Savior of Xuanhuang

Having departed and returned after failing his ascension, the King of Profound Heaven caused a massive uproar in the Xuanhuang Realm. Countless cultivators sent inquiries, but he ignored every single one. After all, this matter was far too shocking; if word were to leak out, the despairing cultivation world might instantly descend into a doomsday frenzy. Hiding away in solitude, the King of Profound Heaven took stock of his gains and pondered the meaning behind the Faceless True Immortal's words. As for the Xuanhuang Realm, after a period of clamor, it gradually returned to peace. With the collapse and disappearance of the Ascension Passage, the fallout of the Immortal Realm's catastrophe seemed to fade away from the lower realm without a trace. Only after about a year had passed did the King of Profound Heaven suddenly detect that the position of the Xuanhuang Realm's beacon had shifted ever so slightly. The degree of change was minuscule. If not for his constant vigilance and the rapid surge in his strength following his baptism in immortal spiritual qi, he might have overlooked it as well. Yet, prepared as he was, how could the King of Profound Heaven ignore such a detail? Another three years went by. By continuously monitoring the fluctuations in the beacon's coordinates, the King of Profound Heaven finally confirmed that the entire Xuanhuang Realm was drifting toward a certain direction in the endless void. What shocked him even more was that it was not just the Xuanhuang Realm. Every cultivation world he could observe or contact was experiencing the exact same thing! The conclusion was unmistakable. Something existed in the endless void that was drawing all the cultivation worlds toward itself! Recalling the words of the Faceless True Immortal: "Hurry and run. If you take any longer, it'll be too late." A chill ran down the King of Profound Heaven's spine. One could only wonder whether, at that moment, the thought of fleeing alone had crossed the King of Profound Heaven's mind. As the cultivator with the highest cultivation talent in the Xuanhuang Realm at the time, the King of Profound Heaven could not bear to watch his homeland slide toward destruction. And so, he ultimately made a decision that could only be described as noble. He would escape together with the Xuanhuang Realm. Even though he already possessed a half-immortal body at the time, wanting to propel an entire world was nothing short of delusional wishful thinking. Not to mention overcoming that terrifying pull... Yet he did not give up. After scouring every text he had stripped from the fallen immortals, the King of Profound Heaven—a man of consummate, heaven-reaching learning—fused it with his own knowledge and deduced a magnificent, peerless array. The King of Profound Heaven named it the Grand Star-Crossing Array. According to his calculations, if they wished to resist the mysterious pull within the endless void, relying solely on the resources of the Xuanhuang Realm was fundamentally insufficient. Even if they hollowed out the Xuanhuang Realm, they could never break free from that unimaginably terrifying force. Therefore, one of the functions of the Grand Star-Crossing Array was to lock onto grotto-heavens and pocket worlds in the surrounding void, capture them, and wage inter-realm warfare against them. In addition to plundering resources to replenish themselves, it would create an effect like linked warships bound by iron chains, slowing the speed at which the Xuanhuang Realm was being pulled. It achieved multiple goals at once. However, relying on his strength alone to construct such a grand array was beyond his ability. He had to unite and coordinate the vast majority of the Xuanhuang Realm's strength to complete the Grand Star-Crossing Array. As for revealing the truth to the public and calling upon everyone to unite... The King of Profound Heaven had considered it. Yet after taking a closer look at the actual moral character of the Xuanhuang Realm's cultivators, he decisively abandoned the thought. If those cultivators learned of the crisis facing the Xuanhuang Realm at this juncture, the vast majority of them would choose to flee immediately. Those willing to stay behind and join the King of Profound Heaven in saving the Xuanhuang Realm would not amount to even one in a hundred. And constructing the Grand Star-Crossing Array required the strength of these cultivators. Hence, the King of Profound Heaven decided to unify the Xuanhuang Realm first, the better to pool their power. He had already been a once-in-a-millennium prodigy, and now he possessed the only half-immortal body in the Xuanhuang Realm. Furthermore, he held numerous immortal method inheritances obtained from the Ascension Passage. Achieving this was not exceedingly difficult. And everything went just as he foresaw. After persuading twelve equally exceptionally gifted top cultivators to serve as his helpers, the King of Profound Heaven swept away all resistance in a matter of years, crushing them like dry weeds. With himself at the helm and the Twelve Dharma Kings beneath him, he founded the Profound Heaven Sect, which reigned supreme over the Xuanhuang Realm. All living beings of Xuanhuang submitted. The Grand Star-Crossing Array was constructed with unprecedented efficiency. It began successfully capturing and conquering other worlds. The rate at which the beacon drifted began to slow down. Everything seemed to be heading in a positive direction. The King of Profound Heaven could almost see a bright future where the Xuanhuang Realm escaped its doom. However, the arrival of an uninvited guest shattered his arrangements completely. The instant that purple qi appeared in the Xuanhuang Realm, the King of Profound Heaven already vaguely sensed the newcomer's origins. An incompletely cleansed half-immortal body and fragmentary, incomplete immortal spiritual qi. He was likely a cultivator who, just like him, had escaped with his life when the Ascension Passage collapsed. Faced with the arrival of a well-matched rival, the King of Profound Heaven was naturally on high alert. Yet the stranger claimed he was merely passing through, intending to stay briefly before departing soon. Moreover, if two half-immortals were to clash, it would inevitably inflict irreversible trauma upon the Xuanhuang Realm. After long deliberation, the King of Profound Heaven held his hand in the end. He never imagined that this would lay the seed for subsequent disasters. When the Grand Star-Crossing Array captured another new world and the King of Profound Heaven was personally away on campaign, that entity calling himself the Tiandu Grand Dharma Master actually enticed numerous native cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm into his Dao sanctuary. And he imparted to them numerous cultivation methods, secret arts, and divine abilities. Returning victorious, the King of Profound Heaven grasped the other's design in an instant. He wanted to use these cultivators to destabilize the Profound Heaven Sect's rule. Fanning the flames to provoke the cultivators to revolt, he would then reap the harvest once both sides were mutually wounded. And his ultimate objective was the immortal spiritual qi in the King of Profound Heaven's body. How could the King of Profound Heaven let him have his way? He immediately stormed into Tiandu and clashed directly with the Tiandu Grand Dharma Master. Although he suffered slight injuries, the other party's wounds were far more severe, forcing him to behave himself from then on. Yet with the intruder refusing to leave, the King of Profound Heaven had no good solution either. Fearing the man might lash out desperately like a cornered beast, the King of Profound Heaven simply chose to leave him alone. From that battle, he had also gained some subtle insights. By relying on the immortal spiritual qi he had seized from the man, he might even be able to reshape a True Immortal body directly in the lower realm. When the time came, infusing True Immortal power would vastly reduce the resources needed to activate the Grand Star-Crossing Array. The Xuanhuang Realm could then escape its perilous plight completely in short order. Yet the King of Profound Heaven still underestimated the baseness of certain cultivators. Or perhaps he underestimated the Tiandu Grand Dharma Master's ability to bewitch people's minds. At the critical juncture when everything was about to head in the best possible direction, the cultivators who had entered Tiandu back then banded together and launched a surprise assault on the Profound Heaven Sect. From that point on, the history of the Xuanhuang Realm veered onto an entirely different trajectory. ... Recalling all that had happened back then, the young man had a dazed look in his eyes. He raised his head and looked up, as if he could see that horrifying existence drawing in and devouring everything. "Several thousand years have passed... Is it already right before us?"