372: Guanghan Palace

The next moment, Li Heng's figure turned into a glimmer of light, instantly piercing through space and speeding toward the moon.

With his cultivation at the Body Integration Stage, traversing this distance of 380,000 kilometers was merely a matter of an instant.

Silence.

Deathly silence.

This was Li Heng's first sensation upon stepping onto the moon's surface.

Beneath his feet was soft, fine gray dust, leaving a deep footprint with every step.

Looking around, everything that met his eyes was desolate.

Craters of all sizes, pockmarked and uneven, stretched to the horizon.

No air, no sound, no life.

Against the dark background of the Universe, only the distant, azure planet emitted a gentle and lonely light.

Li Heng's Spiritual Sense spread out like a tide, covering an area of tens of thousands of miles.

Every inch of land, every speck of dust, was clearly visible under his perception.

A moment later, he retracted his Spiritual Sense, his brows slightly furrowed.

"There is nothing here."

This was just an ordinary, dead, rocky planet with nothing special about it.

Just then, the voice of the artifact spirit Boundless rang out in his mind, carrying a hint of uncertainty.

"Senior, wait."

Li Heng stopped.

"What is it?"

"I... I think I sensed an aura."

Boundless's voice was filled with confusion.

"It is very, very faint, but... it is the aura of an Ancient Deity. I cannot be wrong!"

Upon hearing this, Li Heng's heart stirred.

"In what direction?"

"It is right nearby, as if... it is emanating from the depths of this land, and it is about to dissipate completely."

Boundless's voice became increasingly certain.

"There is no mistake, it is definitely the aura of a Deity!"

Li Heng once again sank his Spiritual Sense into the ground beneath his feet, this time pushing his perception to the limit.

He scanned the rock layers deep underground, inch by inch.

Sure enough.

Several hundred meters underground, he captured a trace of residual energy, countless times finer than a strand of hair.

That energy was ancient and pure, sharing the same origin as the aura he had felt on the Desolate Tower and the "god-slaying spear."

"Interesting."

A playful expression appeared on Li Heng's face.

"It seems the President of America did not lie."

"The remains that returned to Earth with the lunar landing spacecraft were indeed those of an Ancient Deity."

Boundless's voice rang out again, filled with bewilderment.

"But... why?"

"Why would the remains of a fallen Deity come to the moon? There is nothing here; it is of no help to its recovery of strength."

Li Heng shook his head.

"Who knows."

"Perhaps it did not want to come here itself, but was brought here by someone."

"Or perhaps, this moon hides some secret we do not know."

Boundless fell silent.

It discovered that ever since it began following this unfathomable Senior, its understanding of the past tens of thousands of years was being overturned time and again.

"Let's go, let's take a look at the place where the Americans found it."

Li Heng did not stay where he was.

His figure flickered as he utilized an evasion technique, turning into a stream of light and flying rapidly along the moon's surface.

His speed was extreme, and the craters below retreated rapidly in his field of vision, merging into a blur of gray.

He followed the trajectory of the Apollo Program's lunar landing, searching all the way.

On the near side of the moon, he found nothing.

However, when his figure crossed the terminator line and arrived at the far side of the moon, which was perpetually in darkness, the situation changed.

A faint, abnormal fluctuation emanated from the depths of a massive crater below.

The fluctuation was extremely subtle; if not for his current Body Integration Stage cultivation and the resonance with the Desolate Tower, it would have been almost impossible to detect.

"Found it."

Li Heng stopped and hovered above the massive crater.

He looked down; below was bottomless darkness, like the open mouth of a giant beast, ready to swallow everything.

He did not hesitate, his figure plummeting vertically into the deep pit like a meteor.

The further down he went, the clearer that abnormal fluctuation became.

He did not know how many tens of thousands of meters he had descended.

Finally, his feet landed on solid ground.

When Li Heng saw the scene before him, even with his calm and unruffled state of mind, his pupils could not help but constrict slightly.

Before him lay a scene of broken walls and ruins.

Dozens of massive stone pillars, reaching a hundred zhang in height, lay scattered and tilted; some were broken in half, while others were deeply embedded in the ground.

The ground was paved with broken white jade tiles, covered in spiderweb-like cracks.

All of this indicated that there had once been an incredibly magnificent and spectacular complex of buildings here.

"This... how is this possible?"

Boundless's voice rang out in his mind, filled with incredulous shock.

"On the moon... how could there be buildings?"

"In the Primeval Era, I never heard of any Deity building their divine palace in such a godforsaken place!"

Li Heng did not answer.

His gaze fell upon a broken stone tablet that stood over a dozen zhang high.

The main body of the tablet had shattered, leaving only the base and a small portion remaining.

But on that remnant of the tablet, an ancient character, having weathered ages of time, was still clearly visible.

It was the character "Guang".

The script was archaic, with strokes like dragons and snakes, exuding a sense of vast and ancient atmosphere.

Li Heng stared at the character, silent for a long time.

An absurd thought emerged in his mind.

He slowly reached out, his fingertips gently touching the cold character "Guang".

A faint, yet incredibly pure, aura of a Deity came from his fingertips.

Li Heng withdrew his hand and murmured to himself, his voice carrying a trace of an emotion he had not even noticed himself.

"Could it be... that this is truly Guanghan Palace?"

This place, which only existed in the ancient myths and legends of the Dragon Kingdom, the palace on the moon where Immortals resided.

At this moment, it had actually appeared before his eyes in this broken state.

This discovery was more shocking than finding any ancient ruin on Earth.

"Master, what did you say?"

Boundless had not heard his whisper clearly.

"Nothing."

Li Heng suppressed the ripples in his heart, his gaze becoming sharp once again.

He walked step by step over the ruins, carefully observing every detail.

The style of these buildings was unlike any era he knew, filled with an archaic and profound aesthetic.

Judging from the blurred patterns carved on the stone pillars, the craftsmanship was far beyond the imagination of modern humans.

"The time this ruin has existed is likely even more ancient than the Primeval Era you know."

Li Heng said to Boundless.

Boundless was completely stunned.

"More... more ancient than the Primeval Era? What era is that?"

"I don't know."

Li Heng shook his head; he saw a relatively intact floor tile, which seemed to still have faint traces of blood on it, though the color had already turned a dark brown.

He squatted down and reached out to touch it.

"A heaven-shaking, earth-shattering battle once took place here."

"To be able to reduce a divine palace built on the moon to this state, the strength of the opponent is unimaginable."

He stood up and waved his large sleeve.

"Universe in the Sleeve!"

An invisible force swept out, gathering the broken walls and ruins within a radius of several dozen miles, along with the underground foundation, into the Desolate Tower.

He wanted to bring this ruin back to Kunlun, to let Boundless and the students of the Academy's Formation and Artifact Refining Departments study it thoroughly.

Perhaps they could decipher some more ancient secrets from it.

After doing all this, the original site of the ruins was left with only a bare, massive pit.

Li Heng hovered up again, his Spiritual Sense once more scanning other areas on the far side of the moon.

He always felt that the secrets hidden here were far more complex than just the ruins of a "Guanghan Palace."

Why would the remains of that Deity appear here?

And how did it fall?

What connection does the "Return to Ruins" organization have with all of this?

One mystery after another, like an invisible net, shrouded him.

Not only did Li Heng not feel troubled, but his eyes instead flashed with an increasingly interested light.

He liked this feeling of peeling back the layers to approach the truth step by step.

"It seems it is necessary to turn this planet upside down, from inside out."

He looked at the endless dark Universe and spoke calmly.

"The waters are getting deeper and deeper."