533: Chapter 533

The Sea of Boundaries was gone.

That chasm which had spanned across the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths and the Three Thousand Dao Provinces for countless years was completely wiped away after that final battle which swept through both worlds.

The mountains and lands that were once independent began to border one another, and the seas of the old era were pushed up by new land formations.

The fractured provinces and lands were pieced back together under the great power of heaven and earth; countless ancient mountains shifted their paths, rivers surged backward, the firmament expanded, and the trajectories of the sun and moon changed as a result.

This transformation lasted for a very long time.

To the Mortal, this seemed like the end of the world.

To the Cultivator, it was more like the creation of the world.

Many forbidden lands that once existed only in rumors were buried underground, and many ancient veins that should have long been severed were reconnected.

The two names, Nine Heavens and Ten Earths and Three Thousand Dao Provinces, gradually lost their meaning over the passage of time.

Because when the old territories were completely scattered, it was no longer appropriate to use past divisions to understand this world.

Later generations called this new world the Nine Great Celestial Provinces.

Abbreviated as the Nine Provinces.

When the Nine Provinces were first formed, the Laws of heaven and earth were much more complete than before.

Many people who had been stuck at the end of their old Realm saw scenery at a higher level after the new Laws appeared.

The Heavenly Emperor Realm, which was originally regarded as the end of cultivation, was no longer the limit.

More and more Incomplete Manuals of ancient texts were dug up, and more and more ancient monsters who had lived for an extremely long time began to mention one word.

The Path.

Some said it was the Path to Immortality.

Some said it was the only passage to leave the Nine Provinces and head to a higher world.

Others said it was not a path, but a threshold, a Heavenly Pass that only those who had truly reached the pinnacle were qualified to touch.

But no matter how many theories there were, everyone acknowledged one thing.

That path was real.

Because in the first Great Epoch when the Nine Provinces were first opened, someone had truly reached that step.

That was an extremely brilliant person.

He initially suppressed the world with his Physical Body alone, and later, through unknown means, he actually shed his form and attained the legendary Chaos Body upon his original Foundation.

The Chaos Body, before that, only existed in the most ancient Incomplete Manuals and the most ethereal myths.

Many people did not believe it.

But he fought his way through, beating everyone who disbelieved into submission.

Within the Nine Provinces, heroes rose together, emperors contended, and the most outstanding figures from the old two worlds continued to vie for supremacy in the new world.

But this person suppressed the entire era.

He found that path.

He truly stepped onto it.

And, he almost made it through.

But in the end, he still failed.

Regarding that battle, very little has been passed down to later generations.

It is only known that he reached a level beyond the Heavenly Emperor Realm and then fell at the final moment.

His body and soul were destroyed, leaving no bones behind, and even what he had seen remained unknown to later generations.

But his failure, on the contrary, left three pieces of ironclad evidence for the Nine Provinces.

First, the path truly exists.

Second, above the Nine Provinces, there is indeed a world of a higher level.

Third, above the Heavenly Emperor Realm, it is not void.

That level was later named Residual Immortal by the oldest batch of ancient monsters.

It is not an immortal.

Yet it is already far above the Heavenly Emperor Realm.

Thus, legends about that first Chaos Body became more and more numerous and increasingly chaotic.

Some said he left behind the coordinates of the Immortal Path before he died.

Some said he left behind the true cultivation method for the Chaos Body.

Others said he left behind a key, a key that could open that path.

Still others said he left nothing behind, but simply buried some ultimate secret deep within the Nine Provinces, waiting for later generations to find it themselves.

Truth and falsehood are impossible to distinguish.

But these storms were ultimately too far from the Mortal world.

For those small places on the very edge of the Nine Provinces, whether it was Residual Immortals or the Immortal Path, these were just things one dared to mention only after drinking the most expensive pot of wine in a tavern.

What was truly important was the land, mineral veins, trade routes, and one's life right before them.

For example, Jianghan City.

Placed within the current map of the Nine Provinces, Jianghan City was simply too small.

It was so small that by the time those stories about the Chaos Body, the Path, and Residual Immortals reached here, they had already been altered beyond recognition by storytellers.

The strongest person in the city was only at the Spirit King Realm.

In the eyes of those true big shots, this place could not even fill a corner of the map.

But for those living in Jianghan City, this place was everything.

There were three great Families in the city.

The Qin Family.

The Wang Family.

The Zhu Family.

The three families each occupied a side, unwilling to concede territory, trade routes, mineral resources, or the right to speak in the city.

For many years, the three families had been fighting openly and secretly without pause; small frictions were constant, and people dying was a common occurrence, but no one ever dared to truly flip the table.

The reason was very simple.

The highest combat power of all three families was in the Spirit King Realm, keeping each other in check.

If any Family were to risk their lives first, the other two would immediately pounce and devour them until not even a scrap remained.

Therefore, everyone had to endure.

But this balance had been broken in recent years.

This generation of the Wang Family produced a true monster.

That person possessed a terrifying spiritual body, had extremely high talent, and had stepped into the Spirit King Realm by the age of thirty.

A Spirit King of this age, in a place like Jianghan City, was no longer just a Genius, but a powerhouse capable of suppressing his peers.

What was scary was not just how strong he was now.

It was that he was still young.

A thirty-year-old Spirit King still had a very long road ahead.

Give him a few more decades, or even less time, and no one knew to what height the Wang Family would be pushed by him.

By then, Jianghan City would probably no longer be a tripartite balance.

But the Wang Family would dominate alone.

The Qin Family and the Zhu Family were not fools.

They saw it very clearly.

In the past, they could guard against each other because no one could do anything to anyone else.

Now that the Wang Family had produced such a figure, continuing to consume each other from within would only lead to them all being slowly devoured together.

Therefore, secret contacts began.

The high-level members of the Qin Family and the Zhu Family sat down at the same table quietly in a place where no one could see.

On the surface, the two families were still at odds.

They were still fighting over the shops they should fight over.

They were still snatching the trade routes they should snatch.

But in secret, they were already discussing an alliance.

The problem was, a verbal alliance was useless.

In this day and age, turning against someone was faster than turning the pages of a book.

Today they could drink a cup of wine together, and tomorrow they could stab each other in the back.

If they wanted to truly bind the two families together, they needed a more stable bond.

In the end, the high-level members of both families set their sights on the next generation.

The adult direct descendants each had their own interests involved, where one move affected the whole, so it was not suitable for a hasty marriage alliance.

On the contrary, the newborns who had not yet been born were clean and the easiest to set the future for.

Thus, an agreement that would determine the fate of the two families was finalized in a secret discussion.

If the Qin Family newborn was born successfully, they would be betrothed to the newborn on the Zhu Family side.

As an alliance.

As self-preservation.

No one asked if those two children were willing.

In a place like Jianghan City, in a precarious situation like the one the three families were in, children became pieces on the Family chessboard before they were even born.

Night pressed upon the city.

That thirty-year-old Spirit King from the Wang Family was hosting a banquet at the largest tavern in the city tonight.

The banquet was brightly lit, filled with guests, and sounds of congratulations were everywhere.

Everyone could see that the prestige of the Wang Family was growing stronger and stronger.

Outside the tavern, the streets were quiet.

Further away, several high-level members of the Qin Family and the Zhu Family looked at each other from across a long street in the night.

No one spoke.

But they all knew they could not delay any longer.

The storm had already pressed down on the battlements of Jianghan City.

And the back residence of the Qin Family was also about to light up.