Zhi Xuan leaped down from the tree branch, landing precisely at the spot where he had just embraced the girl named Mei. He crouched, touching the black earth on the banks of the Jiu Quan. There were no tiny footprints, no marks from a boat’s hull—it was as if the entire event had been an anomaly erased by an unseen hand.

  "Mei... she called me Big Brother with such profound conviction," Zhi Xuan murmured, his voice hoarse. "Mei... Mei Hua... the two girls are identical. Mei Hua is my adopted sister. But what exactly is happening right now?"

  Zhi Xuan waved his hand, summoning the Seven-Star Boat. He boarded immediately, and the silvery glow of the vessel carried him swiftly across the valley. On the glowing deck, Zhi Xuan stood with a countenance colder than usual. He did not look back, yet his Divine sense continued to scan every inch of space, searching for any lingering silk threads from that bizarre encounter.

  "If she is from the past, why did she appear at the mouth of the Jiu Quan?" Zhi Xuan thought, his fingers gripping the cold wooden railing. "When I saw her, I felt that she originates from the same era as the figure carrying that pagoda."

  He stopped at a crevice in the valley, his eyes narrowing as he discovered a bronze chest that resembled a coffin. With a wave of his hand, the Seven-Star Boat vanished into his storage bag. He came to a halt directly in front of the ancient bronze coffin lying amidst the rocky crags.

  The bronze coffin was covered in bluish moss that emitted the scent of rusted copper and the pure aura of ancient times. Its surface was entwined with heavy chains, as if whatever lay inside was something that must never see the light of day again. On the lid was a seal shaped like a palm with a pattern resembling a complex labyrinth—ancient runes that were nearly identical to those Zhi Xuan had seen on Ruo Xianxue’s Ancient Devil Monument.

  Zhi Xuan stood three paces away, his white robe fluttering softly as his heartbeat steadied after the temporal reversal. He could feel that this chest was not merely a container, but something that might hold an immeasurable depth within. On one side of the coffin, a fragment was broken and missing.

  Zhi Xuan tapped his waist, and the Shabby Coffin instantly floated out. "This coffin once resonated with the Ancient Sky Guardian; could it be a fragment of this bronze chest?"

  The Shabby Coffin floating before Zhi Xuan began to vibrate subtly, emitting a dismal gray glow. The vibration was met by a low hum from the ancient bronze coffin in the rocks, as if two separated objects had finally found their lost soul fragments. Without warning, a piece of wood from the Shabby Coffin detached itself, turning into a gray light that shot toward the damaged section of the bronze coffin.

  KLANG—!

  The heavy thud of metal echoed throughout the valley, followed by a shockwave that flattened the surrounding bluish moss. The fragment merged perfectly, sealing the hole in the bronze coffin as if it had never been separated. Instantly, the chains wrapping the coffin turned glowing red, then crumbled into golden dust that blew away in the wind.

  "The seal is broken," Ruo Xianxue hissed, levitating backward several steps, her translucent hand covering part of her face. "Zhi Xuan, get back quickly."

  Zhi Xuan did not retreat; he stared at the ancient bronze coffin. It remained silent, its glow fading as if the merger were merely the return of a stray brick to its wall. Zhi Xuan turned slowly, frowning as he saw Ruo Xianxue shielding her eyes.

  "The Sacred Devil Saint, the Saint of the Ancient Devil race," Zhi Xuan said with a mocking tone, raising an eyebrow. "Afraid of a bronze coffin to the point of closing your eyes? I think Zhan Xianwang might laugh inside the Nine Heavens Bead if he saw your behavior now, Great Saint."

  Ruo Xianxue lowered her hand slowly, though a look of irritation mixed with vigilance still graced her beautiful face. Her double pupils flashed sharply at Zhi Xuan, as if she wanted to tear through his composure with her gaze.

  "You are a foolish youth who does not know the height of the heavens," Ruo Xianxue hissed, her voice containing suppressed fury. "This coffin... I have never seen it. However, my memory tells me it is a small stone from an ancient casket from the peak of the Nine Heavens era. Do not dare to open it without knowing what is inside. That is not a coffin meant to carry a corpse; it is a casket that may contain a world within it."

  Zhi Xuan snorted softly. "A world inside a coffin?"

  He brought his hand to the edge of the bronze lid, attempting to push it, but it felt incredibly heavy. Zhi Xuan channeled his spiritual essence, the muscles beneath his white robe tensing like a drawn bow. Yet, the lid remained motionless, as if its weight were equal to the entire mountain ranges of the Northern Region.

  "It is so heavy," Zhi Xuan muttered, moving from side to side to push the bronze coffin. "It won't open at all."

  "This object... rejects my existence," Zhi Xuan hissed, his breath coming in short gasps. "Open up! It's too heavy!"

  At that moment, a dark aura began to seep from around the coffin. Zhi Xuan was startled, his eyes widening as the aura proved to be thick with a darkness blacker than anything he had ever seen. He pulled his hand back, and the dark mist from the bronze coffin immediately sealed itself inside again.

  "This darkness... it is so pure," Zhi Xuan whispered. "Even His Majesty might find this density alien."

  Suddenly, hundreds of pairs of reddish eyes appeared in the crevices of the valley. Each of them possessed an irregular form, with bodies contorted in every direction. The creatures crawled out from the shadows of the valley rocks, making the harrowing sound of grinding bones.

  "Strange creatures," Zhi Xuan hissed. He merged into the shadows before one of them could snatch him, reappearing atop a large boulder. "That darkness contaminated the surroundings until it created these aberrations. Just a drop of its aura is enough to manifest something into a form of darkness."

  Below his feet, the formless creatures—resembling lumps of rotting flesh with inverted bones—began to climb with unnatural speed. Zhi Xuan snorted softly, waving his hand as the Heavenly Sword appeared beside him.

  "Cleave." The blade of the Heavenly Sword swept through the air, releasing a wave of sword intent glowing with reddish lightning, tearing through the valley’s gloom like a bolt of lightning ripping through the night.

  SRIING—!

  The slash struck the front line of the formless creatures. However, instead of being cleaved in two and destroyed, their bodies of dense darkness absorbed part of the sword’s energy, then split into smaller but more agile figures.

  "They feed on spiritual energy?" Zhi Xuan murmured, his eyes narrowing. "Then let the darkness swallow you instead."

  He raised his palm into the air, forming a black hole that glowed with a dark purple hue. Zhi Xuan tossed it downward gently. "Eternal Star!"

  The small black hole shot down with lethal elegance. The moment it touched the ground, it exploded—not with a boom, but with a silence that sucked everything around it. The Eternal Star technique Zhi Xuan released created an extreme vortex, forcing the darkness creatures into the axis of an endless void.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  SREEEET—!

  The irregular creatures shrieked silently, their rubbery, dark bodies stretching like silk threads as they were sucked into the center of the void. However, an anomaly occurred. As the creatures born of darkness were swallowed, the Eternal Star vortex grew larger, and its color changed into a pitch black identical to the aura from the bronze coffin.

  "Damn, this technique is just giving them a larger vessel!" Zhi Xuan clicked his tongue, immediately stomping his foot and soaring higher into the air.

  He moved his fingers, forming the Mountain and River mudra, which instantly manifested pillars of earth rising high beneath his feet. The earth pillars formed a prison, crushing and trapping hundreds of the strange creatures. Yet, despite being squeezed by the mountain's pressure, the creatures did not break; they slithered through the cracks like seeping ink, letting out hoarse laughter that seemed to come from the coldest depths of hell.

  "Desperate!" Zhi Xuan hissed. He realized that techniques relying on pure spiritual essence would only serve as food for creatures born from the coffin’s aura.

  He stomped his foot, waved his hand, and grabbed the Vile Heavenly Banner. "Northern Yama!"

  From the gray fabric of the banner, a Nirvana Puppet emerged in armor radiating pure killing intent. The puppet king was immediately followed by other Nirvana Puppets that lacked spiritual fluctuation, instead possessing the power to tear through any creature using bodies filled only with will. The army of Nirvana Puppets plunged from the air like a rain of cold gray meteors.

  BLAAM! BLAAM!

  The Northern Yama slammed its fist into the ground, creating a shockwave of pure physical vibration that shattered the irregular bodies into shards of black flesh. The creatures tried to crawl up and absorb energy, but they found only bodies devoid of spirituality. A one-sided slaughter ensued at the bottom of the valley; the puppets tore, trampled, and crushed the darkness creatures.

  Zhi Xuan hovered in the air, his sharp eyes monitoring every movement. "As I suspected. They can only prey on those with a spiritual trace."

  Zhi Xuan landed back in front of the bronze coffin, standing amidst the chaos. He stared at the chest with a deepening gaze. The dark mist that had seeped out earlier was now calm again, but the silence it left behind felt more threatening than the roar of any monster.

  Suddenly, the dark aura began to seep from the bronze coffin again. Zhi Xuan leaped back, standing on guard, but his brow furrowed when he found no dark mist. Instead, a nine-story pagoda appeared and glowed softly from within. The pagoda was surrounded by an incredibly dense dark aura.

  "This pagoda again," Zhi Xuan hissed, his gaze sharpening as he recognized it. "What exactly is this pagoda?"

  The nine-story pagoda floated with a terrifying elegance, rotating slowly above the bronze coffin lid as if it did not belong to this era. A cold Zen aura immediately enveloped the surroundings, and a blood resonance once again called out to Zhi Xuan, as if the pagoda had a connection to him.

  "The pagoda is resonating with me again," Zhi Xuan said, staring at the glowing object. "No... it's as if the owner of this pagoda shares karma with me. As if we have met before."

  Zhi Xuan stepped forward unconsciously, his hand reaching toward the floating pagoda. However, he immediately pulled his hand back and stared intently. "This object seems to be everywhere. But why does it appear? Does the owner of this pagoda know I would come here before I even arrived?"

  Zhi Xuan closed his eyes. Behind him, chaos still reigned as the Nirvana Puppets destroyed the strange creatures. He allowed his consciousness to slip into the pagoda, trying to find a single trace that might have been left behind. However, when he opened his eyes, he was standing upon a collapsing horizon.

  He looked up, and there, he saw a figure standing tall above a sea of stars. Before the figure were darkness creatures annihilating the horizon with a single slash. The figure's hair billowed, and his robe fluttered across the firmament. He raised his palm, and with a flick of his fingers, he unleashed a temporal slash that seemed to erase those creatures from the river of time.

  The figure slowly turned his body. Although his face was obscured by a blinding mist of light, a pair of eyes behind that mist seemed to pierce through thousands of kalpas just to look directly into Zhi Xuan’s sapphire pupils.

  "Have I come too soon, or is time moving too slowly?" The voice did not sound in his ears but resonated directly within Zhi Xuan.

  Zhi Xuan felt his chest tighten, as if the entire scene was being pressed into his soul. "Who are you? Why did this pagoda bring me to meet you?"

  "The path that never ends, yet where is He?" the voice spoke. The pagoda appeared in the figure's palm and glowed softly. "Heaven and Earth do not possess Him, standing alone in a silence that collapses the soul. River of Time, is He no longer known by you..."

  "Who is the 'He' you mean?" Zhi Xuan cried out, his voice breaking amidst the roar of the void's wind. "And what is that pagoda? You are a figure far higher than any I have ever seen, and why do you seem to know when I arrive and when the resonance strikes?!"

  The figure did not answer with certainty but only gave a long sigh that crossed the river of time. The mist of light covering his face slowly faded, but just before Zhi Xuan could see the features behind it, the horizon behind him cracked and he dissolved.

  "Come with me... to where Heaven is..." the voice echoed, carrying a heavy burden before drifting further away. "The boundless sky, the Great Dao mocks us..."

  Zhi Xuan gasped, his eyelids snapping open as he was thrown back into reality. His breath was ragged, and cold sweat soaked his marble-white forehead. In front of him, the bronze coffin remained silent, but the nine-story pagoda that had been floating was now gone without a trace, leaving behind a dark aura that slowly faded into the cracks of the rocks.

  Silence once again enveloped the valley, leaving only the dull thuds of the Northern Yama still trampling the remains of the black flesh of the destroyed darkness creatures. Zhi Xuan panted softly. He immediately stabilized himself and retracted the Northern Yama and his Nirvana Puppets into the Vile Heavenly Banner.

  Zhi Xuan stood frozen in front of the bronze coffin, his fingers still trembling slightly from the resonance. The sentences from the mysterious figure kept spinning in his head like a mantra locking his soul. "The boundless sky, the Great Dao mocks us..." he murmured in a very low tone, almost swallowed by the roar of the valley wind that now felt hollow.

  He felt a strange emptiness within him, as if his meeting with the figure on the horizon had forcibly snatched away a piece of destiny he hadn't yet understood. His heavenly practitioner body pulsed, emitting an unstable silver light.

  Zhi Xuan took a deep breath, trying to remap his meridians which had been momentarily thrown into chaos. "A man... standing atop the ruins of stars. He seemed to challenge time just to deliver a single message that even I do not understand."

  He looked at the bronze coffin once more. Now that the fragment of the Shabby Coffin had merged, the object looked more complete yet also more locked. No more dark aura seeped out, no more whispers of death. The coffin was now merely a silent monument holding the secret of the "He" sought by the figure in the vision.

  "If this coffin is a vessel for a world, as you said," Zhi Xuan spoke, "then the world inside must be a world that has been destroyed, or perhaps a world that has not yet been born."

  Zhi Xuan did not attempt to open the coffin again. He knew that with a middle-stage Weaver Transformation cultivation base, trying to uncover the secrets of an ancient emperor or anything of that level was an act of seeking death. He cast his gaze around, then merged into the shadows and streaked away.

  "Who is 'He'?" he murmured while piercing through the thickening mist. "Why does that Pagoda seem to be a silent witness to a collapse that has not yet happened? And who exactly is that figure who always appears and seems to invite me to go with him?"

  He reappeared at a pavilion far from the Palace Core, walking slowly around its perimeter. In the distance, he heard the echo of someone walking in a hurry. That scent—Zhu Qinglan. Zhi Xuan stopped his steps, letting his body merge perfectly with the shadows of the towering pavilion pillars.

  the scent of cold plum blossoms mixed with pure ice essence—a fragrance he recognized very well as the trace of Zhu Qinglan's presence. Not long after, a graceful figure in sky-blue robes decorated with ice lotus embroidery emerged from around the corner of the corridor, a soft clink-clink echoing from her Bu Yao hairpins.

  Zhu Qinglan's footsteps sounded irregular, her breath slightly labored, and her face—usually calm with the authority of a Holy Maiden—now showed deep lines of anxiety. She did not notice Zhi Xuan’s presence; her eyes kept scanning the surroundings warily while her hand gripped a communication jade that glowed dimly.

  "Damn... why did I have to enter this pavilion? I regret separating from my brother," Zhu Qinglan whispered in a trembling tone. She paused for a moment, leaning her back against a crystal pillar directly opposite where Zhi Xuan was hiding.

  Zhi Xuan stepped out of the darkness with the subtlety of a night breeze. "Qinglan, you seem to be in a hurry."

  Zhu Qinglan jolted violently, her body reflexively spinning with her right hand already forming a mudra, ready to release a deadly attack. However, as soon as her eyes caught the white-robed figure with silver hair fluttering calmly, the tension in her shoulders instantly dissolved.

  "Zhi Xuan!" she hissed, her voice a mixture of overwhelming relief and un-subsided panic. She lowered her hand and hurriedly approached him. "I'm trapped here. I got separated from my brother. And... and I saw you, but you just left."

  Zhi Xuan caught Zhu Qinglan’s arms in front of him, looking down to gaze at her anxious face. "Calm down, Qinglan. Why are you so worried?"

  Zhu Qinglan took a deep breath, trying to suppress the unstable surge within her body. The touch of Zhi Xuan’s hands on her arms felt cold yet provided an anchor of reality amidst her chaotic perception. She leaned her forehead against his chest, closing her eyes for a moment.