Anchor Year 468: News shook the Xuanhuang Realm.
The White Mist Barrier, which served as the dividing line between provinces, inexplicably began expanding outward.
The Heavenly Alliance dispatched Heavenly Sorcerers to investigate.
Anchor Year 469: The expansion of the White Mist Barrier ceased, but the Heavenly Sorcerers found no answers.
Anchor Year 490: A group of cultivators walked out from the white mist. Dressed in the robes of the former Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, they were clearly dead, yet they moved about freely, completely unaware of their own demise.
Ignorant of the Heavenly Alliance's establishment, these dead Alliance cultivators clashed violently with the Heavenly Sorcerers who arrived to seal off the area.
In the end, only when a squad of Rank 6 Heavenly Sorcerers—possessing Dao Integration combat power—intervened were they forcibly taken away.
Anchor Year 524: Han Wuyou broke through to the Soul Formation realm.
Anchor Year 539: The golden obelisks of the Xuanhuang Realm erupted for the third time.
Heaven and earth shook once again, though far more gently than during the first two occurrences.
Anchor Year 580: Han Wuyou received a secret invitation requesting a meeting at a hidden stronghold in Tianyu Province.
Cautious as ever, Han Wuyou chose not to go.
Anchor Year 592: Han Wuyou learned that within Zhengqiong Province, the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation had completely failed for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.
The Heavenly Alliance once again issued a Heavenly Execution Order, placing a bounty on a cultivator named Liu Yihang.
Anchor Year 595: Han Wuyou received another invitation. Accompanying it was a small, circular stone disk.
According to the letter, the disk was called a Bane Stone; once activated and carried on one's person, it could shield the bearer from the detection of the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation.
After careful consideration, Han Wuyou ultimately disguised his appearance and went to the gathering.
This time, the meeting place had changed to a secluded valley within Tianyun Province.
A cultivator introduced himself to Han Wuyou.
They called themselves the Heaven-Overturning Society, one of the resistance organizations that had rallied the world's cultivators to fight to the death against the Heavenly Alliance back then.
Following the cultivators' crushing defeat, they had gone underground, biding their time.
Over the centuries, they had quietly recruited suitable candidates.
Gu Xinghan, who had issued the "Manifesto to Cultivators"; Lan Yuchang, who had risked his life to expose the existence of the Eternal Immortal Wall; and Liu Yihang, who had recently succeeded in causing the Spirit-Locking Formation to fail, were all members of the Heaven-Overturning Society.
The society gathered the finest elite among the world's remaining cultivators.
Though few in number, exceptional talents emerged in endless succession among them.
Over the years, they had devised many methods to contend with the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation.
The Bane Stone was one such result.
It was created from a secondary body of the Heavenly Profound Mirror, the Calamity Extinction Stone Platter.
Through years of meticulous research, the Heaven-Overturning Society had discovered a potential blind spot in the Spirit-Locking Formation: the secondary bodies of the Heavenly Profound Mirror.
As secondary forms accidentally spawned by the Heavenly Profound Mirror, they all retained certain characteristics of the mirror to varying degrees.
It was precisely these traits that, to some extent, misled the Spirit-Locking Formation into regarding them as parts of itself, thereby neglecting surveillance over them.
Secondary bodies of the Heavenly Profound Mirror were inherently rare, and the Heaven-Overturning Society had sacrificed countless cultivators just to obtain this single Calamity Extinction Stone Platter.
Besides the Bane Stones capable of evading the Spirit-Locking Formation, the Heaven-Overturning Society also possessed a devastating weapon known as Heaven-Rousing Arrows.
Liu Yihang had relied on these very arrows to temporarily disable the Spirit-Locking Formation.
The materials used to forge them came from the various anomalies occurring with increasing frequency across the Xuanhuang Realm.
The existence of these anomalies was like a virus infecting heaven and earth.
If anomalies could affect heaven and earth, then now that the Spirit-Locking Formation had supplanted heaven, anomalies could naturally affect the formation as well.
After learning about the Heaven-Overturning Society's various affairs, Han Wuyou voiced his doubts:
Why disclose the society's deepest secrets in such detail at their very first meeting?
Were they not afraid he might report them to the Heavenly Alliance?
The other man merely smiled and introduced Han Wuyou to someone.
It was none other than Linghu Chang of the Medicine King Sect, a former member of Immortal Restoration.
As it turned out, when Immortal Restoration suffered catastrophe back then, the survivors had fled in every direction.
During the subsequent great manhunts, Linghu Chang had relied on the Medicine King Cauldron to evade capture.
He had lain low in the wilderness ever since, eventually joining the Heaven-Overturning Society by a stroke of fortune.
It was also thanks to the protection of the Medicine King Cauldron and its vast reserves of resources that the Heaven-Overturning Society had been able to develop beneath the Heavenly Alliance's blockade.
Time flew by, and over three hundred years had passed; Linghu Chang had gradually awakened several Medicine King Sect disciples who had been slumbering within the Medicine King Cauldron.
Liu Yihang, for instance, was the adopted son of the former sect master of the Medicine King Sect, Liu Ruchen.
Reuniting with an old friend brought the tragic demise of his Li Realm companions flooding back to Han Wuyou's mind.
With bloodshot eyes, he formally joined the Heaven-Overturning Society.
After spending only a hurried half-day at the stronghold, Han Wuyou returned to the Heavenly Alliance.
Anchor Year 603: The golden obelisks began their fourth eruption.
This eruption lasted longer than the first three combined.
Across the vault of the sky, crisscrossing green lines formed an immense net, shrouding all living beings in the Xuanhuang Realm.
From then on, cultivators across the world privately referred to the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation centered on the Heavenly Profound Mirror as the "Profound Net."
Anchor Year 610: Han Wuyou received word from the Heaven-Overturning Society that a colossal mountain had burst forth from beneath the earth in Zhuyu Province, completely destroying the original landscape.
Not one in ten thousand living beings in Zhuyu Province survived this cataclysm.
The Profound Net over the province also seemed to have been affected.
Thereafter, the Heaven-Overturning Society relocated its stronghold to Zhuyu Province.
Anchor Year 690: During a gathering, Han Wuyou learned that the Heaven-Overturning Society had forged as many as three thousand Heaven-Rousing Arrows over the years.
Unfortunately, the Profound Net was protected by outer formations, and with only this many Heaven-Rousing Arrows, it was likely still impossible to harm the core of the net.
They still needed to wait patiently.
Han Wuyou fell into deep thought.
Anchor Year 698: Han Wuyou comprehended numerous formation blueprints from the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter.
Anchor Year 710: Han Wuyou secretly met with Linghu Chang and Liu Yihang and showed them the formation blueprints.
Anchor Year 711: Han Wuyou received a message from the Heaven-Overturning Society confirming that this was indeed the original formation architecture of the Profound Net, followed by an excited inquiry as to where the blueprints had come from.
In his secret chamber, Han Wuyou gazed at the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter for a long time in silence.
Then, using a secret technique, he sealed the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter.
...
Anchor Year 934: A street urchin accidentally found the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter among the ruins.
Believing he had found a treasure, he joyfully kept it with him day and night.
A resonance was thus awakened.
The sky was no longer green, but a hazy, somber gray.
Anchor Year 935: Among the survivors across the land, legends from a century ago were passed down.
The earth trembled, and cracks spread across the sky.
High above the vault of heaven, silhouettes of battling gods were reflected.
World-ending thunderous punishments rained down ceaselessly, reducing vast swaths of land to nothingness.
Long afterward, a pair of giant hands tore open the firmament.
The dust settled, and calm returned.
Yet the infighting of the gods had enraged the great Father God.
The world had been forsaken.
Magnificent buildings turned to ruins.
The gods who once soared high in the sky vanished without a trace.
The world was sliding into ruin.
Anchor Year 936: During a hunt, the street urchin met an untimely death.
The Formation-Breaking Jade Platter lay quietly in the wasteland.
Only occasional curious beasts came by to inspect it.
Anchor Year 1032: Beasts no longer appeared.
Anchor Year 1573: The sky was dark, the earth silent.
Anchor Year 2078: The world fell into absolute stillness.
Anchor Year 3024: Long-lost sunlight shone upon the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter.
Anchor Year 3036: True Reversion activated.
Chapter 417