First Immortal of the Sword

Three days passed in a flash.

Kcch!

A wraith dissipated into a rain of light in front of Su Yi, and he sank into thought.

During the three days it took to pass through Buried Dragon Ridge, he and his companions proceeded deeper and deeper into the ruins without encountering any of their adversaries. It was smooth sailing the whole way.

They did encounter a few terrifyingly strong wraiths, but Su Yi suppressed and killed them all without discovering anything particularly surprising. At the same time, however, they acquired no small number of treasures rarely seen in the outside world—for instance, rare immortal herbs and relics of the Dragon Palace.

Some of the particularly distinctive herbs made even Xi Ning and Fan Zhui, denizens of the God Domain, cluck their tongues in amazement. From this, it was obvious how extraordinarily wealthy the Dragon Palace had been in its heyday.

It was no exaggeration to say that if they picked any one of the treasures they found at random and auctioned it at the Precious Gem Workshop, it would fetch an astronomical price!

However, in Su Yi’s eyes, the real harvest was the secrets he learned from the wraiths, the long-dead experts of the Dragon Palace!

For one thing, the destruction of the Dragon Palace of the Eastern Sea really was connected to the Book of Karma, one of the Nine Mysteries of Chaos.

However, it was the gods who’d truly destroyed them!

Simply put, during the Primeval Era, gods had descended upon the Dragon Palace, unleashing calamity upon them. The Book of Karma was merely the trigger of this disaster!

Unfortunately, Su Yi still had no idea which deities had been involved, nor how many. He didn’t even have a vague idea.

He didn’t get any clear answers during his conversations with the wraiths.

Second, one of the ancestors of the Dragon Race was indeed a god. They called him the Red Lightning Dragon God, Ao Chiting. He’d proven his Dao and achieved divinity in the early days of the Primeval Era!

The fact that he’d proven his Dao and become a god here in the Immortal Realm astonished Su Yi. To the best of his knowledge, opportunities to become a god had dried up before the Primeval Era began.

The sword-bearing ape told him that in the middle of the Primeval Era, Li Fuyou’s disciple, Luo Changning, was attacked by the gods just as he was about to prove his Dao and achieve divinity!

In the end days of the Primeval Era, a cataclysm swept across the world, targeting its Great Realm experts. Luo Changning’s elderly servant was among those who’d died during the cataclysm. The sword-bearing ape had met with misfortune too!

Only now did Su Yi learn that the path of divinity hadn’t really disappeared during the Primeval Era. At the very least, the Red Lightning Dragon God of the Eastern Sea had managed to become a deity!

But the most shocking part was that not long after Dragon God Chiting successfully achieved divinity, the Dragon Palace of the Eastern Seas met with disaster. Not even Dragon God Chiting escaped!

Su Yi asked Xi Ning about this. After all, her ancestor had been a prominent expert of the Primeval Era.

Xi Ning’s answer was simple. Opportunities to become a god were connected to Epoch Laws. If you found an Epoch Law, grasped its secrets, and mastered its power, you could use it to ignite your Divine Flame, condense a Godhead, and achieve divinity!

In the early days of the Primeval Era, opportunities to become a god were inextricably connected with the nine supreme Epoch Treasures born of the Immortal Realm’s chaos source. That was to say, the Nine Mysteries of Chaos!

Xi Ning could say with certainty that the expert who’d taken the Sky-Stealing Hook and Umbrella of Tribulations had proven their Dao and become a god here in the Immortal Realm!

The Red Lightning Dragon God of the Eastern Sea’s Dragon Palace had perhaps become a god through the Book of Karma.

Su Yi approved of this explanation, but he still felt a bit strange. My fifth incarnation, Li Fuyou, acquired the Sword of Proximity, one of the Nine Mysteries of Chaos. Does that mean he was a god too? But if that is the case, why seal the Sword of Proximity in that six-inch sword coffin? There’s got to be some sort of secret behind it!

It would be just wonderful if I could awaken the power of his Dao Imprint. Then I wouldn’t need to guess like this. I’d know everything I need to know about what happened in the Primeval Era.

Su Yi sighed to himself.

The Primeval Era had ended a long, long, long time ago. Everything that had happened then had long since been all but lost to history.

As mighty as Wang Ye had been, his knowledge of the Primeval Era was barely the tip of the iceberg. He’d never grasped the full picture.

But if Su Yi awakened Li Fuyou’s memories, all would become clear.

If I can find the Fuyou Boat during this trip to the Eastern Sea, I might well be able to awaken Li Fuyou’s Dao Imprint. Even if I can’t, once I’ve proven my Dao and entered the Great Realm, I can try to make progress with the six-inch sword coffin!

“Fellow Daoist, did you discover anything new?” Xi Ning walked over. Her plain hemp dress only served to highlight her smooth, fair skin and extraordinary figure.

Su Yi shook his head. “I can say with some degree of certainty that the Dragon Palace’s destruction was entirely unexpected, and that disaster befell them so suddenly and with such intensity that they didn’t even learn who their enemies were before they died.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Perhaps the true experts of the Dragon Palace know the full story. Like, for instance… the Red Lightning Dragon God, Ao Chiting.”

Fan Zhui couldn’t help but ask, “If the Red Lightning Dragon God met with disaster and perished, does that mean he became a wraith too?”

The expressions of Su Yi and Xi Ning instantly turned solemn.

Had a god died during that catastrophe, would the power of karma have corroded him and turned him into a wraith? It seemed entirely possible!

“We should be able to get some answers when we reach the Dragon Palace’s Ancestral Worship Hall,” said Su Yi.

According to the map Ao Yue had given him, the Ancestral Worship Hall was one of the most important places in the entire sect, a forbidden ground even in the early days of the Primeval Era!

Su Yi hypothesized that leads to the Dragon Palace’s treasury, the Book of Karma, and perhaps even Dragon God Chiting, might all be hidden there!

“The Ancestral Worship Hall… Seems to me that Jing Cheng and the others might well have made it there already,” whispered Xi Ning.

“It would be even better if all our enemies were conveniently gathered in one place,” said Su Yi. He stretched languidly and took out a gourd of wine. “That way, we could get it all over with at once.”

Xi Ning couldn’t help but smile, but after a moment’s thought, she warned him, “Fellow Daoist, don’t forget what I said earlier. The others might not amount to much, but the divine children are dangerous. You cannot let your guard down.”

Su Yi nodded. He and Xi Ning had discussed the divine children on their way here.

Their strength was terrifying, but more than that, they had an overabundance of life-saving trump cards up their sleeves. Xi Ning had such methods herself, including a god’s avatar of will. According to her, even if an actual god attacked, descendants of gods could easily escape with their live.

Su Yi found this rather troublesome. He’d originally planned to seize this opportunity to try and take out some of the divine children. But after learning just how many cards they kept in reserve, even he couldn’t help but admit that killing them would be far, far too difficult.

Of course, there were no absolutes. These were the ruins of the Dragon Palace; the Laws here were shrouded in the power of karma. That aside, the Book of Karma had yet to show itself. Wasn’t all this effectively a threat hovering over the divine children’s heads?

Given the opportunity, Su Yi didn’t think killing the divine children was impossible.

But it was too early to discuss all that.

“Let’s go. The Dragon Ascension Platform is up ahead. Apparently, it’s a first-rate trial ground. Let’s see it for ourselves,” said Su Yi. He took a sip of wine, then continued ahead.

“Fellow Daoist, it doesn’t seem like you’re at all in a hurry,” Xi Ning said thoughtfully.

Su Yi smiled and gestured to himself. “Throughout these ruins, only I can decipher the secret glyphs of the Dragon Palace.”

Xi Ning instantly understood, and she pressed her lips into a smile.

Many of the places hiding good fortune required understanding the secret glyphs. For example, that was undoubtedly the case in the Ancestral Worship Hall, one of the sect’s forbidden grounds. Those unable to decipher the glyphs had no hope of finding the good fortune of the Ancestral Worship Hall; to even suggest it was nothing but the ravings of a madman.

Thus, Su Yi wasn’t in a hurry at all. Good fortune was waiting for him, and no one else could take it away.

It was his enemies who ought to be worried!

After all, Su Yi effectively had his hands on the one and only key to the ruins. Without it, his enemies couldn’t enter the places that held the true good fortune of the ruins!

How could his enemies not be frantic?

“But it’s been three days without any sign of them. I suspect… that they’re plotting something!” Fan Zhui furrowed his brow.

He knew that the divine children were no cravens. Yet now, three days had passed without any sign of them.

Su Yi shook his head. “No need to pay any attention to them. Plots and schemes are all inferior methods.”

As they conversed, a collapsed mountain appeared in the distance. It had been split at the midpoint, and half of the mountain had fallen to the ground, leaving a perfectly flat plateau on top.

Just like Buried Dragon Ridge, the sky was shrouded in dense, blood-red thunderclouds. Waves of the power of the Laws surged through them with heart-palpitating red light. The area around the mountain was covered in fog.

When Su Yi and his companions arrived, they saw the severed mountain covered in blood stains, as well as scattered fragments of treasure and corpses.

There was no doubt about it. When that enormous catastrophe befell the Dragon Palace, a bloody battle had occurred here.

“Is this the Dragon Ascension Platform?” Xi Ning was stunned.

She and Su Yi had discussed the Dragon Ascension Platform on their way here. It was the preeminent trial ground of the Dragon Palace, and in the Primeval Era, only those dragon experts about to break into the Great Realm were permitted to step onto it.

The former teaching elder, Ao Yue, had undergone the trial of the Dragon Ascension Platform, unleashing her latent potential to seize the opportunity she’d needed to break into the Great Realm!

“It’s most likely here,” said Su Yi. He swept his gaze across the area and said, “We’ll know once I’ve captured one of the wraiths who died here.”

He was just about to proceed when Fan Zhui, who was investigating in the distance, suddenly said, “Over here! There’s a stone stele carved with lots of the Dragon Palace’s secret glyphs!”

Su Yi and Xi Ning instantly looked over.