A man in pure white daoist robes, with a lean and refined face, walked slowly along the desolate and cold ancient street.
He tilted his head slightly, glancing at the ancient, simple characters carved on the magnificent building beside him.
Profound Scripture Hall.
Countless Heavenly Summit Mountain disciples had once listened to scriptures and discussed the Dao here, but that was already over sixty thousand years ago.
The former sacred land of cultivation had long since lost its former glory.
All that remained were these abandoned sect buildings and the white jade palace suspended ten thousand zhang high in the sky.
Then, the man with the lean face took a step towards the direction of the Profound Scripture Hall.
The moment he stood before the hall's entrance, the massive doors of the Profound Scripture Hall slowly swung open.
A vast, oppressive pressure of immortal energy surged from within the hall towards the man. If a cultivator below the Upper Three Realms were to come into contact with that pressure, their true qi would likely evaporate instantly, followed by the shattering of their meridians.
"From the Kongshan Sect?"
A deep, resonant male voice came from within the Profound Scripture Hall. A middle-aged man dressed in red and gold daoist robes sat on a chair to one side of the hall.
That was the standard style of the Lingxiao Temple's robes.
It wasn't just this middle-aged man. Also seated within the Profound Scripture Hall were an elderly man and a charming-looking woman who appeared to be in her early thirties.
The elderly man wore the dark cyan daoist robes of the Mirage Palace, while the woman wore the light blue robes of the Wind Ravine Valley.
"Otherwise?"
Lu Li merely asked softly in return, then stepped slowly into the Profound Scripture Hall.
"Then you must be the Kongshan Qingchan's True Person Caiyun. I've long heard of your great name. Ascended to immortality thirteen thousand years ago, fell nine thousand years ago. I heard you were once injured in your Dao Foundation by a little black snake back then. True Person Caiyun's fate truly has been fraught with hardship, huh."
The middle-aged man in red and gold daoist robes sneered coldly.
As a fellow cultivator in the Immortal Ascension Realm, he naturally knew the root cause of True Person Caiyun's damaged Dao Foundation was the karmic backlash spanning nine thousand years.
But that didn't stop him from using such words to annoy Lu Li.
"One can't quite put it that way. Even someone as dazzlingly brilliant as Su Hongzhen, didn't he also fall not long after ascending to immortality less than a thousand years ago?"
The charming woman with an alluring figure, seated on the other side and wearing light blue Wind Ravine Valley robes, spoke.
She was speaking up for Lu Li, or rather, for Kong Yang.
It wasn't for any other reason, but because she clearly understood the current situation within this Profound Scripture Hall.
That middle-aged man in Lingxiao Temple robes was the True Person Xuzhou from the Lingxiao Temple, active more than thirty thousand years ago. The other elderly man sitting beside her, wearing the dark cyan Mirage Palace robes, was the Mirage Palace's Realman Sun-Eroding.
Even though the Mirage Palace's Realman Sun-Eroding was currently just sitting there saying nothing, she knew very well that compared to the rude True Person Xuzhou, it was actually Realman Sun-Eroding who was truly at odds with True Person Caiyun.
The reason was simple. The Mirage Palace's immortal artifact, the Abyssal Tower, had been seized by True Person Caiyun back in the Fallen Sword Mountain Range and had not been returned to this day.
"Is Realman Shuangyu suggesting that Caiyun is worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Sword Immortal Su?"
True Person Xuzhou shifted the focus of his attack, speaking thus to the charming woman in light blue Wind Ravine Valley robes.
Su Hongzhen, who fell seven thousand years ago, would undoubtedly be the junior in terms of seniority if ranked by birth era among the four great powers in the Immortal Ascension Realm present in the Profound Scripture Hall.
Yet, all four Realmen in the Immortal Ascension Realm present held him in the highest esteem and admiration.
This was not only because Su Hongzhen was one of only two existences in the Chenping Continent to have touched a realm beyond Immortal Ascension, but also because of his act of defying heaven and challenging the Dao seven thousand years ago, akin to a moth flying into a flame.
Everyone knew it was an irrational and undoubtedly fatal act, but they still revered Sword Immortal Su's magnificent feat of attempting to blaze a trail for all living beings of the Chenping Continent, using his own Dao Fruit as a sacrifice.
Realman Shuangyu merely smiled and said nothing.
Thirty thousand years ago, during the era when Realman Shuangyu presided over the Wind Ravine Valley, was also the era when the Wind Ravine Valley began to gradually recover its vitality.
Before Realman Shuangyu took charge, the Wind Ravine Valley had nearly fallen out of the ranks of the Five Great Sects.
The Wind Ravine Valley's own decline was one aspect. At that time, there was a top-tier sect in the Northern Region of the Chenping Continent called Giant Wave Mountain, which actually produced one great power in the Dao Union Realm and two cultivators in the Divine Ability Realm. They repeatedly challenged the Wind Ravine Valley's authority time and again.
Following Giant Wave Mountain's lead, the minds of many top-tier sects, first-rate sects, and even second and third-rate sects in the Northern Region began to grow restless.
Because the Wind Ravine Valley controlled over ninety percent of the cultivation resources in the Northern Region of the Chenping Continent, countless spirit farmlands and mineral veins.
In that era, the Wind Ravine Valley endured for fifteen hundred years. It wasn't until Realman Shuangyu ascended to immortality and smashed Giant Wave Mountain to pieces with a single palm that the situation was truly stabilized.
At that time, even second and third-rate cultivation sects dared to harbor some designs against the Wind Ravine Valley, let alone the other four great sects.
Among them, the Lingxiao Temple was the most excessive, annexing nearly one-third of the Wind Ravine Valley's assets located in the Northern Region of the Chenping Continent during those fifteen hundred years. They even wanted more.
It was precisely because of the Lingxiao Temple's covetous gaze, which kept the Wind Ravine Valley struggling to defend itself, that internal chaos erupted in the Northern Region of the Chenping Continent.
After the Northern Region stabilized, Realman Shuangyu personally visited the Lingxiao Temple and, in front of all the Lingxiao Temple disciples present, slapped the contemporary Temple Master of the Lingxiao Temple to death with a single palm.
This was undoubtedly a humiliation.
In that era, the Lingxiao Temple had no Realman in the Immortal Ascension Realm overseeing it. Although there were a total of four cultivators in the Dao Union Realm within the temple, these four combined would not have been a match for a single breath from Realman Shuangyu.
Therefore, although relations between the Wind Ravine Valley and the Lingxiao Temple eased somewhat after Realman Shuangyu's later fall, the disciples of the Lingxiao Temple still harbored hatred for the Wind Ravine Valley's Realman Shuangyu.
As for why the Wind Ravine Valley declined in the first place, one has to trace back forty thousand years.
Realman Bai Shang, who presided over the Wind Ravine Valley forty thousand years ago, ranked among the top three in combat power among the total of thirty-one cultivators in the Immortal Ascension Realm in the Chenping Continent, even after excluding Immortal Venerable Fusheng and the Falling Star Realman.
Especially his exquisite swordsmanship, which was so refined he could cleave an abyss over twelve thousand zhang deep with a single sword strike.
Throughout the entire Chenping Continent, aside from Realman Bai Shang and Su Hongzhen, no one else could accomplish such a feat.
As for the intensity of his temper, among the thirty-one cultivators in the Immortal Ascension Realm, even including Immortal Venerable Fusheng and the Falling Star Realman, he could still rank within the top three.
Therefore, during the period when Realman Bai Shang presided over the Wind Ravine Valley, the sect's sphere of influence rapidly expanded, squeezing out and annihilating many ordinary cultivation sects originally located in the Northern Region of the Chenping Continent.
It was precisely under such circumstances that Realman Bai Shang, with a single sword strike, cleaved out the "Bai Abyss."