence only faintly detectable through the extremely distorted gravitational lensing effect around it.
Its former outer shell was completely shattered, turning into billions of star fragments of varying sizes. Bound by its powerful gravity, these fragments rotate around it at a terrifying speed close to the speed of light, forming a vast belt of broken stars filled with deathly screams.
Further away, the remnants of what appears to be a companion star of the same star are periodically emitting devastating gamma-ray bursts. The pale beams sweep across the Void, causing abnormal ripples in the very fabric of space that linger for a long time.
Chaos, violence, extremes.
However, precisely because of this, this star field has almost no stable celestial bodies, and few living beings or cultivators dare to set foot there.
The residual power of the stellar core and the extreme physical laws dissipated from the neutron star contained in the star fragment belt are dangerous, yet incredibly concentrated.
"This is it." Li Qingshan's eyes narrowed.
The energy here is abundant and chaotic, enough to mask the fluctuations of the Saint Tribulation, and the location is also remote enough.
Without further hesitation, he took a step forward and plunged directly into the relatively sparse area at the edge of the asteroid belt.
Ignoring the metal fragments whistling past him, powerful enough to shatter mountains, he completely released the suppression of his realm in the Void. Li Qingshan stretched his body, opened his chest, looked up at the vast sky, and stood alone under the boundless starry sky, beginning his breakthrough to meet his own divine punishment.
Strands of holy power flowed from his body, and rays of divine radiance bloomed. His entire body was dazzling, as if cast in gold, and his blood energy rose into the sky like True Dragon from the top of his head.
The once lifeless star field suddenly "came alive"!
An endless stream of chaotic energy emerged from nowhere, converging into a boundless, hazy ocean of thunder.
This sea of lightning displayed the chaotic colors of the time before heaven and earth were separated, with earth, water, fire, and wind surging wildly within, constantly enacting the cycle of the world's creation and destruction!
Countless blurry yet terrifying figures floated and roared in the sea of lightning. They were ancient and crude, some with human heads and snake bodies, others with bird wings and dragon bodies, as if they were Heavenly God that existed before the Heaven-Opening!
The Great Tribulation of Saint with Innate Sacred Body Dao Embryo!
Its power far surpasses any Saint Tribulation recorded in ancient texts, and even exceeds the trials and tribulations of ancient Di Huang in their youth!
"Boom!"
In that instant, the divine punishment erupted, so fiercely and dazzlingly bright that it seemed as if countless stars had fallen, completely engulfing the area.
Li Qingshan's figure vanished instantly, swallowed by the vast ocean of stars. The entire starry sea was shrouded in divine radiance, with blazing light everywhere, making his figure completely invisible.
If the tribulations of ordinary Saint are like rivers of stars falling down, converging into a vast ocean, covering this land.
Therefore, Li Qingshan's calamities were like vast oceans pouring down on him, rather than streams falling one after another.
Amidst the terrifying light, planets began to explode, transforming into dazzling orbs of light, but in the Heavenly Tribulation Sea, they were merely a few ripples, failing to cause much turmoil.
Li Qingshan anticipated that the heavenly tribulation would be extremely violent, but he did not expect it to be this fierce. Even his strong body was covered in bloody marks, and his joints cracked.
This was a heavenly punishment akin to peeling off one's skin and refining one's bones, tempering every inch of the body's flesh and blood, akin to shattering bones and then rebuilding them. Li Qingshan's Saint Tribulation was far too domineering.
The most terrifying lightning in the world was revealed. He immediately summoned the Central Wuji Apricot-Yellow Flag and the Pangu Banner, which rose and fell with him, undergoing baptism. These two artifacts will also be transformed and sublimated today.
After an unknown period of time, Li Qingshan's bones were broken multiple times, and his body was almost completely obliterated. He was constantly reforged and reassembled, shining with brilliance.
He endured the pain and resisted the calamity without ever letting his guard down.
After some time, he suddenly looked up, his gaze sharp as torches, towards the depths of the sea of thunder, where the aura of Ancient Great Emperor and another kind of majestic power permeated the air.
The lightning waterfall cascaded down, boundless and vast, and this was only a corner of the sea of lightning. It was magnificent and boundless, with the great tide of heavenly tribulation sweeping across the endless starry sea!
Li Qingshan encountered the most terrifying tribulation since he began cultivating. He struggled against the heavenly punishment while remaining vigilant against the fluctuations coming from the depths of the sky, where the aura of Ancient Great Emperor was spreading.
Throughout his cultivation, he has survived countless tribulations, and he has seen many Great Emperor manifesting Humanoid Lightning lightning during tribulations. However, what appeared during this Saint Tribulation was far beyond anything he had seen before, and he dared not underestimate it in the slightest.
"Boom!"
Dark light surged, engulfing the sea of stars. The Solar Divine Lightning descended, more immense than any calamity before, filling the entire cosmos and shattering countless stars within it.
This was an unparalleled terror; such a scene would chill even the most accomplished saint to the Heavens truly cared for those attempting to break through barriers, why would it unleash such a calamity?
This is an omen that is not recognized by Heaven and Earth; it is a punishment that goes to great lengths and exceeds all limits, aimed at destroying the one undergoing tribulation.
Endless Solar Divine Lightning, shrouded in wisps of immortal mist and bursting with golden light, bombarded Li Qingshan for an unknown duration, utterly shattering him. Even his two treasures, forged from the Xuanhuang Mother Qi, were cracked and riddled with fissures. This was arguably the most devastating divine punishment he had ever encountered in his cultivation.
Thump!
A sound like a heavenly drum reverberated from within its body, emitting beams of golden divine light. Its shattered body and broken bones were reassembled and reconnected, melting into one.