Chapter 434 - 433: The Supreme Grand Elder Awakens, Three Thousand Years of Seclusion Ends

Lin Yuan extended his spiritual perception as far as possible. The dimensional currents were chaotic, but beneath their turbulence he could detect a deeper pattern.

Each Wonder was being drawn along a route that led toward the Hollow Beyond, and the force guiding them possessed a level of control that ordinary cultivators could not hope to reproduce.

The Demon Emperor was not merely taking advantage of the collapse.

He was using it.

The realization settled heavily within Lin Yuan’s mind. The shattered dimensional walls had provided access to the Barrier Realm, but the extraction of the Wonders appeared to be part of a much larger plan.

The Demon Emperor had already demonstrated the ability to uproot the Great Sea Realm and compress the conceptual core of the Exotic Realm. If the remaining Wonders were being gathered through the same method, then he was preparing to do something that extended far beyond the conquest of the Nine Provinces.

"What do you think he intends to do with them?" Bai Qingyue asked.

Lin Yuan remained silent for several breaths, carefully considering the question. The Wonders had once been pillars that helped maintain the structure of the Nine Provinces, but their significance might not end there.

If their laws and origins could be extracted, they might serve as the foundation for an artifact or formation of extraordinary power.

"He may be gathering them to refine something," Lin Yuan finally said. "The Wonders contain different aspects of the laws that govern existence. If their foundations can be combined, the result could be far more powerful than any single Wonder."

Ku Ming’s expression darkened. "A treasure created from the foundational Wonders of the Nine Provinces would possess authority over the very laws that sustain this world."

"And if the Demon Emperor succeeds," Lin Yuan added, "he may no longer need to rely on the limitations of the Nine Provinces. He could use the treasure to strengthen his own Dao or create a weapon capable of threatening even the Imperial Domain."

Bai Qingyue looked again at the enormous structures moving through the fracture. The Whispering Mirage Woods, the Primordial Volcanic Forge, the Continental Land, and the Floating Mountains were all being drawn toward the same destination.

Their individual laws were different, but together they represented an enormous portion of the foundations that had sustained the Nine Provinces throughout their history.

The implications were terrifying.

If the Demon Emperor succeeded in combining their powers, he might create something whose authority surpassed the limits of ordinary cultivation. Even if Lin Yuan and the others found a powerful treasure within the Barrier Realm, they could still be too late to prevent the completion of such a plan.

A sudden pulse of darkness swept across the distant structures.

The demonic energy surrounding the Floating Mountains tightened, and the entire mass accelerated toward the fracture. The Golden Gate released a faint burst of golden light, but the glow vanished almost immediately beneath the overwhelming pressure.

The remaining mountains followed, disappearing one after another into the bruised-purple darkness of the Hollow Beyond.

The Primordial Volcanic Forge passed next, its radiance shrinking as it moved farther away. The enormous sphere of emerald light containing the Whispering Mirage Woods followed, while the Continental Land continued its slow and terrible journey toward the abyss.

The sight remained visible for several breaths before the surrounding spatial currents distorted the view.

The Barrier Realm trembled again.

——————

Deep beneath the Nine Provinces, far below the shattered foundations of the Cultivation Council, an ancient chamber lay hidden behind layer upon layer of temporal stasis arrays.

These formations had remained sealed for three thousand years, protecting the person entrusted with the final inheritance of cultivation. Even the Emperors had rarely been permitted to approach this place, for the existence of the chamber was considered one of the Council’s greatest secrets.

At the center of the chamber, upon a slab of primordial jade, sat the Supreme Grand Elder of the Cultivation Council. His body was so frail that he resembled a corpse that had been preserved for countless years, with skin stretched tightly over fragile bones and long, white hair hanging around his shoulders.

His heartbeat was so slow that it produced only a single pulse every decade, while the spiritual Qi within his body remained compressed into a nearly motionless state.

He was the oldest living human in the Nine Provinces. He had witnessed the rise and fall of countless sects, the establishment of imperial dynasties, and the gradual decline of the world’s cultivation environment.

In his youth, Void Refinement cultivators had been powerful figures, but they had not been so rare that their names became legends merely because they existed.

He had survived those distant eras by withdrawing from the world and entering a state of suspended animation. His cultivation had reached the Half-Step Body Integration realm, leaving him only one step away from a level that cultivators could scarcely imagine.

Yet that final step had remained beyond his reach for three thousand years. It was not because his comprehension was insufficient, but because the damaged laws of the Nine Provinces could no longer support his breakthrough.

The Supreme Grand Elder had exhausted nearly every method available to him. He had refined his spiritual Qi until it could barely be improved, studied the remnants of ancient inheritances, and repeatedly attempted to merge his body, Primordial Spirit, and Dao comprehension into a higher existence.

Every attempt had ended in failure, with the surrounding laws rejecting the weight of his cultivation before the final transformation could occur.

Eventually, he had accepted that time alone would not solve his problem. Rather than waste the last remnants of his lifespan struggling against a world that could no longer support him, he chose to preserve his existence until a genuine opportunity appeared.

His temporal arrays would keep his body from deteriorating, while the small amount of Origin energy he had gathered from ancient tectonic plates would sustain the foundation of his cultivation.

For three thousand years, the Supreme Grand Elder had remained motionless.

Now, the arrays were breaking.

A faint vibration passed through the primordial jade beneath him, followed by a second, more violent tremor. The intricate formations carved into the chamber’s walls began to flicker, their ancient symbols losing their radiance one after another.

The temporal currents that had maintained the chamber’s isolation suddenly became disordered. The flow of time that had once remained under his control began moving at an alarming pace.

The emergency transmission sent by Emperor Tianxu had reached the deepest layers of the temporal formation. It carried the desperate will of the Emperors, but the message was only the beginning of the disturbance.

The collapse of the Nine Heavens Ward, the uprooting of the Exotic Realm, and the disappearance of the Great Sea Realm had already changed the fundamental structure of the surrounding universe.

The temporal arrays could no longer maintain their original function.

One formation after another shattered, releasing the Supreme Grand Elder from his three thousand years of suspended animation. The moment the final seal collapsed, the broken reality of the Nine Provinces pressed against his senses with overwhelming force.

He felt the disappearance of the two great realms that had once helped stabilize the world’s structure. He immediately understood that the calamity had surpassed anything recorded in the Cultivation Council’s oldest archives.

Even more disturbing was the suppression spreading through the Nine Provinces. The laws that once permitted powerful cultivators to exercise their full strength had become incomplete, forcing all cultivation to remain at the Nascent Soul level regardless of the practitioner’s original realm.

The restriction was not a formation that could be broken through brute force, nor was it an ordinary seal imposed by an enemy.

It was the world’s own failing structure attempting to preserve itself.

The Supreme Grand Elder slowly opened his eyes!