Ye Fan stood suspended in the vast sky, gazing down at the ancient star in its entirety. It was an irregularly shaped celestial body that truly bore a striking resemblance to a skull, connected to the surrounding stars as though it were part of an ancient corpse.

The Primordial Mountains were a stretch of ancient land—towering cliffs of ten thousand fathoms, ancient trees reaching toward the heavens wherever one looked. The mountain ranges here were majestic, stretching endlessly across the horizon in breathtaking grandeur.

Ye Fan led the Twelve Saints to this place. Filled with curiosity about this star, he had undertaken extensive investigations of several important ancient sites, seeking to understand them more deeply.

The mountains were vast and imposing. Many great ridges soared into the clouds, reaching tens of thousands of zhang in height, wreathed in primordial chaos qi, resembling a land from the very beginning of time. The rumbling sounds of the Great Dao echoed from within.

“This truly is sacred ground. Cultivating the Dao in a place like this would yield twice the results for half the effort—no wonder it has produced so many powerful warriors. Saints have never ceased to emerge here.”

The entire ancient star was shaped like a skull, and the Primordial Mountains bore a striking resemblance to the frontal bone of that great head—the position corresponding to the human body’s Immortal Platform—making it a place of extraordinary importance.

This region was vast and boundless, inhabited by various ancient beasts. It served as the territory of the demon clan and certain primitive tribes; human cultivators rarely ventured here.

According to legend, one of the three Grand Saints of this ancient star had taken up residence somewhere within the mountains—a fire crow who had attained the Dao and become the paramount powerhouse of the demon clan, capable of overlooking this entire stellar domain.

Ye Fan had done extensive research. This ancient fire crow patriarch kept an extremely low profile, emerging once every several hundred years at most, maintaining no real dealings with the various factions. So long as no one provoked it, there would be no danger.

Of course, he also dared to venture deep into this place because his mastery of the Movement Scripture had reached an unparalleled level. He would not claim to be peerless under heaven, but escaping when danger arose was no problem.

In the mountains, ancient trees formed dense wolf-forests, apes cried out, tigers roared, and various exotic beasts prowled about—yet the moment Ye Fan and his companions arrived, everything fell silent at once. The Golden Lion, the Nine-tailed Crocodile Dragon—which among them was not a sovereign among beasts?

“Awoooo…”

Shortly after, chaos erupted throughout the mountains. Beast kings of every kind fled in all directions. No matter how formidable they had been on ordinary days, under the sweeping advance of the Twelve Saints, they had no choice but to scatter and run. Among them were no shortage of great consummate kings and demi-saints. In the end, even holy beasts were stirred into alarm.

“ROAR!” A saber-toothed tiger as massive as a mountain itself leaped out. Its two great fangs were snow-white and razor-sharp, blindingly bright. It let out a continuous torrent of furious roars. “Four ancient demons left the mountains and never returned—did you kill them all?!”

The Black Bear Saint stepped forward, uprooting a mountain peak ten thousand zhang tall, and pressed it down toward the white tiger. “We are merely passing through. Do you wish to fight?”

The Saber-toothed Tiger Saint was a hothead. Having heard of the foreign invaders, he had been seething with indignation and leaped out with a chest full of righteous fury, intent on calling them to account and stopping this great demon lord.

Yet at this moment, his head began to throb with dismay. The rumors had been wrong—every single one of these people’s cultivation was above the seventh tier of Saint realm. There was no stopping them. This was an invincible divine army.

“Awoooo…” The saber-toothed tiger let out a miserable cry and was suppressed on the spot.

The Black Bear Saint, comparable to a massive black mountain that propped up the heavens, cradled it in his arms as one might hold a little kitten. The ferocious holy tiger howled in distress, nearly every bone in its body on the verge of shattering, frightened out of its wits.

Ye Fan signaled for the Black Bear to show mercy and not kill the tiger saint, intending to question it about what had transpired.

“Little kitty, be good, don’t be afraid. Tell your uncle here why you bear us such a grudge?” The Black Bear Saint took on the manner of a creepy older fellow, grinning and chuckling as he hugged the saber-toothed tiger, a thoroughly guileless expression on his face.

“Awoooo…” The saber-toothed tiger saint let out a great cry, terror gripping its heart. The Black Bear’s arm strength was too terrifying—no matter how many of its sacred arts it unleashed simultaneously, it could not break free. Its bones were on the verge of snapping one by one.

Though the saber-toothed tiger was enormous as a mountain, compared to the Black Bear Saint it was utterly outmatched. The other savage beasts watching from the periphery were laughing coldly, sending a chill running through its body.

“Hmm. It’s the Gu Family stirring up trouble, provoking trouble on all sides. That clan’s patriarch is an old nemesis of Lin Han. The He Family was incited to act by this very clan.” The Black Bear searched through the saber-toothed tiger’s Immortal Platform and sorted out the full sequence of cause and effect.

The Gu Family had a long lineage and immense power—far stronger than the He Family. Their patriarch had also reached the pinnacle of the Saint King realm, but his lifespan was running short, and he had lost all hope of advancing to Grand Saint.

He wished to wipe out the Lin Clan while he still lived, to prevent Lin Han from becoming a Grand Saint. He was the hidden mastermind targeting Wang Ziwen’s family, the one who had rallied many great powers together.

In recent days they had been stirring up constant agitation, inciting hostility among many powerful figures on all sides, seeking to turn them against Ye Fan and his companions as “invaders” and against the Lin Clan.

“Little kitty, don’t let yourself be used. Hot blood alone is not enough. The ones telling you we are foreign demons are the true demons. You need to go out and see things for yourself.” The Black Bear Saint said with a smile, looking for all the world as though he were eyeing a delicious meal.

The saber-toothed tiger’s fur stood on end, goosebumps rising all over its body. It let out a long whimper. To be hugged to death like this would truly be the most pathetic way to go.

Ye Fan reached out and touched a finger to its forehead, imprinting the full context of events into the saber-toothed tiger’s Immortal Platform, then released it. He intended for it to spread the truth throughout the Primordial Mountains with its own voice, warning the saints not to lead themselves astray.

“What a shame…” The Black Bear shrank back down to one foot in length, an endearingly dopey look about him, blinking his bright big eyes. He licked his lips, wearing an expression of both regret and irresistible cuteness.

Their group pressed forward through the Primordial Mountains, stirring up chaos as they went—various ancient beasts startled into flight, and even powerful holy beast kings radiated their Pressure Auras. Yet no true bloodbath occurred.

As for the Fire Crow Grand Saint, they never caught so much as a shadow of it. The territory was simply too vast, and this slow method of exploration could not hope to reach many of the important ancient sites.

“Hmm. If this star truly is a skull, then this place should be the center of its frontal bone—the Immortal Platform. If any emperor-grade weapons are buried here, they should lie deep beneath this very ground.” Long Ma mused aloud. It had developed a deep friendship with Duan De and the Black Emperor and received no small amount of guidance from them. By now it had accumulated considerable skill in the investigation of treasures and the like.

Following the ancient texts and anecdotes at their disposal, Ye Fan and his companions explored the Celestial Soldier Star, unwilling to miss a single hidden location.

Golden light flickering, the Nine-tailed Crocodile Dragon moved like a pangolin, drilling into the earth and boring through the soil layers, seeking to uncover any ancient weapons that might be buried beneath the Primordial Mountains.

“If the star is a skull, then this region should be the Immortal Platform—the most likely place to harbor celestial weapons.”

Regrettably, no matter how deep they drilled into the earth’s strata, they found no trace of any weapons whatsoever. The entire ancient star also contained no bone material—it was nothing like what they had imagined.

“If it truly were a skull, that would be terrifying indeed. Whose skull could possibly be this enormous?” The Golden Lion remarked.

Ye Fan furrowed his brow. As a Source Heavenly Master, he was acutely sensitive to the lay of the land and the flow of the earth’s veins. He had noticed several anomalies. The way the underground mountain veins ran bore a striking resemblance to the walls of blood vessels—though long since petrified and turned to earth and soil, their patterns could still be traced.

“This truly may be an enormous skull that has transformed into earth and stone!” Ye Fan murmured to himself.

“What—you mean that seriously?” The Scorpion, the Black Bear, the Golden Lion, and the others were all stunned.

Ye Fan nodded, then began carefully calculating and surveying, using source arts to determine how far the most central region of the Immortal Platform lay from their current position. At last he produced a formation platform. “It’s far too distant. We will need to cross into the underground world through a dimensional gateway and see for ourselves what lies at the true center of the Immortal Platform.”

For Ye Fan had a vague sense that somewhere in the deepest recesses of the earth, something existed—what seemed to be a surge of vigorous vitality, brimming with tremendous power.

Were emperor-grade weapons nestled within the Immortal Platform?

All Twelve Saints were filled with eager anticipation. After a round of preparations, they stepped through the dimensional gateway and crossed into the depths below.

The underground world was hollow—boundlessly vast. The moment they stepped out of the gateway, they felt an instant blast of scorching heat. Flames raged to the sky.

“This… is this truly the skull of some living creature? Look ahead—there is an enormous Immortal Platform, and upon it, undying flames are blooming and burning.” The Scorpion was stunned.

It was a great elevated platform of immense scale, floating in the void like an entire continent. Radiant and dazzling, divine fires danced upon it, burning fiercely.

From it emanated a powerful surge of life—awe-inspiring and soul-shaking, so intense that even creatures as formidable as the Golden Lion and the Black Bear Saint felt as though they were choking, unable to draw breath.

“Is it still alive? Does it carry life force?” Long Ma was unsettled and uncertain.

“No, that’s not it!” Ye Fan’s brow creased, and he opened his Source Heavenly Eye, gazing forward—and saw the reason for it all.

A fire crow, as enormous as a mountain range, stood motionless amid the flames. Its entire body was covered in black feathers that shimmered with dark light and flowed with immortal radiance. It stood utterly still, as though in deep slumber.

The Fire Crow Grand Saint—one of the three Grand Saints of the Celestial Soldier Star!

All Twelve Saints felt a chill run through them. This fire crow was terrifying to the extreme. Every single feather on its body pulsed with divine radiance, carrying within it a resonance of the Great Dao, as though it could suppress the nine heavens and ten earths.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, a pair of terrifying eyes snapped open, shooting beams from atop that enormous Immortal Platform like two bolts of lightning slashing across the sky. The Fire Crow Grand Saint had awakened.

In that instant, the Nine-tailed Crocodile Dragon, the Golden Lion, the Black Bear Saint, the Scorpion, and all twelve of the saints were almost completely frozen in place—unable to move so much as a finger, unable to suppress their trembling.

Every one of them was a great sovereign among saints, capable of fighting across levels—extraordinary and matchless talents of their age. Yet in this moment they were as insignificant as ants before a giant, their entire bodies drained of strength.

The scene was too terrifying. Every single one of them had the potential to become a beast god or a demon god. Yet at this moment they were reduced to such insignificance, small as specks of dust.

“This junior has no intention of disturbing your elder’s quiet cultivation. I beg your forgiveness and humbly takes my leave.” Ye Fan clasped his fists and backed away. Only the Sacred Body of the Human Tribe could move at such a time—the golden blood within him surged and churned with wild force.

Ye Fan shook his robe sleeve, swept all twelve saints up within it, drove the Movement Scripture to its absolute limit, and completed it all in the span of a single spark. He tore open the fabric of space directly.

It was clear that this fire crow, whose power defied imagination, had slumbered for so long that dust had settled upon it. Its divine consciousness had reawakened, its eyes blazing like lightning—it seemed to want to act, but it was already too late. It watched them as they departed.

Ye Fan glanced back hastily, and his heart jolted. Then, without a backward look, he vanished from that place.

“A golden divine egg!”

His heart was filled with bewilderment. That fire crow covered in black shimmering feathers was, in truth, a guardian—watching over a golden divine egg, seemingly unwilling to stray even a single step from it.

The divine fires danced upon the Immortal Platform, brilliantly radiant. The Fire Crow Grand Saint did not occupy the central position—that had been given to a single crystalline golden egg. The Fire Crow Grand Saint had been slumbering here for one reason only: to guard this egg until it hatched.

A tempest of shock rose within Ye Fan’s heart. The entire ancient star was the transformed skull of a supreme existence; at the center of that skull’s Immortal Platform, a divine egg awaited its birth; a Grand Saint personally stood guard. What could all of this be foretelling?

A moment later they returned to the surface. Ye Fan shifted location and activated the Movement Scripture—time itself seemed to halt, the void twisted, and they put great distance between themselves and the Primordial Mountains.

“That was terrifying. That was absolutely not an ordinary Grand Saint. It is no less than Cang Yan, the Flame Saint of the Fire Clan, and possesses a peerless aura of supremacy!”

“Precisely—I felt it was comparable to Cang Yan the Fire Spirit. Matchless in power!”

Even after leaving that place, the Golden Lion, the Nine-tailed Crocodile Dragon, the Scorpion, and the others remained shaken to the core, wave after wave of dread washing over them. A moment ago they had felt as though standing before a deity.

The Celestial Soldier Star clearly had an astonishing origin. Tracing it back to the most ancient cosmos, the mightiest force would naturally have been the Ancient Heavenly Court. Could this place have a connection to it?

Ye Fan fell into deep thought, his mind turning to Wang Ziwen—who had crossed through the immortal palace outside the forbidden wilderness to arrive here.

There were rumors in the Northern Dipper region that the immortal palace was connected to the Ancient Heavenly Court, that it may have been a surviving portion of the Court’s great celestial halls, which is why it had come to be called the immortal palace.

What troubled Ye Fan most at this moment were the golden divine egg and the Fire Crow Grand Saint on the subterranean “Immortal Platform.” He turned it over carefully in his mind, feeling a vague sense of familiarity, as though he recognized the aura—and then a cold shudder ran through him.