After leaving the marshlands, Ye Fan and his companions arrived in a mountain range where the vegetation was sparse but every tree stood tall and sacred—some ancient trees more imposing than the mountain peaks themselves, blotting out the sky and soaring into the clouds.

This had once been the dwelling of the Tyrant Dragon Clan’s Great Sage-level lords, and now only the Sacred Beast King-level Tuolan remained as its guardian. In recent days, dragon roars had frequently echoed from within—the Tyrant Dragon Queen was consumed by both fury and grief, driven to near-madness by the theft of the golden divine egg.

Ye Fan, Long Ma, and the Nine-Tailed Crocodile Dragon paid a covert visit, slipping into the mountain range. Every beast cultivator they encountered was trembling with fear—testament to the terrifying might of Tuolan’s wrath.

During those days, every ancient beast within the mountain range had been living on the edge, dreading the moment the Sacred Beast King-level Tyrant Dragon Queen would unleash her fury and flatten the ancient mountains.

Ye Fan and his companions witnessed with their own eyes that Tuolan had just seen off a stone spirit. This holy spirit and her late husband had been old friends; he had come from the depths of the starry sky to help her search for her lost child.

This was precisely why they had come—they believed all of this had been orchestrated by the Holy Spirit Clan, who had deliberately incited the ancient beasts of this ancient star to rebel and collectively oppose the human race. The truth needed to be exposed.

The mountain range was majestic. Deep within the towering peaks, they located the cave residence of the Tyrant Dragon Clan. Ye Fan and his companions sent secret transmissions calling out to Tuolan, not wishing to alert the lesser servants.

“How bold of you, daring to intrude into my clan’s cave residence!” Tuolan’s face was dark, her feelings toward the human race anything but warm. Had it not been for the sake of the Nine-Tailed Crocodile Dragon—an exceptionally talented junior—she would have swallowed these morsels of prey alive long ago.

Ye Fan said nothing. Instead, he produced the golden divine egg directly. Immediately, the chamber blazed with radiant light, Life Essence surging in powerful waves.

“My child!” Tuolan cried out, her face flooded with overwhelming emotion. A sacred and dignified aura unique to a Sacred Beast King radiated from her entire body, her form blazing with blinding light.

“Does Your Majesty believe in our sincerity now?” Ye Fan asked with a smile.

What followed was straightforward. He recounted every detail of what had transpired, holding nothing back, trusting that the Tyrant Dragon Queen was capable of drawing her own conclusions.

Tuolan’s expression shifted between dark and light. “I had actually suspected the Holy Spirit lineage myself,” she said. “I never imagined they could be so underhanded—using my child to unlock the Divine Ghost Burial Ground.”

“They are utterly shameless,” Long Ma said. “They looted the Tyrant Dragon’s divine egg and then had the audacity to step forward and offer to help search for it—truly despicable scoundrels.”

“Rest assured, I will not let them off,” Tuolan said coldly. “At the critical moment, I will deliver a fatal blow to those involved.”

She then revealed a crucial piece of intelligence: four days hence, the Holy Spirits would launch a massive assault, destroy the Tenth City of the Human Race, slaughter every human being, and descend upon this star.

“According to the plan, they asked me to lead the various sacred beasts in a joint attack—destroy the ancient starry road and free ourselves from the human race’s stranglehold.” Tuolan’s face was filled with murderous intent; her hatred for the shadowy Holy Spirit Clan ran bone-deep.

“Is there something buried within the Divine Ghost Burial Ground—some ancient artifact that shook the world, or perhaps a passage of immortal scripture? After so many countless ages, could anything like that have survived?” Ye Fan asked, his mind full of unanswered questions.

In a burial ground from the Age of Mythology, even sacred bones had long since withered away to dust. What kind of divine implement could possibly have endured?

Ye Fan’s thoughts drifted unbidden to that bone well. He truly could not imagine what had been sealed within it. The hazy image of an old Daoist priest sitting at the well’s mouth, chanting sutras—that impression had been branded into him, impossible to forget.

“They are searching for an ancient artifact that belongs exclusively to the Holy Spirits,” Tuolan said. “It records the method by which a Holy Spirit may ascend to immortality and complete the Dao—to achieve absolute perfection. However, whether that artifact is actually on this ancient star is far from certain. Legend has it that it was buried somewhere along a certain stretch of the ancient starry road, but the precise location cannot be confirmed.”

This had been hinted at before by the Nine-Tailed Crocodile Dragon, and now it was confirmed. The weight of it settled heavily in Ye Fan’s chest. The Holy Spirit Clan’s pursuit of this ancient artifact made it plain that among their number, one had aspirations to attain perfection—to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Great Emperors of antiquity.

From this alone, it is not difficult to see—the Holy Spirits have produced a peerless powerhouse who seeks to take that final step, to push a hundred feet further from the top of the pole!

Ye Fan took his leave and made a covert return trip to the Tenth City of the Human Race, where he reported the intelligence to the Reception Envoy. He was awarded a great merit—signaling that this stage of the trial had been brought to a successful conclusion.

However, there was no leaving now. The starry sky was sealed, and powerful adversaries from beyond the domain watched with predatory patience, ready to strike at any moment.

Four days later, the sky was a boundless clear blue, washed and pristine. Then, without warning, a single thunderous roar rang out—and the entire ancient star began to tremble. Countless mountains and rivers shattered apart in an instant.

It was as though the end of the world had come—nothing could stand against it, everything was to be ground to nothing. Enormous peaks crumbled and collapsed; the endless oceans surged and heaved, their waves surging heaven-high; the order of the entire world fell into chaos, as though creation itself had reached its final moment.

BOOM!

Supreme holy might descended. A massive hand reached in from the stellar domain, appearing in the vault of heaven—grasping for the Tenth City of the Human Race!

“Holy Spirit lineage—you have crossed the boundary!” A resounding voice rang out as the human race’s Path Guardian appeared, confronting that terrifying Holy Spirit.

Heaven and earth split asunder; ghosts wailed and gods howled. An army from beyond the domain descended from the cosmos, their killing intent sweeping across all of antiquity, shaking the entire ancient starry road to its core.

“Human race—your fortune has reached its end. In this age, you are far inferior to the other races. You are destined to fall behind, destined to produce no Great Emperor. Achieving the Dao and ascending to immortality—these things shall never be yours.”

That imperious voice reverberated across the sky. The massive hand covered an area of countless thousands of miles, blotting out the heavens, closing around the Tenth City of the Human Race and pulling it toward the palm.

“What a massive brute!” Long Ma exclaimed in shock.

In the cosmic starry sky, a colossal stone figure manifested, its blood energy towering heaven-high, causing the entire stellar domain to quake. Its eyes blazed like torches, sending chills down the spine. It stood with its head touching the heavens and its feet upon the earth—how many tens of thousands of miles tall, none could say.

This was a formidable Holy Spirit!

Only now did it choose to appear. With a lift of its hand it could seize the moon and pluck the stars; a single resounding cry sent meteorites flying in from all directions, and some smaller asteroids erupted in explosions.

“Peak of the Great Sage realm—only a single step from crossing into the Quasi-Emperor domain!”

People cried out in trembling voices, and many fell into despair. How was one supposed to fight such a Holy Spirit? Legend held that stone-embryo Holy Spirits had been rare since ancient times, and that every single one was invincible within its own realm.

Such a being—nurtured by heaven and earth itself, having reached this peak of supreme power—unless a Quasi-Emperor were to come, even one of the same cultivation level would most likely meet a bitter end.

Yet was there even a Quasi-Emperor in the current starry sky? There had always been legends, but no one had actually seen one.

BOOM!

A war-spear thrust forward—tens of thousands of miles long, piercing across the starry sky, blocking the Holy Spirit’s great hand and saving the Tenth City of the Human Race from being seized!

The human race’s Path Guardian appeared, his divine form filling the entire sky. He stood in the cosmos like Pangu at the opening of heaven, and upon his back was a pair of ancient cyan phoenix wings capable of splitting heaven and earth asunder.

“The human race’s Path Guardian has come—to think it is actually the Cyan Phoenix Daoist! The old master is still alive, never having passed into nirvana!”

The Reception Envoy of the Human Race’s Tenth City was moved to hot tears, trembling with emotion. This was a Great Sage eight thousand years old, a being of breathtaking talent—only a single step away from crossing into the Quasi-Emperor realm.

It was said that he had passed into nirvana three hundred years ago. No one had expected him to reappear at this critical juncture, having traveled from the depths of the starry sky to intercept this supremely powerful and invincible Holy Spirit.

A clash of peak powers—a battle of the supreme!

The Cyan Phoenix Daoist had a lean and refined appearance. He wore a Daoist robe and stood at an unknowable height of tens of thousands of miles, wielding a war-spear in his hands that seemed capable of toppling the universe—each nearby asteroid crumbling to dust in the arc of his spear’s brilliance.

The Holy Spirit was forced back, retreating into the cosmic void to continue their battle, temporarily releasing its grip on the Tenth City of the Human Race.

The human race erupted in cheers. The Cyan Phoenix Daoist’s immense power sent morale soaring at once, bolstering the resistance against the invading army from beyond.

“Wuuuu——!”

The horns of attack sounded. From deep in the outer domain, savage beasts roared; dark clouds pressed down overhead—all of them surging toward the ancient star below.

A vast army crashed forward—only a handful of Holy Spirits among them, the rest mostly nameless foreign races, their battle cries shaking the heavens as they charged down toward the earth and mountains below.

“Charge——!”

Layer upon layer of leaden clouds pressed down to ground level, as though ten hundred thousand heavenly soldiers and celestial generals had descended, carrying an indomitable, all-conquering momentum as they swept toward the mountains and rivers below.

The great slaughter calamity had begun!

Ye Fan bore the brunt of it, coming under attack from a group of powerful foreign-race warriors. A stone spirit locked onto him, roaring: “Your hands are soaked in the blood of my clan. The curse has been branded into your very bones—every Holy Spirit who lays eyes on you is sworn to hunt you down and kill you!”

The one saving grace was that this stone spirit Holy Spirit was still in the Saint realm, not yet having ascended to King, or the situation would have been far more dire.

This was an invincible race—rare in all of antiquity, and to have gathered even a few of them in the boundless starry sky was already remarkable.

“Charge——!”

The foreign-race army vastly outnumbered them. In that moment, Ye Fan went into a killing frenzy, joining forces with Long Ma and the Nine-Tailed Crocodile Dragon to fight blood-for-blood against these invaders.

The same, of course, was true everywhere else. Every human race trialist was clashing with the foreign races, battling the cultivators from beyond the domain, refusing to let this star fall completely into enemy hands.

This ancient life star holds paramount importance for every single race!

“Let loose and fight—this planet is under the protection of the ancient Great Emperors, and there are certain formation arrays embedded within it. It will not be shattered through, so you need not worry about destroying it.” Even the Reception Envoy had gone red-eyed with killing, shouting orders at the top of his voice.

The foreign-race army was vast in numbers, but so too were the human race cultivators. All those days of preparation had brought in great numbers of powerhouses summoned from other stellar domains.

For this road belonged to the human race. Within this ancient stellar domain, the human race was the supreme ruler—this was human territory.

The sky was stained red with blood. Whether in space at the Tenth City of the Human Race or on the ancient star below, fierce and desperate battles raged without end.

The sacred beasts too had entered the fray—some fighting alongside the foreign races from beyond, others standing together with the human race. Each had made their own choice.

However, once the Tyrant Dragon King Tuolan quietly issued her order, the number of ancient beasts fighting for the human race surged dramatically. Their roars shook the heavens; the slaughter grew ever more intense.

This was a catastrophe. Body after body rained down from the sky, their cultivation levels ranging from the second to the fourth tier of the Immortal Platform realm. This was a doomsday battlefield.

The scenes from the burial ground of the Age of Mythology had almost come back to life—swarms of cultivators were falling, turning this land into a hellscape of wailing ghosts and howling gods.

“Can the Cyan Phoenix Daoist hold that Holy Spirit at bay? That race is invincible within the same realm—this must be known!”

Amid the fierce fighting, people kept glancing up toward the outer starry sky, but nothing could be seen. The two supreme beings at the pinnacle had fought their way to who knew where.

“Anyone who has cultivated to the Great Sage realm is a being of breathtaking brilliance who looks down upon all of antiquity across all ages. They are not necessarily inferior to a Holy Spirit—and besides, the Cyan Phoenix Daoist has wielded the ‘divine form’ of the cyan phoenix since his youth, giving him unmatched combat power. He will not be defeated.”

“Charge——!”

Sky and earth alike were sprayed with blood as body after body fell. None could say how many had already died.

Ye Fan was drenched head to toe in blood, cutting through ten thousand soldiers, a great cauldron rising and falling above his head. Ten thousand techniques could not touch him; strands of primordial chaos sword energy streamed downward, slaying wave after wave of foreign-race warriors. Wherever he passed, blood flowed in rivers and bones piled like mountains.

“Press into the Divine Ghost Burial Ground—the first seal has been successfully broken! Everyone, lend your strength to collect the blood and spirit bones of the human race for use as sacrificial offerings to the demonic well!” one of the Holy Spirits in the foreign-race army called out.

To break open the ancient well’s seal, life itself had to be piled up as sacrifice—otherwise, the hazy form of an old Daoist priest, seated at the well’s mouth in silent sutra-chanting, simply could not be shaken. Without a doubt, slaying the human race and gathering their blood and souls was their most effective option.