Ye Fan leaned against the Ancient Bronze Coffin, standing still as the moon’s reflection on a tranquil lake, motionless. An aura of otherworldly transcendence rippled from him — in that moment, he appeared ethereal and free, like an exiled immortal untouched by the mortal world, ready to drift away on the wind at any instant.

Yet his inner world at that moment was anything but as tranquil as his body appeared. The celestial sound of the Great Dao surged like an abyss, like a boundless ocean — profound and vast. Each word that rang out was like the collapse of seas and the splitting of chasms, reverberating across heaven and earth.

Like an ancient chant, like a prayer from a primordial deity, it flowed endlessly, cutting through the eternal skies, slowly streaming into Ye Fan’s heart, causing waves to surge within him, his thoughts rising and falling as he lost all sense of where he was.

In the distance, the others watched him standing in perfect stillness, all wearing expressions of confusion, unable to understand what had happened. They only sensed that he carried the quality of a flawless exiled immortal — dust-free and unblemished, a drifting, transcendent presence beyond the mortal world.

Ye Fan remained completely fixed in place. The divine sound resonated like a great bell — distant, vast, and profoundly difficult to comprehend. He could not grasp its meaning at all. One moment he felt as though he stood at the edge of a deep abyss in hell; the next, as though he had stepped into the pure land of the gods. Countless nameless sensations rose within his heart, leaving him alert yet bewildered.

This mysterious divine sound was not lengthy — quite the opposite. It was sparing with its words, amounting to no more than a few hundred characters in total, carrying the ancient feeling of great simplicity: the Dao at its most plain, all grandeur stripped away, returning to unadorned truth.

Like the solemn toll of great bells and resonant chimes, the celestial sound rang out again and again. Each word that fell into Ye Fan’s heart first stirred like mountains and rivers shaking, then settled into stillness like the moon rising over the sea. Several hundred ancient characters had already been clearly engraved in Ye Fan’s heart, yet the divine sound did not cease — it continued echoing in his ears without pause.

Throughout this process, the Bodhi Seed against Ye Fan’s chest was radiantly warm, filling his entire body with gentle heat. It was precisely because of it that Ye Fan had been able to hear this wondrous supreme sound.

Legend held that the Bodhi Tree could awaken the divine nature within a person, grant enlightenment of the self, and capture the rhythms of the Dao between heaven and earth. Clearly, this Bodhi Seed — buried beneath the ancient Bodhi tree in front of the Great Thunder Sound Temple — had an extraordinary origin.

While Ye Fan stood still in silence, the others grew puzzled. Someone suggested pulling Ye Fan away, since he was leaning against an Ancient Bronze Coffin, and no matter how one looked at it, that was difficult to associate with anything good.

Pang Bo circled Ye Fan twice, and seeing no expression of pain on his face — quite the contrary, with a transcendent air drifting faintly around him — he decided the copper coffin itself was emanating a divine, godlike presence.

In the end, Pang Bo made no rash move, instead standing guard nearby in quiet wait.

“Could it be that some evil spirit has taken hold of him, possessing his body?” Li Changqing stared at the Ancient Bronze Coffin, then glanced at Ye Fan, and said as much.

The others tightened their grip on the divine relics in their hands upon hearing this. Several people involuntarily stepped back a few paces. The mysterious ancient coffin was full of unknowns, making everyone uneasy.

“Your rear end decides your brain — you’d die if you didn’t slander Ye Fan, wouldn’t you? What kind of thinking is that? What exactly goes through your head?” Pang Bo held no fondness for him deep down. Ever since the confrontation at the Five-Colored Sacrificial Altar, the other party had constantly targeted him and Ye Fan, so he spoke without the least bit of courtesy.

“Alright, stop arguing,” Zhou Yi said, furrowing his brows slightly, then sweeping his gaze across everyone present. “Right now we can’t be certain whether there are still divine crocodiles inside this enormous bronze coffin. We should be careful and search carefully.”

The others felt an immediate tightening in their chests upon hearing this. It was the truth — since one divine crocodile had already been found, there was no guarantee there wouldn’t be a second, a third, or even more. This was a matter of life and death for everyone. Fourteen people had already lost their lives to the divine crocodiles, and these ferocious, terrifying creatures made all of them shudder.

The group did not scatter too widely, dividing only into two teams — so they could cover each other. They lit up their phones, gripped their divine relics tightly, and began searching through the dim darkness.

However, after searching every corner, the two teams reunited without finding anything. Even so, no one dared to let their guard down. The copper coffin was enormous and wide open — more than enough space to hide several divine crocodiles without detection. Moreover, there was no guarantee that divine crocodiles weren’t clinging to the upper reaches of the coffin walls, which were shrouded in complete darkness and impossible to see clearly.

“Stay vigilant — taking precautions won’t hurt us,” Lin Jia reminded everyone, then offered some reassurance. “Even if there are still divine crocodiles in here, they’re clearly afraid of the Buddhist relics in our hands. Otherwise, they would have attacked us again long ago.”

Suddenly, everyone heard a strange sound. Though faint — barely perceptible — it shook the very spirit! The sound of drums seemed to be drifting in from some distant time and space: muffled, filled with grief. Then came the toll of bells, sorrow spreading in all directions, both ethereal and real.

“Where is that sound coming from?”

Everyone was greatly startled. They looked around, but found nothing.

The gloomy drumbeats and mournful bell tolls seemed to be penetrating through the coffin walls — a sensation that made everyone’s skin crawl.

“This… could this be the funeral dirge played when an ancient emperor was laid to rest?”

Suddenly, even more sounds arrived — as though an infinite mourning cry had come, with tens of thousands of people bowing and praying for one person’s funeral.

Funeral bells rang out, mourning drums beat in succession — as though a grand and magnificent burial was unfolding before everyone’s eyes, with countless multitudes throughout heaven and earth weeping in grief and prayer.

At that very moment, nine successive, piercing dragon cries suddenly rang out across the skies, shaking mountains and rivers, spreading across all the land — as though a real scene was being etched into the star-filled tapestry of history…

In that instant, everyone experienced a strange sensation, as though they were personally witnessing an ancient emperor commanding the vast earth and dominating the world — followed by a funeral of unprecedented and never-to-be-surpassed grandeur.

In truth, there were no images. All of this was conjured by what they heard — those dragon cries, those prayers from an endless sea of people. The crowd quickly came back to their senses. The ethereal sounds of mourning still lingered, making everyone’s spines run cold.

“The divine relics in our hands are glowing again…”

At that moment, divine radiance scattered down. All the Buddhist relics in everyone’s hands were blazing with light — yet it was not a restoration of divine power, but rather a near-exhausted outpouring of luminous energy. Tens of thousands of streams of divine light flowed out, all rushing toward the walls of the great bronze coffin and sinking into the ancient engravings on the bronze.

The coffin walls were covered in green patina, but it could not conceal the primordial carvings of ancient ancestors and ancient deities. In that moment, these carvings blazed with brilliant light, as though about to come back to life. The engravings of wild beasts and sacred birds also became lifelike, these primeval bronze carvings filled with a mysterious power.

“Look — the star map engraving over there is flickering…”

Everyone noticed the anomaly there. It was the largest single expanse of primordial bronze carving: a vast and magnificent star map, with every star shining brightly at that moment. The dim coffin wall that served as its backdrop showed no change — dark as a black night sky — yet it truly appeared as though countless brilliant stars were scattered across the boundless darkness.

“There’s a fine line on the star map that’s flickering — could that be the ancient star road we traveled along?”

Everyone gathered around to look, all speaking at once, all showing expressions of astonishment.

This star map was vast as the ocean. Most of its stars were tiny as specks of dust, but some were especially bright — far more prominent than the surrounding stars, drawing the eye immediately.

“These seven stars shine especially brightly — they look like the Big Dipper!”

Hearing Wang Ziwen say this, everyone fixed their gaze. There, ahead along what appeared to be the ancient star road, the seven stars of the Big Dipper shone brilliantly, catching the eye above all else.

There were many other stars shining just as brightly as the Big Dipper. After careful examination, a few individuals showed expressions of surprise. Zhou Yi was not only refined and genteel in appearance — he had genuinely read a great many books. On the spot, he identified those particularly bright stars and said, “Those are all the ancient Chinese constellations.”

In ancient China, the sky was divided into a number of regions, each with different names — summarized as the Three Enclosures, Four Symbols, and Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions, together mapping the full celestial sphere.

And the primordial bronze carving before them followed exactly this system of division, specifically marking a number of the most well-known stars.

“Looking at this star map, then examining the ancient star road more carefully — it’s impossible not to be astonished. When the ancients divided the star map, it likely wasn’t superstition that drove them. Different constellations represent different stellar regions, and they seem to carry an extremely special and significant meaning…”

“Indeed — looking at it now, it seems to be connected to the ancient star road. It may also be related to the origin of life…”

Everyone was stunned, and for a long while no one could find words.

“Look — the glowing fine line on the star map is extending! Could it be marking the direction we’re moving in — an extension and manifestation of the ancient star road?”

“The fine line is drawing infinitely closer to the Big Dipper!”

Everyone was dazed. They had started out on Mount Tai on Earth, yet in such a short span of time, they might already be approaching the Big Dipper! It felt utterly dreamlike, completely unreal.

By humanity’s current technological capabilities, even if one traveled for millions of years, reaching the vicinity of the Big Dipper would be impossible — the distance was simply too vast.

Everyone was stunned speechless, deeply shaken to the core.

“There’s an even brighter star ahead of the Big Dipper — the Purple Tenuity Star. Could our destination be a planet in that stellar region? After all, the Purple Tenuity Star held a special significance in ancient times.” Someone put forward this conjecture, for the Purple Tenuity Star truly was resplendent on this star map — one of the most dazzling stars of all.

“That’s hard to say. We might travel toward an even more distant stellar region.”

Just then, someone cried out, “The glowing fine line has stopped extending — it’s fixed in place at the stellar region of the Big Dipper!”

At the same moment, everyone felt the great bronze coffin begin to shake violently, as though heaven and earth themselves were quaking.

“We seem to have reached the destination…”

“Could we truly have arrived at the resting place of the gods?”

“Might this be the immortal realm of legend…?”

“Perhaps it’s an extraordinarily glorious civilization of advanced science and technology.”

“If there are truly immortals and Buddhas, perhaps we’ll see legendary figures.”

“Following the ancient star road forged by the gods to its endpoint — what kind of world could possibly await?!”

Everyone’s hearts were filled with deep tension, and yet also with great anticipation. They no longer wished to remain inside the copper coffin a moment longer.