Chapter 533 - 469: Harvesting the Fruits

PLOP. An inconspicuous grayish-white pebble dropped from the void, gently falling into a vast, colorful, and quietly flowing "river." The pebble entered the water, neither sinking nor stirring up massive waves. It only rippled outward in extremely faint yet clearly discernible rings.

CREAK. The faint sound of an old wooden door being pushed open rang out. The half-closed wooden door of the simple thatched cottage was pushed outward from the inside. A figure stepped out slowly. It was exactly Shen Yi Preaching True Monarch.

He had not tied his hair up at this moment; his black hair was scattered casually over his shoulders. The black Daoist Robe he wore was draped open, revealing the plain white inner garments beneath, making him look rather leisurely and uninhibited. The expression on his ordinary face, however, was one of profound indifference, devoid of the gentle smile he usually wore when facing Qi Yun.

His gaze bypassed the lush lawn in front of the cottage and landed straight on the eternally surging river of time not far away. Staring at the faint ripples that were gradually expanding and slowly subsiding, a trace of bone-piercing coldness flashed deep in his eyes.

"Another one," True Monarch Shen Yi’s voice was deep. "It seems... those old folks hiding in the gutters can hardly restrain themselves anymore."

True Monarch Feng Xi, dressed in a moon-white dress, walked out of the cottage slowly. Her slender jade-like fingers nimbly tied a pale green silk sash around her waist in an elegant and poised manner. She raised her beautiful eyes, which seemed to contain ancient frost and snow, and cast a light glance at the ripples on the river. Her gaze lowered slightly as she offered a somewhat indifferent reminder.

"Your plan... needs to speed up.

"If you wait until the World Honored One and the others descend in person regardless of the cost," Feng Xi’s voice was cold, "in our current state, we will be no match for them."

Hearing this, True Monarch Shen Yi did not respond immediately. With his hands behind his back, he slowly walked to the bank of the river of time. Reflected in the eternally flowing, colorful waters, his figure appeared somewhat isolated and solitary.

"Acting with undue haste..." he spoke slowly, his voice completely calm, "will only backfire.

"The flower has not yet bloomed." True Monarch Shen Yi turned to look at Feng Xi. "How can one pluck the fruit?"

"Heh..." True Monarch Feng Xi could not help but let out a very soft sneer, laced with a bit of mockery. "I’m just afraid... that by the time the flower blooms and the fruit falls, it will ripen and drop from the vine on its own.

"By the time you want to make a move, it will be too late."

"Rest assured." The smile on True Monarch Shen Yi’s face remained unchanged, yet it revealed a sense of absolute confidence and profound calculation. "This flower can only bloom if I allow it to.

"As for this fruit..." His voice paused slightly, and his gaze returned to the surging river of time beneath his feet. Countless threads of fate seemed to weave and calculate within his eyes.

"If I don’t pluck it, no one else... can even think about doing so."

Saying this, he slowly lowered his eyes, his gaze piercing into the depths of the colorful river water like something tangible.

A bizarre scene unfolded.

Wherever his gaze landed, the river water—which should have flowed in chaos, making it difficult to discern the specific future—faintly reflected a tall, straight human silhouette! The outline was extremely blurry at first, but under True Monarch Shen Yi’s gaze, it slowly grew... clearer! That figure was marching forward in the river of time. His footsteps were firm, and his aura was continuously condensing, rising, and reaching... a certain threshold at an astonishing speed!

...

Meanwhile, at the other end of the endless void, in a dead star field shrouded by a [Primordial Isolation Grand Array] casually set up by Qi Yun.

The light barrier of the Grand Array displayed chaotic colors, like an overturned giant bowl that completely sealed and isolated tens of thousands of miles of the void. Auras could not pass between the inside and outside, and heavenly secrets were rendered inscrutable. Within the array, Qi Yun stood face-to-face with Cai Shen, who had manifested a phantom human form.

Cai Shen’s face bore uncontrollable excitement. With a flash of golden light, the pitch-black, quaint iron chest—about a foot square in size, obtained from the True Monarch Forest of Steles—appeared in the void between them, hovering quietly.

The iron chest did not look large, but the moment it appeared, it naturally exuded an indescribable sense of heaviness, as if the weight of an entire mountain and river were sealed within. The chest itself was pitch-black. It was unknown what metal it was forged from, but it felt bone-piercingly cold to the touch. Moreover, a massive number of Seals and Restrictions clung to its surface in dense, overlapping layers!

The sheer volume of these Seals and Restrictions was terrifying; a rough sweep revealed no less than a hundred of them! Furthermore, they did not originate from the same source, but came from the hands of different True Monarchs!

Some Restrictions glowed with a Vajra-like dark gold, their strokes resembling Buddhist Sect Sanskrit, radiating a majestic Buddha Power meant to suppress demons and remain Immovable as a mountain. Others were Taoist School Talismans, faintly crackling with green and purple lightning, containing the righteous energy of Celestial Spirits. Some were hideous demonic Curse Seals, swirling with a bloodthirsty and corrosive aura. Still others were the upright phantoms of Confucian Dao disciplinary rulers, representing law and discipline...

The hundred-plus Seals represented over a hundred True Monarchs who cultivated different great Daos and employed varied methods, laying layer upon layer of lockdown on this iron chest and the existence within it! These Seals intertwined and overlapped. Some strengthened one another, while others vaguely conflicted. As a whole, however, they formed a terrifying, tightly knit, and incredibly complex, stable Seal system where moving a single strand would affect the entire structure!

It was like a lump of iron bound by countless chains and locks of various materials and craftsmanship, leaving one completely clueless on how to start unpacking it!

HISS... Even the knowledgeable and experienced Cai Shen could not help but suck in a breath of cold air when he looked at the dense, glowing array of over a hundred True Monarch Seals on the iron chest. He grimaced, revealing an expression as if he were suffering from a toothache.

"This... this is way too exaggerated!" Cai Shen muttered, ultimately casting a helpless gaze at the calm-faced Qi Yun beside him. "Qi the Kid, for this job... I’m afraid you’re the only one who can handle it."

Qi Yun’s gaze indifferently swept over the extremely complex Seals on the iron chest. There was not a single ripple of emotion in his eyes. To him, the quantity and complexity of the Seals did not constitute a fundamental difference.

"They are just... some long-dusty restraints," he said calmly. Then, he raised his right hand and gently swiped it through the empty air toward the hovering, pitch-black iron chest.

HUM.

A gentle, peaceful chaos color that carried a Realm towering above everything flowed from his palm. Like a clear spring, it softly washed over the surface of the iron chest. The instant the hundred-plus True Monarch Seals—with their varied colors, different Dao Rhymes, and intertwined conflicts—touched this chaos color, it was as if they had met the ultimate "solvent"!

Under the dominion of the Primordial Power, those incredibly sturdy Seal Dao Patterns representing various rules of the great Daos rapidly dimmed, loosened, and disintegrated! The entire process was as smooth and natural as the spring sun melting snow. In just the time of a breath, the hundred-plus Seals on the surface of the iron chest that had made Cai Shen’s scalp tingle vanished completely, revealing the pitch-black, quaint, and mirror-smooth original appearance of the iron chest itself.

"Open," Qi Yun lightly spat out a single word.

CLICK. The faint sound of a mechanism springing open rang out. The lid of the iron chest, which had been tightly shut for an untold number of millennia, slowly lifted upwards on its own to reveal a crack, without any direct contact from external forces.

BOOM!!!

At the exact moment the lid opened a slit! An indescribable, upright, and vast terrifying aura—filled with supreme imperial majesty and the weight of the nation’s lands—suddenly erupted from the chest and shot into the sky like an ancient giant dragon violently awakening from its slumber! The entire [Primordial Isolation Grand Array] violently shuddered, and countless ripples spread across the light barrier!

CLANG. A clear, grand sound of clashing Golden Stone, resembling the toll of a massive divine bell, rang out from the chest, shaking the cosmos!

The next moment, an endless stream of Profound Yellow energy spewed forth from the chest! This Profound Yellow energy was as heavy as a mountain and as vast as an ocean, rapidly condensing and evolving within the void!

A large cauldron, its entire body radiating the purest Profound Yellow hue, slowly rose from the brilliance! It was nine zhang in size, yet it gave off a sense of supreme weight, as if it could suppress all the heavens and myriad realms, and secure the four seas and eight wastelands!

Nine Profound Yellow divine dragons coiled around the body of the cauldron, their heads facing the sky in a posture of swallowing and exhaling the universe. At the bottom of the cauldron, instead of engraved characters, there was a naturally formed, miniature yet incredibly clear [Vast Divine Land Mountains and Rivers Map]! In the map, thousands of miles of lands were like a painting, billions of commoners were like ants, and the dynasty’s destiny was like a dragon. All were rising, falling, and flowing within it, as if the entirety of the Golden Tang Dynasty’s state and humanitarian destiny at its absolute peak had been condensed and sealed into this single cauldron!

The great Dao maxims and defensive Dao Patterns of "Invulnerable to Ten Thousand Laws" and "Eternal State" circulated and flickered around the cauldron like living creatures! An absolute will of "Where I am, is an unbreakable fortress; where I suppress, is an immovable empire" poured out recklessly!

As the phantom of the cauldron fully manifested, the entire void sealed by the Grand Array emitted a low, unbearable rumble! It was as if this space, due to the appearance of the cauldron, had become incomparably "sturdy" and "heavy"! Any external attacks, corrosion, or even temporal and spatial disturbances would naturally be smoothed out, neutralized, and reduced to nothingness upon approaching a certain range of this seal!

"Indeed..." Cai Shen’s eyes widened, his voice trembling slightly with excitement. "[Mountains and Rivers Cauldron]! It’s Fourteen!"

The [Mountains and Rivers Cauldron]!

Its name "Mountains and Rivers" was derived from the meaning of "eternal and immovable suppression of the nation’s lands"! This was no ordinary offensive weapon; it was a pure, ultimate defensive and suppressive set of Imperial Soldiers! With it present, it was like condensing the entire weight and destiny of a region’s divine land and mountains and rivers into one body. It could suppress the invasion of Ten Thousand Laws, truly earning the title of an unbreakable fortress!

Qi Yun’s gaze fell on this Profound Yellow cauldron. Chaos colors swirled in his eyes as he felt the vast, steady Dao Rhyme within it that carried and suppressed everything. He nodded slowly.

"As expected of the Golden Tang Dynasty Imperial Soldiers."

Compared to the wondrous and extraordinary divine wealth path of the God of Wealth, this Mountains and Rivers Cauldron focused on suppression and defense. Judging solely by the Daoist Intent it revealed, it was already no less than a Middle Realm True Monarch!

Furthermore, these Imperial Soldiers had been forbidden and sealed for countless years, causing their innate power to drop significantly. If they could be restored to their peak, their power would be unimaginable.

...