Chapter 170 - 169: Continental Court (2)

The Adjudicator looked directly at Lin Yuan, who stood calmly beside Bai Qingyue.

"The Zhao Province nominee: Lin Yuan. Cultivation Realm: Early-Stage Spirit Severing."

For three seconds, the Grand Court was completely silent.

And then, the Upper Division delegations erupted.

It was not a polite chuckle, but a roaring eruption of open scorn, and mockery. Cultivators from the Chu, Ye, and Xuan Provinces laughed so loudly that some had tears forming in the corners of their eyes. To them, the very suggestion was so utterly preposterous that it bordered on comedy.

"Early-Stage Spirit Severing?!" Ye Ao sneered loudly, his voice echoing across the amphitheater. "Is Lord Zhao senile? A man who has only just severed his mortal dust actually thinks he can stand among the Upper Division? He wants his Participating General to fight those who have already cultivated their Dao Resolve, even Half-Step Soul Transformation?!"

"They invoked the Ascension Clause for him?" another Upper Division elder laughed mockingly. "He will be turned into a fine red mist in the first five minutes of the preliminary round! He won’t even have the chance to yield!"

Among the laughing crowds, Chu Kuang, the massive, arrogant heir of the Chu Province, hoisted his massive, rusted halberd and stepped forward from his delegation. He walked toward the edge of his platform, looking directly down at where Lin Yuan stood.

"Hey! Peasant from the mud!" Chu Kuang roared, his voice carrying the terrifying, crushing weight of a Peerless stage (Eighth Step) Dao Resolve. He pointed the blood-stained tip of his halberd directly at Lin Yuan’s chest. "Did you lose a bet, boy? Or do you just want to die so badly that you came all the way here to find a grave? I promise you, if you cross my path, I won’t kill you quickly. I’ll peel your Early-Stage cultivation away piece by piece just to hear how a Lower Division pig squeals!"

The Chu delegation roared with laughter, feeding off their young master’s cruelty.

Lin Yuan stood perfectly still. He did not flush with anger. He slowly lifted his gaze, his deep purple eyes meeting Chu Kuang’s manic, bloodthirsty stare.

When Lin Yuan’s gaze fell upon him, Chu Kuang’s overwhelming aura caused even his cultivation to tremble faintly. Lin Yuan narrowed his eyes, and for the first time, he was forced to acknowledge the terrifying gap between himself and this man.

At this moment, even Lin Yuan had to admit that Chu Kuang’s might had subdued him.

The difference between the early stages of Spirit Severing and the higher stages was simply too vast. A cultivator who had reached the Peerless Stage of Spirit Severing could possess a level of strength that dwarfed an early-stage Spirit Severing expert.

This was fundamentally different from the gap between Nascent Soul cultivators.

An Early Nascent Soul cultivator, given sufficient talent and powerful techniques, could still contend with a Peak Nascent Soul expert. The gap was enormous, but it was not necessarily insurmountable.

Spirit Severing was different.

Once a cultivator’s Dao Resolve reached the higher stages, their understanding of the Dao itself underwent a qualitative transformation. Their every move carried a profundity that an early-stage Spirit Severing cultivator could barely comprehend.

The difference was like heaven and earth.

And Chu Kuang stood firmly on the side of heaven.

"I have heard," Lin Yuan said as he steadied himself, his voice calm despite the pressure bearing down upon him. He understood the difference between their realms, but he could not allow Chu Kuang to walk over him in front of everyone, least of all his wife, "that the Chu Province relies heavily on physical intimidation. Keep swinging your rusted toy, Chu Kuang. When the crucible begins, I will take it from your hands, and I will force you to eat it."

The laughter in the Chu delegation died instantly.

Chu Kuang’s face contorted into a mask of pure rage. For a lowly Early-Stage cultivator to speak to him with such absolute, chilling condescension was an act that demanded immediate slaughter. He gripped his halberd, his knuckles turning white, looking as though he might violate the rules and leap across the arena right then and there.

"You are a dead man," Chu Kuang hissed, the veins in his thick neck bulging. "Dead."

Lin Yuan merely smiled faintly, turning his attention away from the barking dog.

As his gaze swept across the other Upper Division platforms, Lin Yuan felt a sudden, distinct prickle at the back of his neck. It was a sensation entirely different from the aggressive, blunt killing intent of Chu Kuang or Ye Ao. It was cold, incredibly invasive, and felt like icy fingers brushing against the outer barriers of his spiritual sea.

Lin Yuan turned his head slightly.

Standing on the Feng Province platform, surrounded by highly protective elders, was the sixteen-year-old anomaly. Feng Yao.

The frail-looking boy was not laughing. Instead, Feng Yao was staring directly at Lin Yuan. The boy’s wide, pupil-less eyes, filled with that solid, milky white light, were locked onto Lin Yuan’s figure with an unblinking, unsettling intensity.

It was a stare that lingered a beat too long.

Through the immense power of his innate Primordial Spirit, Feng Yao was not looking at Lin Yuan’s physical body, nor was he looking at the Early-Stage aura of Lin Yuan. The anomaly was peering deeper. Feng Yao’s head tilted slightly to the side, his expression completely unreadable, displaying a strange, childlike curiosity mixed with something that looked dangerously close to recognition.

Lin Yuan did not break eye contact. He held the sixteen-year-old’s eerie stare, offering a slow nod of acknowledgment.

Feng Yao blinked, the milky white light in his eyes swirling slightly, before he turned his head away, returning to his silent, blank observation of the sky.

With that, Lin Yuan decided to take a much closer look at the Five Emperors seated at the absolute zenith of the Grand Court.

He did not dare probe them with his divine sense. That would be nothing short of courting death.

Even with all the extraordinary techniques and treasures he had obtained from the System, Lin Yuan could already tell that if he truly crossed paths with any one of these existences and they decided to kill him, he would probably die within a single breath.

The difference was simply too great.

As the saying went, "There is always a higher mountain, and there is always someone beyond the heavens."

Standing beneath the gazes of the Five Emperors, Lin Yuan felt the truth of those words more clearly than ever. These five were no longer cultivators he could measure by ordinary standards. They stood at a height so far beyond his current realm that even Lin Yuan could only look up and acknowledge the vastness of the distance between them.

Lin Yuan’s gaze lingered upon them, and the more he observed, the more profound his expression became.

The Void Refinement Realm truly deserved every word of praise it had received.

Even without probing their cultivation, Lin Yuan could vaguely sense the terrifying harmony between their bodies, souls, and the surrounding heavens. They were no longer merely borrowing the power of Heaven and Earth.

They seemed to have become part of it.

At that moment, Lin Yuan had absolutely no doubt that if he could obtain the assistance of one of these Emperors, the Soul Transformation restriction sealing Bai Qingyue’s meridians could be removed.

"The higher one climbs, the wider the heavens become."

Lin Yuan silently repeated the saying in his heart.

But then his gaze settled upon one particular throne.

Emperor Tianxu.

Lin Yuan’s brows slowly furrowed.

There was something strangely familiar about that face. His posture was straight, his robes immaculate, and his expression carried the effortless majesty of someone who had ruled an entire continent for countless years.

Yet that face...

Lin Yuan’s mind began to turn rapidly.

Where had he seen him before?

He had never met Emperor Tianxu.

At least, that was what he had believed.

His memories suddenly flashed backward.

The mountains.

The ancient forest.

The period when he had been tempering his body.

And then...

The old man with the brown-furred sable.

A seemingly ordinary old man who had appeared while Lin Yuan was forging his body.

The old man who had casually advised him to eat the delicious marrow of the beasts raw instead of wasting their blood essence by bathing in it.

Lin Yuan’s pupils suddenly contracted.

That’s him!!

He almost failed to maintain his composure.

He had thought that old man was merely some eccentric senior who happened to possess profound knowledge of body tempering.

Who could have imagined...

The old man he had encountered back then was actually Emperor Tianxu, the absolute ruler of the Central Continent!

Lin Yuan stared at the figure upon the throne, completely unable to reconcile the two images in his mind.

The elegant Emperor before him.

And the old man with the sable, casually discussing the best way to consume beast marrow.

They were the same person.

A strange feeling welled up within Lin Yuan.

The world was truly vast.

The Central Continent alone was unimaginably enormous, with countless cities, sects, clans, and billions of cultivators scattered across its territory.

Yet sometimes, the heavens seemed incredibly small.

As the saying went, "Wherever fate wills, a thousand miles are no distance; where fate does not, even face-to-face becomes a stranger."

Lin Yuan had never expected that the mysterious old man who had casually crossed his path during his body-forging days would one day appear before him as the supreme ruler of the Central Continent.

He had been standing beneath the same sky all this time.

He simply had no idea how close he had once stood to the very peak of the mortal world.

High above, Emperor Tianxu raised a single hand from his throne. The gesture commanded absolute authority, instantly silencing the lingering threats and murmurs of the Upper Division.

"The words have been spoken. The pride has been laid bare," Emperor Tianxu’s voice rolled over the amphitheater, vibrating with the supreme power of the Qilin. "Now, we let the Dao decide the truth of your convictions. Adjudicator Xuanji, open the first round!"