The mountains shook and ten thousand beasts were thrown into terror, scattering through the mountain ranges like a surging flood. Flocks of birds spread their wings and fled toward the distant sky, frightened by the aura Ye Fan had released. Most simply crumpled to the ground, trembling uncontrollably.

A moment later, Ye Fan calmed himself. His blood energy receded inward, his body and mind became serene, and he wandered through the mountains.

“The Grand Dao of Nature, the Wondrous Scripture of Path-Forging — though not my path, it is nonetheless a transcendent inheritance passed down through the ages… There is much here worth learning from.”

Ye Fan found it difficult to walk this road with equanimity, yet he understood clearly that this was a magnificent immortal text on the art of forging one’s path — one containing far too many things worth drawing upon. In order to complete the trial and forge his own way forward, he immersed himself in careful study for three full days and nights before finally rising and departing.

Zone Thirty-Six had long been emptied of people. The middle-aged Daoist nun and the other twenty-three cultivators had been slaughtered clean by Ye Fan, leaving not a single outsider to set foot in this place. Zone Thirty-Seven was equally silent. With the defeat and fall of the Five from Junwei Mountain’s lord, not a single contender had appeared to challenge him. Ye Fan moved freely between both zones without catching sight of any opponent.

“A five-thousand-year-old Little Medicine King!” Long Ma bit off half a stalk in a single chomp, as casually as if gnawing on cabbage, and was thoroughly pleased with itself. Had anyone else witnessed this, they would surely have been heartbroken and cursed it for squandering a priceless treasure.

Though the Fallen Saint Island held many ancient medicinal herbs, those reaching tens of thousands of years in age were far rarer — after all, a fresh wave of people broke through every ten thousand years, depleting the supply.

In the days that followed, Ye Fan began crossing between zones. His figure appeared both five zones to the left and five zones to the right, his body laden with iron shackles totaling millions of pounds — gleaming like crimson divine iron, their brilliance shifting and flashing, utterly astonishing.

At last, he set his sights on the Central Forbidden Zone at the heart of the island, and together with Long Ma, the two pressed forward toward a place filled with the roars of sacred beasts and streaks of blood-red radiance tearing toward the sky.

The Fallen Saint Island held fifty zones in total. The first forty-nine served as trial grounds, while the final zone was something altogether different — situated at the island’s center, connected to every other zone. The Grand Commander had issued a warning: trial participants were not to approach this place. There was no need. One only had to complete one’s comprehension within the first forty-nine zones.

It was said the central grounds were a forbidden zone — even ancient saints who entered were likely to perish there. It had always been a burial ground for the powerful.

Ye Fan and Long Ma pressed on. They encountered no danger along the way until they drew close and detected a dreadful killing aura permeating the air.

Black clouds roiled and churned. Ahead, enormous mountains soared into the vast sky as though piercing into the cosmos itself, and terrifying winged creatures — like pterosaurs — could be seen beating their wings.

These were merely a breed of fierce birds. While capable of tearing apart many trial participants, they were not the apex of the food chain here. In the face of powerful surges of aura, even they trembled.

“What exactly lies within the Central Forbidden Zone, that it has drawn so many powerful existences to take up residence and refuse to leave? There must be some secret here.”

Ye Fan ultimately entered the zone, and the moment he crossed inside, he felt an indescribable killing intent wash over him — as though it had seeped through from ten thousand ages past.

Long Ma followed behind, feeling somewhat uneasy. It quickly spotted a sacred beast lurking in a stretch of ancient primordial forest in the distance, watching them.

They had barely entered, and already a sacred beast had revealed itself. Who could say how terrifying the most powerful existences here truly were.

Crunch, crunch…

Long Ma stepped on a skull — roughly the size of a stone millstone — which, by all appearances, had lain there for hundreds of thousands of years yet had not fully decayed.

“Sacred bone. This doesn’t belong to a human. A catastrophic battle was fought here long ago!” Long Ma muttered to itself.

“Something is odd about this mountain,” Ye Fan said, uneasy and uncertain.

Ahead stood a mountain — not especially tall, yet suffused with a dreadfully grim aura. Its vegetation was sparse, consisting entirely of ancient shade-dwelling trees. The soil covering it was thin, its body an ashen grey that made it look steeply jagged. When touched, it produced a series of crisp, clear sounds.

“No — this is a tooth, not a mountain peak!” Ye Fan finally discerned the truth. What stood before them was a hundred-zhang-tall “small mountain” made entirely of tooth material.

The very thought was bone-chilling. What manner of creature could be so colossal that a single tooth rivaled a mountain peak? If this tooth sat here alone, how enormous must the creature’s body have been?

In that moment, they finally understood why this place was called the Fallen Saint Island. The battle fought here long ago must have shaken the heavens — countless saints had perished.

“Another sacred beast!” Long Ma issued a low-voiced warning.

A pangolin, its entire body an ashen lead-grey color, was not especially large — only a dozen or so zhang in length. It bored straight through a cluster of stone mountains and vanished ahead.

Clang, clang, clang…

Suddenly, the two of them came under attack. As they stepped into a stretch of marsh, sword light erupted in bursts all around them. The power behind it was at the sacred level, and within the mire, withered bones floated and sank in the murk.

An interlocking net of divine order-chains crisscrossed here, seeking to grind Ye Fan and Long Ma into nothing. Sacred might surged and crashed against them as the power of natural law permeated every inch of the air.

“This place is a battlefield. The laws left behind by the powerful who perished here have yet to disperse even now — for those who come after, it is a killing field; yet for certain powerful sacred beasts, it is a rare ground for comprehending the Dao,” Long Ma said.

By now, Ye Fan’s combat strength had soared to great heights, so this was naturally insufficient to trap them. He suppressed every law bearing down on them, gradually bringing that place to stillness.

Whoosh!

A water serpent spirit, refined from a flood dragon’s essence, had fed on the bones of ancient saints and possessed formidable divine abilities — and it lunged at Ye Fan and Long Ma. The result: Long Ma drove one hoof straight down and crushed it dead, leaving behind a pool of foul blood. Its life came to an end.

“The creatures here are strange. They cannot be measured by cultivation realm alone — they have consumed sacred bones, and yet they dare attack us.”

The two grew more cautious and continued onward, walking for a long while until at the foot of a stone mountain they discovered an ancient cave from which flames erupted, scorching and billowing.

Ye Fan’s expression froze. He sensed an emotional fluctuation of utter despair — and stepped inside. Then he immediately stumbled back out, a cold sweat breaking across his skin.

The power of Dao-dissolution!

This fire cave had been left behind by a powerful cultivator who had dissolved into the Dao. Even now, the Dao-fire burned without end. He and Long Ma had come within a hair’s breadth of falling into utter and irreversible calamity.

“What the @#%…” Long Ma cursed relentlessly. Just half a step further and it would have been passively dissolved into the Dao. Mercifully, its cultivation was strong enough to survive this ordeal.

“The Central Forbidden Zone is filled with deadly traps at every turn. There is no room for carelessness.”

They encountered twenty-four dangers along the way and survived every one. At last they arrived at the deepest reaches of the zone, where blood aura shot up like sword light, piercing through the heavens and vanishing into the high sky.

Accompanying it was the ringing chime of sword-song — a fierce, pervasive killing intent that left one’s soul trembling.

“A blood lake!”

Blood aura shot toward the sky. Sword light rang and rang. It all emanated from a blood-colored lake — roughly ten li in diameter, a glaring, eye-searing crimson.

Blood clouds surged. Mist and vapor steamed off the surface. Even from a great distance, one could feel that murderous intent that seemed to pierce through ten thousand ages, as streams of blood-red radiance soared skyward.

“A blood pool ten zhang deep — the burial ground of the Ancestral Progenitor and the Human Patriarch.”

Beside the blood lake stood a stone stele. Worn by the erosion of ages, half of it had already crumbled away. The primordial divine script carved into its surface could only barely be made out.

“A ten-zhang blood pool — but why does it look like ten li to me?” Long Ma asked, puzzled.

So many years had passed, seas had turned to mulberry fields, and the ten-zhang blood pool had grown into an entire lake. Yet the killing intent within the blood had never dispersed. One could only imagine how terrifying the killing energy that had been driven into this powerful being’s body by enemies at the moment of their fall must have been.

“There is a spiritual imprint here…” Ye Fan said in surprise.

“No wonder this place is called the greatest ancient trial path of the powerful. Every step was designed to forge one’s character, to make those who come after grow stronger,” Long Ma sighed.

This spiritual imprint conveyed a truth: beyond one’s enemies, one’s own self is the most powerful adversary.

Here lay a blood-colored battlefield capable of providing the conditions for later arrivals to wage war against themselves — allowing trial participants to see themselves more clearly and undergo endless transformation.

“To be able to instantly conjure a replica of oneself within this ancient battlefield — what an utterly heaven-defying method.”

Long Ma could not help but marvel. The person who had created this ancient battlefield had undeniably performed a feat rivaling the work of creation itself. Anyone who entered could witness a second version of themselves brought to life.

The blood-colored battlefield lay within the lake. Countless blood-red rifts spread across its surface. Without a moment’s hesitation, Ye Fan and Long Ma each entered a separate rift.

Boom!

Not long after Ye Fan entered, a world-shaking confrontation began. The blood-red rift sealed shut, becoming a closed world unto itself. The battle within was magnificent beyond words — a pity no one could witness it.

Three days later, Ye Fan emerged covered in golden blood, having suffered damage close to total annihilation. Even with the character secret, that supreme immortal technique devoted to healing, the devastation was still this brutal.

The reason was simple: he had let himself go completely, battling against his own self — and whatever secret techniques he knew, that other figure knew as well; whatever combat skills he possessed, that other self understood perfectly.

This was the most devastating battle of Ye Fan’s life. No other opponent could compare — an absolute equal, fighting until both had gone utterly mad.

When Ye Fan emerged, Long Ma was in the middle of retching. It was drenched in blood, nearly reduced to a lump of mangled flesh, its white bones exposed to the open air.

“Never in my life have I hated myself the way I do today. Why is it so impossible to beat? Why can’t I kill it? My true body nearly met its end in there.”

Long Ma cursed without stop, alternately raging and retching. From the looks of it, fighting against itself had driven it to genuine madness.

“I have found a method to elevate my cultivation. From here on, the phantom-self within the One Breath Transforms into Three Pure Ones technique will be my mortal enemy!” Ye Fan said wearily, dragging his battered body forward.

“Please don’t — that’s fine here, but if you truly clash like that in the real world, you might be killed by yourself!” Long Ma warned.

In this place, even if one’s true body perished, one could ultimately be revived. That was the beauty of the blood-colored battlefield.

Unfortunately, each person was only granted one opportunity. A second confrontation was not permitted.

Ye Fan and Long Ma withdrew and returned to Zone Thirty-Six, where they began to heal their wounds. Long Ma continued retching for two full days before it gradually composed itself.

“Do you think there were others in there fighting themselves as well?” Long Ma asked.

“Certainly. Others must have entered as well,” Ye Fan answered.

“I wish them the joy of wanting to vomit the moment they lay eyes on themselves!” Long Ma cursed with ill-natured glee.

Clang…

On the twelfth day, a bell tolled and rang throughout the Fallen Saint Island. Time was up. All trial participants were required to withdraw. Those who did not would be sealed inside.

Ye Fan changed out of his shredded battle robes, washed the blood from his body in a lake, and donned a fresh set of battle garments. He then mounted Long Ma and rode out toward the exit.

At this moment, his spirit, energy, and mind had all reached an astounding level. His blood energy was like a vast ocean, his divine sense refined and concentrated as immortal light. His entire being was like a divine infant reborn.

Figures emerged from every exit. Powerful cultivators from various star domains — some bearing heavy injuries, others radiating brilliant spirit — walked out from the trial grounds.

“Tuoba Yu of the Human King Ancient Star Domain has emerged! Just as expected — graceful and confident, truly a hero of his generation!”

Many who caught sight of this elegantly dressed young lord felt that he had undergone a kind of cleansing, his entire bearing now carrying an aura that was difficult to put into words.

“Amitabha!”

A Buddhist invocation rang out. The Bitter Ascetic from the Amitabha Ancient Star Domain also stepped forth, the scar-like birthmark on his face now adorned with a faint spill of Buddha’s light.

Then the Feathered Immortal from the Feathering Ancient Star Domain appeared — a sweet smile on her lips, her figure graceful and willowy, drawing admiring gazes from many.

The powerful Ou Ye Mo, along with the enigmatic Mu Guanghan, emerged in turn as well, without incident.

“Why has no one come out of Zone Thirty-Six or Zone Thirty-Seven yet?”

“Hmm… that Daoist nun went with more than twenty people to hunt down the cultivator called Ye Fan. Could it be they haven’t found him and are waiting to intercept him at the exit?”

“Very likely. With so many people making a move, even a seeded-level powerhouse would find it difficult to withstand — one person fighting so many at once is nearly certain death.”

“The Lord of Junwei Mountain and four powerful cultivators entered Zone Thirty-Seven. Why haven’t they emerged either? Could he have crossed zones to assist?”

“They say the Lord of Junwei Mountain is a seeded-level powerhouse of world-shaking divine might. If he lent his aid, this would be little short of a slaughter.”

Everyone waited, eyes fixed on Zone Thirty-Six. Even figures like the Bitter Ascetic, Ou Ye Mo, the Feathered Immortal, and Mu Guanghan were watching with keen attention.