"Fellow Daoists! Please ascend!!!"
As soon as those words rang out, all the remaining cultivators fell silent.
Then came the sound of stifled weeping.
Not a single person triggered an ascension passage.
One by one, the bloodstained, gravely wounded cultivators slowly turned around. They flew toward the ruined debris below, searching through the wreckage to piece together corpse after corpse.
Watching this, Li Guanqi felt tears welling in his eyes, his emotions churning.
Silently, he walked over to Xiao Chen's side.
By now, Xiao Chen had long shaken off the illusion of his own death. Though battered and broken beyond recognition, he clutched Tang Ru, wailing aloud.
"Fifth Brother, are you an idiot?!"
"A full twenty thousand years of lifespan!!"
Tang Ru's face was aged now, his hair snow-white, his countenance lined with deep wrinkles. Yet he grinned, extending a withered palm to pat Xiao Chen gently on the shoulder.
"As long as you're... not dead... that's all that matters..."
"Still... alive... We're all alive..."
Ye Feng and the others gathered close. Seeing Li Guanqi arrive, they embraced one another and wept bitterly.
By just a hair—just a hair, and the Human Spirit Realm would have been gone.
By just a hair, Xiao Chen and the others would have perished in that bizarre space.
Had Li Guanqi not fought without fear of death to slay that terrifying enemy...
Had Pengluo not broken through to the tenth rank and found Xiao Chen and the rest...
The joy of surviving catastrophe was something no outsider could truly fathom.
Meng Wanshu and Li Qingchan leaned on each other for support as they watched this unfold.
Lu Kangnian was severely injured, leaning against a crumbling wall and gasping for breath.
His arm severed, Qin Xiao wore a solemn expression, carrying Ye Xuan's corpse with his remaining hand as he walked slowly toward the Sword Stele.
At this moment, nearly everyone donned black robes.
Name after name appeared upon the pitch-black Sword Stele...
A heavy, stifling atmosphere of grief spread through the air.
In this battle, nearly eighty percent of the Seventh Domain's cultivators had fallen.
When the cultivators of the Six Domains later arrived to reinforce them, they too suffered catastrophic casualties. Had Li Guanqi not unleashed his overwhelming pressure to suppress everyone, more than half of the Six Domains' cultivators would likely have perished.
The dust had settled.
Across the sky of the Daochan Domain, shattered for thousands of li, one could still faintly see that hundred-li fissure glimmering with immortal light.
Now, with the aura of the Immortal Realm gone, the Abyss Demons across the world's Six Domains ceased to appear as well. This indirectly confirmed that the Abyss Demon fissures in the Human Spirit Realm truly shared a peculiar connection with the Immortal Realm.
The Six Domains gradually stabilized, but the people's hearts remained uneasy.
Only when Li Guanqi's words—"Fellow Daoists, please ascend"—echoed across the Six Domains did the cultivators of the world realize that a crisis concerning the very survival of the Human Spirit Realm had finally passed.
Yet upon the black Sword Stele towering high in the heavens of the Daochan Domain, so many more names had appeared out of nowhere...
Throughout this time, not a single cultivator across the Six Domains broke through to ascend.
Heaven and earth were steeped in a solemn, grave atmosphere.
The struggle between mortals and immortals spanning ten thousand years had finally come to an end.
Many veteran cultivators of the Seventh Domain wept uncontrollably, sitting atop the broken mountains and rivers, drinking freely. But when they looked back, they found none of the familiar faces they once knew.
The entire battle had been a profound trial of human nature.
Whether selfishness or righteousness, everything had been laid bare under the crucible of war.
Li Guanqi leaned against Ye Feng's shoulder, deeply grateful that such people existed in the Human Spirit Realm.
By now, Li Guanqi had also learned from Gu Li what they had endured earlier. He spared no praise for Xiao Chen, giving him a thumbs-up.
"Well done!"
"A real man!"
Xiao Chen gave a wry grin. Looking toward Tang Ru, guilt flickered in his eyes as he murmured, "Fifth Brother is the one who..."
Tang Ru waved a feeble hand and said in a low voice, "None of us could have done without the rest!"
The six men pulled each other into a tight embrace.
Just then, a man's gentle voice sounded beside them.
Heavily injured, Wen Guyan clutched his shoulder as he walked over to Li Guanqi. "Guanqi, I... plan to head up."
With that, the man narrowed his eyes. "And it's best if everyone still here heads up as well!"
Li Guanqi frowned slightly. Before he could ask, Wen Guyan spoke again.
"If anyone here still harbors ambitions for worldly power, in the world today... no one could stand in their way! Once we ascend, the Human Spirit Realm will inevitably be plunged into upheaval. That wouldn't be a good thing."
Li Guanqi gave a slight nod as an inscrutable power enveloped the firmament. He exchanged a glance with Meng Wanshu and nodded.
"Fellow Daoists, does anyone among you still hold lingering attachments to the Human Spirit Realm?"
Silence. Virtually no one spoke.
After all, ascension was the ultimate goal of every seeker of the Dao. Now that they could ascend, naturally few longed to stay in the mortal realm.
Yet quite a few looked troubled.
Shen Ye of Zhenyue Mountain dragged his heavily injured body as he slowly got to his feet. "Young Friend Li, Shen Qi's cultivation is still low, and I am still young. Might I delay ascension for now?"
His words immediately drew the attention of many.
Li Guanqi fell into deep thought. He felt that Tribulation Transcendence realm cultivators could indeed sway many things, but Mahayana realm cultivators were relatively manageable now.
Besides...
Li Guanqi slowly raised his head.
In his perception, the Heavenly Dao's repulsive force toward cultivators was currently exceedingly powerful. Take himself, for instance: if he were not exerting every ounce of effort to suppress it, and situated in this shattered battlefield of heaven and earth, the Heavenly Dao's power would have expelled him from the world long ago.
In other words...
Now that the Seventh Domain was no more and Su Xuan's origin power was gone, even if he reconstructed the domain realm, it could never shelter so many Mahayana and Tribulation Transcendence powerhouses. Back then, the Seventh Domain had been able to suppress this repulsion precisely because Su Xuan's origin power had dispersed into the Heavenly Dao.
Once the void space settled into calm, all of them would be forced to ascend!
Li Guanqi came to terms with it: let nature take its course.
For now, they still had roughly one day left to suppress this force.
"Fellow Daoists, surely you have also sensed the Heavenly Dao's repulsive force, as well as the beckoning aura of the Immortal Realm," Li Guanqi said, his tone heavy with emotion. "The void space where we stand can hold for another day. After one day, cultivators at or above the late Mahayana realm will be forced to ascend, whether they wish to or not. Use this single day to say your farewells to the Human Spirit Realm."
Upon sensing the heavens carefully, the crowd understood the truth of what Li Guanqi said.
Immediately after, Li Guanqi waved his hand.
A tall pagoda appeared before them.
The Immortal Burial Pavilion!
Looking at the pagoda, Li Guanqi said softly, "All of you fought to protect the Human Spirit Realm, and now you must ascend to the Immortal Realm. The road ahead is unknown; none can tell what the Immortal Realm holds. I, Li Guanqi, keep my word. I will gift all the resources within the Immortal Burial Pavilion freely to all of you! This is what you have earned!"
At these words, excitement flushed across the faces of many cultivators.
Assessing the previous battlefield contributions, Li Guanqi divided all the immortal artifacts, cultivation techniques, and immortal crystals within the Immortal Burial Pavilion into storage rings and handed them to everyone!
Every single cultivator received at least one immortal artifact, one cultivation technique, and thirty thousand first-grade immortal crystals!
Such was the ten-thousand-year heritage of the Immortal Burial Realm!
As for the fallen cultivators, their descendants and clans would receive these provisions as well!
Chapter 1549