“This is the reason why half-demons can’t reach Heaven’s Emergence? Having different mixes in the foundation prevents the essence from condensing.”
“This is a suppression stemming from the heavenly dao, a curse on the hybrids. This includes men and demons or men and ghosts or any other races. For example, a horse and a donkey will birth a mule, but it has no reproductive capability. A lion and a tiger will create a liger or a tigon, both are incapable of reproducing as well, punishments for going against the heaven.”
“Half-demons are lucky enough to be able to reproduce. However, their offspring and future generations will continue to be weaker. Cultivation is already difficult, let alone reaching Heaven’s Emergence. You have reached the apex of your kind, it is impossible to improve.” The voice in the Regal Sacred Jade didn’t hold back.
“There is no absolute. A child from half-demons won’t always be weaker than their parents. If the heavenly dao has severed the path, we can still open a new one. If it paints a river before me, I can build a bridge. If it erects a wall, I can use a ladder, if it’s a cliff, I can cultivate a pair of wings.”
“If it’s an ocean and no bridge can be long enough, what will you do? If the wall is higher than the nine heavens, can you build a ladder tall enough in your lifetime? The same case for the cliff. The power of the heavenly dao is boundless, men cannot resist.” The jade said.
“There will be a way.” Feiyun didn’t give up: “If a bridge doesn’t work, I’ll use a ship, as for the wall, I can crush it instead. If the cliff is too far for flying, I’ll use a rope to reach the bottom. Cultivation itself is already heaven-defying. Someone started this path in the first place.”
The jade didn’t answer for a while rotating in the air. Eventually, it said: “Your conviction is a good thing, I hope you will be able to do it. Those capable of contending against the heaven are always amazing. There’s something else you should know though, this ship is incredible. Every now and then, an aura from the immemorial period would seep out.”
“You can sense it, Senior? From where?” Feiyun became emotional.
The entire ship was sealed without a single opening. The only entrance was a door. Unfortunately, it was rotten and shut. If there is an aura seeping out, there might be another opening to enter.
“From that dragon-horse diagram.” The jade said.
Feiyun looked up at the diagram and used his Grand Change Art to find the aura.
“Could this be the key to entering the ship?” He leaped up into the air and landed on the dragon-horse.
It was only an image, not an actual physical entity. Alas, once he got close enough, he felt as if there was life.
“I wonder if dragon-horses actually exist in this world.” He wondered.
Suddenly, a massive vortex sucked him into the dragon-horse’s nostril.
“This is its breathing?” He didn’t try to stop it because this was only a divine intent.
“Boom!” He fell into a dark space and noticed chaotic energies resembling tornadoes.
He used Swift Samsara to dodge them and landed on a floating boulder.
“Where is this place? Inside the beast’s stomach? No, could this be the vessel’s internal region?” He looked around and only saw a cold expanse. This resembled the path of the Golden River that he had walked through before.
If this was his real body, he would have tried to escape long ago. Intuition told him that this place was dangerous. He could die even at the seventh level of Heaven’s Emergence.
The boulder beneath him was old and had traces of time immemorial. It was more than ten meters long and extremely tough. Feiyun would have a hard time breaking it.
There were other floating boulders as well. They moved around with no discernible pattern.
A piece of wood slowly drifted onward him. It was unreasonably massive with a diameter of seven thousand meters. Its length was eighty thousand meters.
It was still ten miles away but its size shocked him, looking like a floating mountain range. It had an unpleasant rotten odor. There were numerous cracks looking like large valleys with muddled streams.
Feiyun grew a pair of wings on his back and flew over to the piece of wood.
“What a large tree, looking like the spine of the world in the legend, Immemorial Heavenwood.” He said.
In the legends during this era, there existed a towering tree with flames engulfing it. This was the place of the ten saints from the golden crow race.
They somehow had ten saints in one era. This allowed them to massacre everyone. Even the four great demon clans were taken down a notch.
Eventually, they nearly killed all the phoenixes in order to take their spot as one of the four. Eventually, their arrogance finally invoked the wrath of one of the three strongest saints in the Immemorial Era – Nine-arrow Grand Saint.
Every race had its own legends. For example, the white spiders had their sacred ancestor. The phoenix had their Immemorial Divine Phoenix, and humans had Heavenly Witchcraft God and Emperor Xuanyuan.
Everyone believed that their own legends were unbeatable. Therefore, there were large disputes about their claims.
However, three existences were unanimously considered the strongest during the Immemorial Era. They were from the same era but didn’t appear in the same generation. One of them was Nine-arrow Grand Saint.
The saint shot nine arrows in one day and killed the nine saints from the golden crow race, leaving them helpless.
This ended up saving the phoenixes. Therefore, the saint was considered the guardian deity of the phoenix race and was considered to be on the same level as the Immemorial Divine Phoenix and Phoenix Sacred Queen.
Subsequently, this tree was cut down by a phoenix saint using a special hatchet. Why was a piece of it here in the vessel?
Feiyun was aware of the feud between the phoenixes and the golden crows. The former had an upper hand the majority of the time. The late stage of the Immemorial Era left the golden crows in disarray and made sure that the phoenixes came out on top.
Immemorial Divine Phoenix appeared during this period – the greatest existence of that generation.
During his youth, Feiyun viewed this being as an idol. He was a great fan after hearing all the tales. In fact, he respected this being more than the Phoenix Sacred Queen.
As mentioned previously about the tree, the one who cut it down was none other than Immemorial Divine Phoenix. Her power was rumored to be on the same level as the three great saints from this era.
“Doesn’t this mean that I am somehow connected to the great Divine Phoenix after billions of years?” Feiyun became emotional.
Seeing this tree meant that the legend might have been real. Immortal Divine Phoenix truly existed in history.
As he walked on the wood, he found the top layer to be brittle and his feet would cave down. This must be due to the withering of time.
