440: Chapter 440 Origin Immortal Palace

Outside the Secret Realm, on that giant observation deck floating in the clouds, shrouded in divine light and Dao rhymes.

Dead silence.

Absolute dead silence.

The powerful beings, elders, emperors, and Sect Masters from the myriad races of the heavens—who had seen great storms and even experienced the turbulence of epochal changes—were now all as if gripped by an invisible force.

They stared with wide, unblinking eyes at those hundreds of water mirror screens, their pupils reflecting the earth-shattering, heaven-reversing scenes in the depths of the Secret Realm that challenged the limits of their cognition time and again.

Cold sweat had long since soaked the backs of everyone's robes, and some even had the hems of their robes trembling unconsciously.

Their heavy, suppressed, and incredulous gasps sounded exceptionally clear and jarring in the pin-drop silence.

This confrontation occurring in the depths of the Secret Realm—could it still be called a "Prodigy" battle?

This was clearly a group of "young Supremes" and "young divinities" who had long since transcended the category of "Prodigy," walking in the Mortal world, wielding part of the authority of heaven and earth, engaged in a life-and-death struggle that would determine the direction of the future epoch!

Every move and every style contained terrifying Dao rhymes and Supreme power that made even these old monsters, who had lived for thousands or tens of thousands of years, feel heart-palpitations, disbelief, and even a faint sense that their own Dao was being suppressed!

"It is... it is... too unbelievable..." An ancient Emperor from an old Human Race Imperial Dynasty, long retired and with heaven-reaching cultivation, trembled his lips as he spat out these words.

The hand gripping the armrest of his Dragon throne had veins bulging, his knuckles pinched white, and in his turbid yet wise imperial eyes, only boundless shock and a trace of bewilderment remained.

"Is this... is this the monster nurtured by the 'Ultimate Golden Age'... where the heavens resonate and all Daos contend as prophesied? I... in my prime, I dominated a realm and was hailed as an unparalleled Genius, but looking at this now... it is simply... simply like a firefly compared to the bright moon..."

"Twenty-seven... no, even fewer now... top Prodigies from major powerful races, possessing Heaven-Defying Bloodlines and Physiques, surrounding ten Human Race... Prodigies? Monsters?"

An ancient Demon Realm priest from a certain Supreme Demon Realm spoke in a hoarse voice, filled with deep wariness and confusion.

"With this lineup, and this battle situation... let alone ancient times, even if I were to scour the tattered history books inherited from the Primordial Era, I could not find similar records... The Human Race... is the Luck and potential of this race truly... bottomless? Or could it be that these ten people... are some kind of... 'anomalies' born to the occasion?"

"Look quickly! Look at the sky! Behind that crack!!"

Suddenly, on the edge of the observation deck, an Elder of the Spirit Eye Clan, whose eyesight surpassed his peers, seemed to have seen something that made him lose his composure even more than the battle below.

He sprang up from his seat, his voice shrill and distorted, his fingers trembling so much he almost poked through the water mirror before him, pointing at the top of one of the light screens!

This cry of extreme shock was like plucking a string tightened to its limit, instantly shattering the suffocating silence of the observation deck!

Everyone, regardless of their cultivation level or racial stance, involuntarily and simultaneously focused their gaze on the position of the water mirror pointed out by the Spirit Eye Clan Elder, focusing on the depths of that terrifying crack that spanned the sky and flowed with dark golden ancient luster at the extreme height of the Secret Realm's firmament!

Through that crack, accidentally torn open by the aftermath of the great battle and connecting the Secret Realm to an unknown land, one could clearly see that in the center of that vast, magnificent, star-studded starry sky, that magnificent ancient palace, which had been floating for who knows how many ten thousand years, was undergoing some... indescribable change!

It was not the palace itself moving or opening.

Instead, infinite cyan radiance seemed to seep out from every brick, every tile, every divine pattern, and every piece of broken roof tile of the palace, like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, or ten thousand streams paying homage to their ancestor, rushing crazily toward the very top of the palace—the void that seemed to have once been the "zenith" or "altar"!

That cyan radiance was not ordinary Spiritual Qi or energy; it was ancient, vast, pure, and contained an indescribable, vibrant vitality and Supreme Dao rhyme, as if it were the first strand of "Innate Ancestral Qi" born between heaven and earth when the world was first created, or perhaps some long-lost Origin power that transcended ordinary Dao.

The speed at which the endless cyan radiance gathered was astonishing. In the blink of an eye, it condensed into a huge, slowly rotating cyan nebula vortex directly above the Immortal Palace!

In the center of the vortex, where the light was most intense, the light and shadow began to twist, change, and solidify...

Finally, under the gaze of all the observers whose eyes were widened to the limit, a transparent silhouette—entirely condensed from that pure, ancient, Supreme cyan radiance—slowly emerged from the center of the vortex.

The silhouette was over a thousand zhang tall, slender, with long hair cascading like a cyan galaxy, and her features were blurred, as if shrouded behind a layer of eternal mist of time.

Yet, merely by her outline and the ancient Aura she exuded—which disregarded the ages, transcended epochs, and seemed to have existed since the beginning of the world along with that palace—it was enough to make any witness feel awe and have their Soul tremble.

She seemed to be just an imprint, a projection, a sleeping will.

But when she "opened" those "eyes," which were completely composed of cyan radiance and calm without the slightest ripple, and slowly swept across the Secret Realm below, sweeping across the bottomless battlefield abyss, sweeping across the two sides of Prodigies confronting each other in the abyss, and sweeping across those remaining, shaken alien Prodigies...

An indescribable, vast, ancient, Supreme pressure, which seemed to represent "rules" and "order" itself, penetrated the barriers of the Secret Realm, penetrated the water mirror projections, and faintly shrouded the entire observation deck, making all the powerful beings feel their breath hitch and their Dao Heart tremble!

Immediately, a clear, calm, indifferent voice, which seemed to come from the end of ancient time, containing no personal emotions and representing only absolute "rules" and "proclamation," resounded simultaneously in the depths of every living being's heart-lake within the Secret Realm, and in the Primordial Spirit of every powerful being on the observation deck:

"Legacy not severed, Trial Seed reappears."

"Meets... Primordial Contract... minimum trigger conditions."

"Primordial Trial—"

"Open."

The moment the voice fell.

Boom!!!

That dark golden crack spanning the Secret Realm's firmament suddenly erupted with light a billion times more intense than the sun!

A phantom of a Heaven Rank—completely constructed from cyan divine light, vast and boundless, engraved with countless long-lost Innate Dao patterns—rushed out from the depths of the crack, from before that starry Immortal Palace, extending directly!

One end connected to the Immortal Palace, and the other end... ignoring the distance of space, directly penetrated the Secret Realm's barrier and descended right above the battlefield that had turned into an abyss below!

Around the Heaven Rank, endless cyan Dao light fell like a waterfall, temporarily "smoothing" and "suppressing" the chaotic battlefield, the violent energy turbulence, and the shattered Void Realm.

A desolate, vast, sacred, and unquestionable "trial" Aura permeated the entire Secret Realm, even faintly seeping out of the Secret Realm, allowing the observers outside to clearly sense it!

That Primordial relic, sealed for who knows how many epochs, stimulated by this earth-shattering battle, had finally... completely awakened! And lowered its eternal—path of trial!

Outside the Secret Realm, on the observation deck.

Time—this cold monarch who had ruled all things since eternity—was, at this moment, nailed to the eternal cross by a more Supreme will.

That was not a sound.

That proclamation from the end of endless antiquity was the rules themselves speaking; it was the throat of the Dao vibrating.

Every syllable that fell was like an ancient divine text that had burned for billions of years, falling from an unknowable height, branding itself into the texture of the Laws at the very bottom of the present world, burning in indelible scorch marks.

Everyone's thoughts—those Divine Thoughts that could deduce the changes of heaven's secrets with a single thought on ordinary days; the flow of magic power—those energy tides that had once roared like rivers and were as vast as a sea of stars; and even the stubborn rhythm of life beating in the depths of their beings—at this moment, were rudely pressed to a pause button by this absolute "proclamation."

Like an invisible hand covering the heavens, gently pressing on the pulse of the whole world.

This was not pressure.

Pressure is the arrogance of the strong, the low growl of a giant beast.

But this was... something more essential.

It was when an ant looked up at the starry river for the first time that it understood it had never truly understood the weight of the word "vastness."

It was when a candle flame faced the great sun hanging in the sky for the first time that it understood what it meant for "existence" itself to be a crushing force.

The Soul trembled instinctively, not because of fear, but because the boundaries of cognition were silently collapsing—just like a Mortal looking up at a god, only to find that even the posture of "looking up" was a granted favor.

In that instant, in everyone's consciousness, only a blank space remained.

A trembling shock left behind after being casually painted over by a Supreme existence.

"Pri... mor... dial... Tri... al...?"

It was unknown how much time had passed. Perhaps a breath, perhaps an epoch.

A hoarse, dry gasping sound was squeezed out with difficulty from a certain corner.

The sound was like a rusty blade scraping across a throat, carrying blood, carrying the pain of tearing, but it became the first crack in the frozen epoch.

And then—

"Boom—!!!"

The silent ice surface exploded!

The sound waves, suppressed to the extreme, rushed back with a violent force a hundred, a thousand times greater!

Like a Vicious Beast imprisoned for eternity that had finally broken its chains, opening its bloody mouth, wanting to swallow the whole world into boiling madness!

The entire observation deck was instantly swallowed!

Space twisted in the sound waves, like a piece of silk twisted by great force.

Countless tyrannical Divine Thoughts collided due to loss of control, exploding into pieces of invisible spiritual thunder and fire—that was terrifying power capable of suppressing and killing powerful beings on ordinary days, but now it was like out-of-control fireworks, blooming wantonly in the crowd!

"Origin Immortal Palace! It is the Heaven Rank of the Origin Immortal Palace!"

An old antique with disheveled white hair was the first to roar, his voice torn, and what welled up in his eye sockets was not tears, but light flames transformed from the thirst for knowledge that had burned for a thousand years!

"Ancient records! That is a staircase cast from broken Primordial Heavenly Laws! Every step of the staircase is a broken Heavenly Law! Every step taken is a path to enlightenment, knocking on the Origin of the Dao! It actually... actually really exists! In my lifetime, I can actually really see it appear in the world!"