441: Chapter 441 They've gone mad! They've all gone mad!

"Crazy! Everyone's gone crazy!"

Another descendant of an ancient demon god roared at the sky, the demon markings on his forehead burning on their own from excitement, transforming into scarlet flames!

"The era of ancient gods and demons! How many talented and peerless forbidden existences exhausted their life's efforts trying to knock on this door, only to fail! Even that… that God of Slaughter who once severed the ages with a single halberd and brought twilight to the Myriad Heavens and Worlds, couldn't elicit even the slightest response from these ruins! How could it possibly open today?!"

"And I also heard…"

A low voice sounded, like a whisper crawling out from the depths of a grave, instantly silencing the surrounding clamor for a moment.

"Deep within the Shangqing Secret Realm, what lies dormant is likely not just trial ruins… inside, there might be hidden… the true Legacy of the Taiqing Heavenly Lord."

"Tai… qing… Heavenly… Lord?"

These four words were no longer just sound.

They were like four ancient guillotines rusted by endless years, held high by an unseen hand, and then—slammed down heavily onto every boiling heart!

The viewing platform, which had been boisterous and clamorous a second ago, was sucked into a vacuum in that instant.

On countless faces, the extreme fanaticism froze instantly. Then it shattered—shattered into an even more thorough, bewildered horror.

That kind of horror was the fear of having a name smashed into the deepest depths of one's Soul.

"Who?! Who is presumptuously speaking the Heavenly Lord's honorable name?!"

A violent shout exploded!

A prince clad in mysterious black imperial robes, hailing from an immortal Dynasty, suddenly tore through the spatial barrier in front of him and stepped out!

He wasn't tearing through the air, but the spatial Law that had been stable for ages!

The eyes beneath his imperial crown were blood-red, and the imperial Dragon Qi surrounding his body lost control due to the extreme emotional fluctuation, transforming into ferocious golden Dragon shadows that roared wildly behind him!

"Taiqing Heavenly Lord—"

He enunciated every word, each one like thunder squeezed out from between his teeth.

"That is the supreme existence who, since the Heaven-Earth Connection was severed in the desolate ancient forbidden land, is the only one confirmed to have descended from the 'Ancestral Realm', walked through the Myriad Heavens and Worlds, and personally reshaped the Dao veins! His traces have long returned to legend, to myth, to forbidden zones that descendants dare not even touch in their imagination! His Legacy… how could it be left behind in this 'Lower Realm' Secret Realm?! Absurd! Utterly absurd!"

"It is not absurd."

An old, dry voice, as if sandpaper were rubbing against stars, slowly sounded.

The elderly man at death's door, shrouded in the dim halo of a galaxy, lifted his turbid eyes.

Those eyes—eyes that had once seen the birth and death of stars and the rise and fall of dynasties—now, with every word he uttered, a star in his eyes extinguished along with it.

He was burning his remaining Lifespan, using his final life force to recite the most forbidden secret scriptures within his clan.

"The 'Fragmented Records of the Burning Universe' states… 'The Taiqing one manifested from boundless light, born from the embers of creation. His body is the Endless Fire God Body, and his Dao Foundation is… Grandmist Burning Heaven Flame.'"

He paused. The sound of his inhalation was like a bellows broken for hundreds of millions of years, carrying a fear and reverence that made even the Soul tremble.

That was not the fear of death, but reverence for "reality" itself.

"Dissolving the fires of all worlds, extinguishing the flames of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds. With one thought, burning the sea of tribulations; with one thought, forging the Dao Heaven…"

His voice grew lower and lower, yet heavier and heavier; every word was like an ancient sacred mountain, pressing into everyone's heart.

"This is… the Taiqing Chaos Dao Foundation."

"Grandmist Burning Heaven Flame… Chaos Dao Foundation…"

Someone repeated it blankly, their body swaying as if all their strength had been drained away.

"That… isn't that the ultimate picture of cultivation imagined by the Dao Venerables of later generations? Is it just the babbling written down in madness by those dreamers? Could it be… could it be that those records in ancient books, once dismissed as ravings, are… all true?!"

"True! Of course it's true!"

Another powerful alien being roared, his voice tearing apart; the vertical eye on his forehead shed golden tears of blood due to excessive excitement—that was the price of burning his Origin!

"If not for the Heavenly Lord's Legacy, how could this Secret Realm have such complete, such supreme Laws, nearly independent from the Myriad Heavens and Worlds, earning it the title of 'Little Immortal Realm'?! And how could it give birth to the 'Origin Immortal Palace', a ruin that even ancient demon gods can only look up to and sigh at?!"

His voice grew higher, more insane, like a beast ignited by the truth.

"This place… this place is not some naturally formed paradise at all! This place is very likely—a 'Dao Trace Embryonic Imprint' left behind by the Taiqing Heavenly Lord outside the Ancestral Realm endless years ago! It is one of the… starting points of His Dao manifesting in the world!"

"Not just a starting point."

"Crack—" A crisp sound of breaking.

Everyone looked over in horror. The High Priest from the ancient Wood Spirit Race, who lived in isolation and held a gnarled ancestral sacrificial wooden staff—the staff in his hand, passed down for who knows how many epochs, had actually developed a tiny crack due to his uncontrollable trembling!

On the staff, those ancient totems that had been dim for endless years were now emitting a faint yet incomparably pure emerald light.

They were trembling, resonating, echoing with some greater existence in the nether—that was the most primitive palpitation from the depths of their Bloodline, the submission branded into the deepest depths of the race's memory!

The High Priest's voice was hoarse and broken, yet it struck everyone's heart like a funeral bell:

"My race's… 'Ancestral Sacrificial Text', based on the Jianmu Spiritual Root… in its deepest… forbidden chapter of destruction… had… vague records…"

Every word he spoke was like crawling over a mountain of knives with his life.

"Taiqing Heavenly Lord… is not a solitary saint… The Family He came from… prospered because of Him… rising from insignificant dust… absorbing the Heavenly Lord's glory… rampaging at the end of the Desolate Ancient era… fighting bloody battles at the beginning of the Ancient era… and once followed… followed that one…"

When he said "that one", his throat felt as if it were being choked by an invisible hand from an infinite height.

His face turned purple, his eyeballs bulged, and blue veins writhed on his forehead like snakes—that was the most direct backlash from the Laws of the great Universe when touching a forbidden true name!

For several long breaths, he finally squeezed out the sound as if using up his entire life:

"…followed that 'Lord of Conquest' who cannot be spoken of, cannot be looked at directly, and whose name cannot be recalled… trampled the source of weirdness… crusaded against the enemies of nothingness… upon the ruins of the epoch… for all living beings… re-established the strings of order…"

"Boom—!!!!" Above the sky of the viewing platform, a pitch-black thunderstorm covering ten thousand miles exploded without warning!

That was not natural thunder—natural thunder would have light, sound, and the Aura to destroy everything.

That was—the spontaneous backlash of the great Universe's Law caused by touching a "truth" and "name" that were too terrifying! It was Heavenly Secrets being annihilated! It was Karma breaking! It was the word "truth" itself, infuriating the underlying rules of the entire Universe!

The lightning was as black as ink, flashing silently—it wasn't that there was no sound, but that the frequency of the sound exceeded the limit of what living beings could perceive; it was a wail on the level of the Law!

That light illuminated every face below, making them as pale as ghosts, as white as corpses that had just crawled out of a grave.

"Old Wood Spirit ghost! You… you dare to recite that history?! You don't want to live, but we do!"

Someone roared in terror, frantically opening layers of Magic Treasure light shields—those supreme treasures that could usually withstand a full-power strike from a powerful being were now layered over their heads, yet they trembled like paper under that pitch-black lightning!

It was as if that pitch-black thunderstorm would strike down the next moment, completely erasing every ant that touched the taboo from the line of Karma!

But the High Priest seemed not to hear. In his eyes burned a fanatical light like a martyr—that was the madness of someone who, at the end of their life, had finally touched the "truth" they had sought all their life, without regret!

He growled in a tearing voice—that sound was like using his final life force to proclaim a truth to the world:

"It was precisely that battle of mountains of corpses and seas of blood… it was precisely having bathed in the supreme glory and tribulations of that 'Lord of Conquest'… that the Family… truly laid its supreme Foundation as the First Clan, spanning the Desolate Ancient, Ancient, and even the present era… still shrouding the Myriad Heavens and Worlds like a shadow of the abyss!"

"The First Clan… that Family…"

A Human Race intelligence tycoon known for knowing the secrets of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds no longer had the composure of having everything under control on his face. Only boundless fear—and realization—remained.

His voice was as low as sleep-talking, yet as clear as a curse, drilling into everyone's ears:

"That's it… only that Family… only that kind of Karma… is worthy of the name 'Origin'… only that is worthy of the 'Origin Immortal Palace' lying dormant here, waiting here…"

His eyes widened, and in the depths of his pupils, fear and greed were intertwining and burning wildly!

"If… if there really is something left behind by the Taiqing Heavenly Lord inside, even if it's just a wisp of scattered Dao fire, a fragment of time carrying His insights…"

He suddenly raised his head! A brilliant light shot from his eyes, piercing the Void Realm—in that light was greed enough to burn away reason, and a deeper fear stemming from the instinct of the Soul!

"Then obtaining it—would mean more than just the fortune of reaching the sky in one step!"

His voice exploded, like detonating a nuclear bomb in everyone's heart!

"It would mean—holding the key to the core secrets of that Family! Glimpsing the path to a trace of the 'Lord of Conquest'! Perhaps even—the only opportunity to end this seemingly glorious, yet actually long-solidified Golden Great Era, and open the next entirely new epoch, woven with blood and fire, that no one has ever seen!"

"Whoosh—!!!!" This time, there was no more deathly silence. All the powerful beings, tycoons, and ancient existences who heard these words—whether Human Race, alien race, or demon god descendants—