The great battle in the Heart-Questioning Ancient Forest finally came to an end. The trillions of Supreme Transformation Source Crystal that once blotted out the sky were now almost gone. Huge pits were everywhere, hollowed out, and numerous unhealed spatial rifts floated in the void. The entire ancient forest was unrecognizable. At this moment, the main body of the Divine Mountain was suspended in the center of the world.
Its enormous body was constantly absorbing the last remaining Supreme Transformation Source Crystal. Streams of silver rivers converged from all directions, like countless galaxies returning to their nest. They continuously disappeared into its scales that covered the heavens and the earth. With each batch of Source Crystals absorbed, the cracks on the Divine Mountain healed a little, and the broken Fate Soul essence was also re-condensed a little.
Those Supreme Transformation Source Crystal that Qin Yu had secretly tampered with also did not escape the Divine Mountain's devouring. Among them, the Source Crystal that had been secretly implanted with a causal anchor and Cognitive Cage was also silently integrated into the Divine Mountain's body amidst the torrent of countless Supreme Transformation Source Crystal, without causing any ripples.
Without arousing any alarm, as if it were something that naturally belonged there, Qin Yu quietly watched all of this from the distant Transcendent Five-Dimensional Space. His gaze remained calm until finally, the last Supreme Transformation Source Crystal was absorbed by the Divine Mountain. Boom—the entire world trembled slightly.
The colossal, boundless Divine Mountain slowly raised its head, countless ancient divine runes illuminating its surface. Then, its body gradually became transparent, as if it were detaching itself from this world. Space folded and dimensions twisted, and the enormous figure blurred little by little.
Finally, it completely disappeared from the spot as if it had never existed. As the Divine Mountain left, the entire Heart-Questioning Ancient Forest finally fell silent. Qin Yu did not act immediately, but continued to hide in the Transcendent Five-Dimensional Space. His divine sense slowly swept around, once, twice, three times, and even covered the entire area of millions of miles around.
After confirming that there were no hidden cultivators, Qin Yu slowly revealed himself. The void slightly distorted as his figure appeared in the center of the ruins. Xiao Yue also poked her head out from her sea of consciousness. "Are you gone?" Qin Yu nodded and then slowly closed his eyes. In his sea of consciousness, the causal anchor point that had been buried in the body of the Divine Mountain lit up instantly.
A faint thread of cause and effect appeared, traversing countless spaces and extending into the unknown depths. Qin Yu slowly smiled. "Hmph." "I'll see what secrets you're still hiding." The next moment, he raised his hand, tearing open the void, and stepped into it, disappearing without a trace.
... After an unknown amount of time, when Qin Yu emerged from the spatial rift again, everything before him had completely changed. This should be the deepest part of the Heart-Questioning Ancient Forest, but even the laws of heaven and earth had changed. Qin Yu slowly raised his head, his eyes narrowing slightly, because this place was actually an ancient world forgotten at the end of time and space.
The sky was a deep purple, without sun or moon. The entire firmament was filled with countless inverted, enormous stone tablets, each tens of thousands of feet tall, densely packed in the sky like some kind of ancient cemetery. The surfaces of the stone tablets were engraved with ancient characters that had long been lost, and those characters were constantly flowing, as if they were alive.
Sometimes it coalesces, sometimes it disperses, and the ground is a silver-gray wasteland with countless withered giant trees standing between heaven and earth, each tree reaching tens of thousands of feet in height. The trunks are transparent like crystal, and within the heart of the tree are sealed countless blurry figures, including humans, divine beasts, and ancient races.
They seemed to be forever sealed within the tree, preserving the appearance of their last moments. Even more eerie, the entire world was utterly silent. The wind was still, the dust was stagnant, as if time had completely stopped. And in the deepest part of this deathly silent world, a colossal figure lay quietly prostrate.
That was the Divine Mountain we had left earlier. Now it sat atop a black altar, which was a million feet tall. Countless ancient chains descended from the depths of the void, wrapping around the Divine Mountain. At the very center of the altar, the purplish-gold Supreme Transformation Source Crystal floated in mid-air, slowly rotating.
Streams of purple-gold light flowed out, illuminating the entire desolate world. At the same time, the ancient map given to Qin Yu by Lotus Pond Fairy within Qin Yu's storage crystal core began to vibrate wildly once more, even flying out on its own and hovering in front of Qin Yu. The ancient patterns on the map lit up continuously, and eventually all the patterns pointed to the purple-gold source crystal in the center of the altar.
Qin Yu's gaze slowly narrowed, because at this moment he was 100% certain that the so-called ancient map, the secret that made the three Primordial Beast Luminary fight for millions of eras, was inside that Purple Gold Origin Crystal. More importantly, the map left by Lotus Pond Fairy resonated with it.
In the deathly silence of the world, there was no sound of wind, no trace of the passage of time, only the million-foot-tall altar standing silently at the edge of the wasteland, with countless ancient chains hanging down across the sky and earth, as if binding something that should not exist in the world.
The Divine Mountain itself was perched in the center of the altar, the cracks on its body that had not yet fully healed still clearly visible, and a large amount of silver-gold primordial divine light slowly flowed between the wounds, while its eyes were fixed on the purple-gold Supreme Transformation Source Crystal that floated in the center of the altar.
Boom! The Divine Mountain slowly opened its massive maw, and ancient divine runes spread out from it. These runes were taken from the origin of the Great Transformation and transformed into layers of sealing chains. Each rune contained the sedimentation of billions of years. As the Divine Mountain continuously activated the origin of its Fate Soul, the entire purple-gold source crystal began to vibrate violently.
The purplish-gold patterns on the surface peeled away bit by bit, and seal after seal began to break. Crack—the first seal shattered. Crack—the second seal collapsed. As more and more seals were broken, the entire altar began to shake violently, and the ancient stone tablets hanging in the sky around it simultaneously lit up with a ghostly blue light.
Countless ancient characters, sealed away, slowly floated out, as if paying homage to some supreme being. Finally, with the shattering of the last seal, the purple-gold source crystal burst open, and a dark blue divine light shot into the sky, instantly dyeing the entire desolate world a deep blue. At the very center of that blue light, an ancient scroll slowly unfurled, its surface a deep blue.
As if formed by the fusion of countless deep seas and void, the scroll depicts a huge wheel half-submerged in the void sea at its center. The wheel is not complete, with many cracks and gaps around its edges. Countless broken causal threads are wrapped around it, some hanging down into the void, and some extending into the depths of darkness. Each causal thread seems to hold the fate of a world.
The wheel slowly spun, and the surrounding spacetime began to reverse, as if all cause and effect were converging towards the end. At the top of the scroll, several ancient divine runes slowly emerged. "Scroll of Causal End, Annihilation Return to the Ruins, Wheel of Karmic End." Divine Mountain stared intently at the ancient map, his eyes revealing an uncontrollable excitement for the first time.
It slowly let out a low laugh. "Hahaha..." "Luckily, I was clever enough to hide the ancient map in my mouth." "Otherwise, it would have been snatched away by those two fools millions of epochs ago." "What a pity..." At this point, a trace of regret appeared in the eyes of the Divine Mountain. "Hundreds of epochs have passed." "I still haven't found the other half of the ancient map." "A mix of joy and sorrow..." At the same time.
Hidden in the spatial interlayer in the distance, Qin Yu's sea of consciousness suddenly trembled. Within his storage crystal core, the ancient map given to him by the Lotus Pond Fairy flew out on its own and hovered in front of Qin Yu. Boom! Deep blue divine light instantly spread out, and another ancient map slowly unfolded. On the scroll, a glass pagoda suspended upside down above a roulette wheel floated silently, its body flowing with countless bubbles of thought.
Those bubbles seemed to contain the thoughts of billions of beings, born and dying, joyful and sorrowful, endlessly reincarnating. Ancient divine scripts also appeared on the scroll. The Scroll of Thought-Locking Void, the Void Thought Stillness, without birth or death. The two ancient images, separated by endless distance, resonated violently at the same time, and Yu's eyes suddenly narrowed.
At this moment, all the clues finally connected. "So that's how it is..." The ancient map that Lotus Pond Fairy gave me back then... "It was one of them." "And what Divine Mountain obtained was the other half of the scroll." "No wonder we couldn't find the answer even after millions of epochs." Qin Yu slowly withdrew his gaze.
Looking back at the distant altar, his gaze gradually became solemn, because he knew very well that the biggest trouble at the moment was not the ancient map, but the Divine Mountain. Although the Divine Mountain's Fate Soul essence had been severely damaged after the great battle, and it had even almost perished, the Primordial Supreme Treasure, the Taiyan Ancestral Mountain, still existed.
With his current cultivation level, he had absolutely no chance of winning in a direct confrontation. "I must find a way..." "I can't just take it by force." "Otherwise, I'll be the one who dies." Qin Yu slowly closed his eyes, and the causal anchors he had previously planted in his sea of consciousness began to surface.
The Supreme Transformation Source Crystal that was swallowed by the Divine Mountain still exists, and the seed of cause and effect hidden within it is also still there. The next moment, Qin Yu slowly activated the Three Forms of Fate Construction of Cause and Effect Deconstruction and Effect. The whole process was Ultimate careful, without releasing any power fluctuations, without affecting any changes in the laws, and without even generating any Fate Soul aura.
He simply followed the connection of the causal anchor points, extremely slowly plucking one of the causal threads, as lightly as a breeze blowing through a spider web, almost imperceptible. Inside that source crystal, an extremely tiny Cognitive Cage quietly awakened, without activating or erupting, but simply beginning to operate slowly.
Gradually, it merged into the body of the Divine Mountain, like a drop of ink falling into a lake, slowly spreading silently without any notice. The Divine Mountain remained immersed in the joy of the ancient map's reappearance, completely unaware of anything amiss. Qin Yu, meanwhile, quietly hid in the darkness, patiently waiting, for he knew that true hunting was never about a single, decisive blow.
Instead, it led the opponent step by step into the abyss without their knowledge. At this time, the Divine Mountain concealed its ancient diagram, closed its eyes, and sat quietly to recuperate and repair its depleted essence, completely unaware of the subtle anomalies hidden on the ancient diagram.