285: Chapter 283 Ascension Guidance Platform

Su Lin walked to her side and gently kicked her thigh with the tip of his toe. "Get up, the ground is cold."

"It's not cold, my heart is cold." Su Hongling rolled over. "I want to eat braised pork, the kind without any gamey taste."

"I'll make it for you once we settle down."

Su Lin smiled helplessly, then looked up, his gaze passing through the flying boat's shield to look at the deep and unfamiliar Void Realm ahead.

Just now, the super vomit from the World-Devouring Kun, while saving their lives, had also brought about an extremely serious consequence.

That power was too strong; it had blasted the star sea wave breaker off its originally planned course.

At this moment, the flying boat was floating all alone in a completely unfamiliar Star Domain.

There were no familiar stellar reference points around, nor was there the howling of turbulence in the Void Realm.

It was eerily quiet here.

"Qiyue." Su Lin called the main control room through the sound transmission Formation. "Report our current position."

A moment later, Gu Qiuyue's slightly trembling voice came through.

"Ma... Revered Master."

"The coordinates on the star chart... are all messed up."

"We were blasted out of the Law Vacuum Zone by that monster, and now... now we have entered an unknown dead zone of the Void Realm."

"And..."

Gu Qiuyue swallowed hard.

"The star chart shows that the Void Realm gravitational field around us is distorting; it seems... there is some kind of huge mass body right near us."

Su Lin's eyes narrowed, and he immediately released his Mahayana Stage Divine Sense.

However, as soon as his Divine Sense probed outside the flying boat, it was like hitting an invisible, cold iron wall, and it was violently bounced back.

"Revered Master, what's wrong?" Luo Ximei noticed Su Lin's abnormality and walked quickly to his side.

"Divine Sense has been blocked," Su Lin said in a deep voice.

Just then, Mu Qingxue, who had been standing by the ship's rail, suddenly pointed to the deep darkness directly in front of the flying boat.

"Revered Master, look there."

Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing.

They saw a huge shadow faintly emerging in the extremely distant darkness.

It was not a meteorite, nor was it an ordinary continent in the Void Realm.

As the flying boat drifted slowly forward, following the weak gravitational pull, the outline of that shadow gradually became clear.

It was a vast, continuous ruin.

Ruins floating in the Void Realm.

Huge, broken white jade pillars, a sword tower reaching the heavens with only half remaining, dilapidated plaques emitting a faint golden light, and... countless skeletal remains of unknown Divine Beasts, as huge as mountains, yet long devoid of life.

These remains floated silently in the dead, silent Void Realm, maintaining their posture from the very last moment before their destruction, as if time had been permanently pressed to a stop here.

An aura filled with endless sorrow rushed towards them from those ruins.

"What... what is this place?"

Chu Weiwei opened her mouth wide, her eyes full of shock.

Everyone's gaze turned towards Su Lin, who was standing at the bow of the ship.

In their hearts, Revered Master was omniscient and omnipotent.

However, facing this vast and desolate ruin, Su Lin was uncharacteristically silent for a long time.

Starlight swirled in his deep eyes, and his Divine Sense spread outwards cautiously like a large net. However, everywhere his Divine Sense touched, apart from coldness and desolation, he could feel nothing else. There was no Spiritual Qi, no Devilish Qi, and not even the violent destructive power found in the turbulence of the Void Realm.

"I don't know."

After a long while, Su Lin slowly shook his head and uttered these four words.

"Huh?" Su Hongling was stunned; the half-eaten spirit fruit she had just taken out to nibble on almost fell onto the deck.

"Old Man, is there any place in this world you don't know about? Didn't you even hack a heavenly dao incarnation?"

"Your Revered Master is human, not an omniscient and omnipotent god."

Su Lin looked at her helplessly, then his gaze became deep again. "Furthermore... the aura of this place is very strange. It does not belong to the Lower Realm, but it also doesn't look like the space of any alien race."

"Revered Master, do you mean..." Luo Ximei stepped forward, trying to see through the mist ahead, "These ruins belong to us, the Human Race Cultivators?"

"Not just the Human Race."

Su Lin pointed to a huge skeleton in the distance emitting a faint golden light. "That is the skeleton of an archaic remnant species. This kind of Divine Beast has been extinct in the Lower Realm for a hundred thousand years; you can't even find a single drop of their essence blood on the entire continent."

"How could it die here?" Ye You also crowded over, a trace of instinctive awe flashing in her dark green slit pupils. As the king of the Yao Race, she could clearly feel how terrifying that skeleton must have been when it was alive; it was definitely a supreme existence that surpassed the Mahayana Stage and even surpassed ordinary True Immortals.

"I don't know." Su Lin took a deep breath. "But since we've encountered it, there's no reason not to enter. Qiuyue, bring the flying boat closer and find a relatively intact floating island to land on."

"Yes, Revered Master. Everyone, hold on tight."

Gu Qiuyue manipulated the star chart in the main control room, and the star sea wave breaker carefully wove through countless huge wrecks, like a small insect flying in a steel jungle.

The closer they got, the stronger the sense of historical weight and extreme desolation that rushed towards them became.

Half an hour later.

The flying boat finally landed slowly on a semicircular, dilapidated plaza that was several hundred miles in radius.

"Thump."

As the Formation at the bottom of the flying boat touched the white jade slabs on the ground, it made a dull sound.

"Open the hatch."

Su Lin waved his sleeve and was the first to step off the flying boat.

His seven disciples followed closely behind, each subconsciously summoning their own Lifebound Treasure, spiritual light flickering around them, raising their vigilance to the highest level.

"Such hard stone."

As soon as Su Hongling landed, she habitually stomped heavily on the ground with the tip of her toe.

"Bang!"

A muffled sound. With her terrifying brute force as a Mahayana Stage Body Cultivator, if this kick had landed on a mountain range in the outside world, it would have been enough to crush a mountain Peak. However, the white jade slab under her feet only trembled slightly, and not even a single crack appeared!

"How is this possible?!" Su Hongling's eyes widened. Refusing to believe it, she swung the no edge great sword, intending to smash it onto the ground.

"Don't mess around!"

Su Lin grabbed her sword hilt, staring at the ground beneath his feet with a solemn expression. "This is not ordinary stone. This is Nine Heavens Condensed Immortal Jade."

"Nine Heavens Condensed Immortal Jade?" Hearing this, Mu Qingxue gasped. As an Ice Cultivator, she was most sensitive to all kinds of top-grade jade. "Legend has it that this is a supreme divine material that only True Immortals in the Upper Realm can condense using Immortal Qi? Even a piece the size of a fingernail could trigger a bloodbath if it fell into the Lower Realm. Here... it's actually used to pave the ground?!"

Everyone looked around; this huge plaza, spanning several hundred miles, was actually entirely paved with this legendary Immortal Jade!

Although it was covered with shocking, huge cracks and dark, dried bloodstains, that luxury and heritage still made everyone present feel a strong sense of suffocation.

"Too extravagant... whose house is this, anyway..." Gu Qiuyue poked her head out from the flying boat. Looking at the Immortal Jade all over the ground, her miserly nature kicked in, and she was almost drooling. If it weren't for Su Lin being here, she would have probably already taken a shovel and started prying up the floor tiles.

"This is no one's house."

Luo Ximei closed her right eye, only using her pitch-black left eye to survey her surroundings. With the True Immortal Origin fused within her body, her perception of this place was sharper than anyone else's.

"Revered Master, an unimaginably tragic great battle once took place here."

She pointed to a broken, heaven-reaching jade pillar not far away. "Look at that cut."

Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing.

That huge jade pillar, with a diameter of a hundred zhang, had been cleanly cut in half. The cut was as smooth as a mirror, and even now, it still retained a terrifying, destructive Sword Intent.

"A single strike to sever an Immortal Jade pillar reinforced by a Formation..." Cold Moon took a deep breath. As the Empress of Southern Yu, she knew best what kind of terrifying cultivation level was required to cause such destructive power. "This is definitely not something a Mahayana Stage could achieve. Even at the Peak of the Tribulation Transcendence Stage, one might not be able to leave behind such persistent Law remnants."

"Let's go ahead and take a look."

Su Lin did not jump to conclusions; he led his disciples forward along the wide avenue in the center of the plaza, which was also paved with Immortal Jade.

It was silent all around, with only the sound of their footsteps echoing in the empty ruins.

As they walked, Chu Weiwei suddenly stopped.

She walked to a huge pit by the side of the road. The pit was semicircular, ten zhang in diameter, and the bottom was covered with dark brown crystals.

"Revered Master, come and look at this."

Chu Weiwei squatted down, took a silver needle from her storage ring, and carefully picked up a bit of the dark brown crystal to sniff at the tip of her nose.

The next second, her expression changed drastically, as if she had seen something extremely incredible.

"Is this... blood?" Mu Qingxue walked over and asked.

"No, not just blood." Chu Weiwei's voice trembled slightly, her purple eyes, which were always filled with a misty haze, now full of shock. "This is the residue left after the pool water of the Immortal Transformation Pool dried up!"

"Immortal Transformation Pool?!"

As soon as these three words were spoken, everyone present (except for Su Hongling, who was still looking at the scenery) was stunned.

"Third, are you sure you didn't see wrong?" Luo Ximei's eyes narrowed. "The Immortal Transformation Pool exists only in legends; it is a supreme Holy Land used to cleanse the mortal bodies and bones of Lower Realm Cultivators and reshape their immortal bodies! How could it have turned into this pitch-black, stinking mud pit?"

"I cannot be wrong." Chu Weiwei shook her head very firmly. "There are detailed records in the ancient books of my Medicine Immortal lineage. The water of the Immortal Transformation Pool contains the purest vitality of creation; even if it dries up for a hundred thousand years, its remaining crystals would still exhibit a seven-colored glow. However..."

She pointed to the dark brown crystals at the bottom of the pit, her tone carrying a trace of fear: "These crystals are filled with extreme resentment, despair, and an aura of death. It's as if... as if countless people were instantly slaughtered while they were halfway through the baptism of the pool water, and their blood and resentment completely polluted this Holy Pool!"

Following Chu Weiwei's discovery, everyone continued to explore forward; the further they walked, the heavier the chill in their hearts became.

It was not just one Immortal Transformation Pool.

Around this huge plaza, they successively discovered dozens of dried-up pools of various sizes.

Without exception, they were all filled with dark brown, blood-stained crystals.

And beside these pools, countless fragments of broken Magic Treasures were scattered. There were broken Flying Swords, pagodas that had been pierced through, Eight Trigram Compasses shattered into several pieces... The material of every single Magic Treasure could be called a Peerless Grade in the Lower Realm, but in the face of some terrifying power, they had been easily destroyed as if they were made of paper.

"The style of these Magic Treasures..." Su Lin bent down to pick up half of a broken horsetail whisk; the handle of the whisk was engraved with an ancient character "Qing". "This is the treasure of the Shangqing Sect, which dominated the Central Plains thirty thousand years ago, the Taiqing One Qi Broom."

He threw down the broken whisk and walked to another spot, picking up a shattered bronze shield. "This is the Great Ming King Diamond Shield of the Western Desert's Diamond Gate, also an ancient object from tens of thousands of years ago."

Su Lin's gaze swept across the mess, his expression calm as water, but beneath his eyes, stormy waves were surging.

"Eastern Continent, Central Plains, Western Desert, Northern Plains, Southern Border..."

"Relics from all the top Daoist traditions, hidden Holy Lands, and even the archaic Yao Race can be found here."

"What kind of place is this? Why would the world's top experts and Magic Treasures all die in the same place?" Cold Moon's brows were locked in a frown; this phenomenon, which completely defied logic, made her, as an empress, feel a deep sense of powerlessness.

"There is a stone tablet ahead."

Just as everyone was puzzled, sharp-eyed Ye You suddenly pointed to the end of the plaza and shouted.

Everyone immediately quickened their pace.

At the end of the plaza stood the remains of a gigantic archway.

The archway towered into the Void Realm and was crafted from a mysterious material that was neither metal nor stone.

Although most of the door frame had collapsed, the remaining half still emitted a vast immortal might that made one want to prostrate in worship.

Directly beneath the archway lay a huge jade tablet that had broken into two pieces.

Although the jade tablet was broken, the few ancient divine characters carved on it were still clearly visible; each character was vigorous and powerful, as if containing the Dao Laws of creation.

Su Lin stepped forward, reached out, and gently brushed away the thick Void Realm dust that had covered the jade tablet for who knows how many tens of thousands of years.

As the dust cleared, those four ancient and majestic divine characters were revealed to the Revered Master and his disciples without any concealment.

"Ascension... Reception... Platform..."

Although Su Hongling didn't like reading books, she still recognized these characters. She read them out one by one, then suddenly turned her head, looking at Su Lin with a blank expression.

"Old Man, does this say Ascension Reception Platform?"

"Ascension Reception Platform?!"

"What does that mean?!"

Luo Ximei's white-gold right eye widened to its maximum.

The Ice Sword in Mu Qingxue's hand let out an uneasy sword hum, and Chu Weiwei was so frightened that she took two steps back, almost bumping into Cold Moon's arms.

"Revered Master... this... this..."

Cold Moon's voice trembled as never before; she pointed at the broken jade tablet, then pointed at the boundless ruins and corpses around them, feeling that her common sense had been completely shattered at this moment.

"Is what is written on this tablet the legendary... Ascension Reception Platform?!"