Qin Renhuang just became an immortal, and you told me this is the prehistoric time

Even the Great Emperor dares not easily set foot in this forbidden land; how could it be a place where some unknown junior can run wild?!

Ying Xuan listened to the Stone Emperor's threats and "conditions," and couldn't help but chuckle. He then drank the remaining Enlightenment Tea in his cup in one gulp, casually placing the cup on the stone table with a crisp sound.

He leaned forward slightly, placed his hands on the table with his hands crossed, and calmly swept his gaze over the Stone Emperor and the Eternal Heavenly Venerable, his tone still that infuriatingly condescending.

"Guarantee not to harvest humans? Ha... Do I need your guarantees?"

He paused, then slowly and deliberately stated his conditions, as if stating something perfectly obvious.

"Whether you want me to let you leave this 'cage', or... if you want me to stop for the time being, that's not impossible."

The Stone Emperor's eyes narrowed, and even the lifeless eyelids of the Eternal Heavenly Venerable seemed to twitch slightly.

"It's very simple."

Ying Xuan held up one finger.

"First, hand over all the cultivation techniques, secret arts, and ancient books collected by your Undying Mountain, especially the cultivation insights and understandings related to the Sendai Secret Realm and above."

He then extended a second finger.

"Second, take out all the rare and precious materials, divine ingredients and immortal gold from your treasure trove, especially the seeds, roots and stems of various spiritual roots and herbs, or living plants."

He leaned back against the stone chair, crossed his legs, picked up another spirit fruit, took a bite, and chewed, speaking clearly though his mouth was slurred.

"As long as you obediently comply and satisfy me... today, I will no longer refine your Undying Mountain, nor will I attack either of you. How about it? This deal is much more worthwhile than your empty 'guarantees,' isn't it?"

This is no longer negotiation, it's blatant robbery! And right in front of the two masters of the forbidden zone, they're robbing them of their entire fortune!

The aura emanating from the Stone Emperor erupted, scorching and distorting the surrounding air. He stared intently at Ying Xuan, as if he wanted to tear him to pieces with his gaze. Hand over all their accumulated wealth? What difference was there between that and simply demolishing the Undying Mountain and leaving them penniless? That was worse than killing them!

Just as Shi Huang was about to lose his temper and was about to risk everything to try and fight to the death,

The Celestial Venerable of Immortality, who had remained silent like rotten wood, finally moved.

He stood up from the tree stump very slowly, as if every movement had exhausted his strength.

The black turtle in my hand had disappeared without me noticing.

He hunched over, slowly walking step by step to a spot slightly in front of the Stone Emperor, where he stopped. His gray robes fluttered without wind, and the chilling, deathly aura grew even stronger, as if carrying the decaying smell of an ancient tomb.

He raised his head, looking at Ying Xuan with his cloudy eyes, which seemed to be covered by a white film yet could devour all light, and then slowly, long... sighed.

The sigh was filled with weariness and a complex emotion that was hard to describe.

"Young friend... you really are quite aggressive."

The voice of the Celestial Venerable of Longevity was dry and hoarse, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

"It has been a long time since I have encountered such an interesting situation."

He paused, as if organizing his thoughts or recalling something, before continuing slowly, each word carrying immense weight.

"I... am indeed old. So old that... I've almost forgotten the warmth of the sun, forgotten the breath of vibrant life."

"But it is precisely because I am getting old that I am even more eager to wait for an opportunity."

"An opportunity... that might allow me to stop living like this."

His gaze seemed to pierce through Ying Xuan and reach into the distant void. His tone became unusually calm, even carrying a hint of eerie sincerity.

"Before that... in order to survive and wait for that opportunity... I am willing to pay any price."

The words of the Celestial Venerable of Immortality, which seemed sincere but actually concealed endless years of accumulation and complex calculations, still echoed in the air. However, the Stone Emperor's body, which was like a demon god, suddenly trembled. The dark golden aura of his blood and qi flickered, showing his intense struggle and weighing of his inner thoughts.

Finally, he spoke, his voice resolute and unwavering, yet upon closer listening, one could detect a faint but undeniable hint of weakness and compromise.

"enough!"

The Stone Emperor's voice, like the clash of metal, interrupted the long, meaningful sigh of the Eternal Heavenly Venerable.

"I, the Emperor, stepped into the forbidden zone of life, severing my own life force to prolong my existence until now, all in the hope of waiting for the once-in-a-millennium path to open, to seek a sliver of true immortality and transcendence! Before that, I absolutely do not wish for any unforeseen events to deplete my already limited immortal essence and lifespan!"

He suddenly turned his head and stared intently at Ying Xuan, his eyes filled with a mixture of anger and resentment.

"It was my carelessness! I never expected that you, a junior, could refine such a top-level formation of such scale and level to the point that it is as easy to use as a natal magic weapon, and even isolate the world from the heavens and earth, forming your own realm!"
"If I had known this earlier, the moment your formation was deployed, I would have immediately left the core of the Undying Mountain and ascended to the highest level outside, forcefully bombarding it from the outside with the laws of the Imperial Dao. No matter how profound your formation is, it might not be able to completely block the full-force attack of a peak Imperial Dao expert! Unfortunately..."

Shi Huang's voice lowered, carrying a hint of barely concealed annoyance and gravity.

“One wrong step leads to another. Now I am trapped in this array cage of yours, isolated from heaven and earth, and even leaving has become a luxury. I cannot even sense the complete Great Dao outside if I want to achieve ultimate sublimation…”

His words, seemingly an explanation and an emphasis on his "mistake," were actually a subtle message to Ying Xuan.

It's not that I have no trump cards, it's just that you've restricted them with your strange methods. At the same time, it also reveals a piece of information—being trapped in the formation is indeed an extremely disadvantageous situation for ancient supreme beings like them who rely on the laws of heaven and earth.

Ying Xuan listened calmly, his fingers lightly tapping the stone tabletop. His face remained expressionless, but inwardly he sneered. Showing weakness? Explaining? It was nothing more than an attempt to increase bargaining power, or… stall for time to find a weakness? Unfortunately, faced with overwhelming strength and home-field advantage, these petty tricks were utterly meaningless.

Just as the Stone Emperor finished speaking, the immortal Celestial Venerable, who resembled a dried corpse, moved. He didn't say anything more, but slowly raised his withered, claw-like hands covered with black age spots.

The next moment, a scene appeared that made Ying Xuan raise an eyebrow slightly.

Before the Celestial Venerable of Longevity, the void rippled like water.

One by one, objects exuding ancient, obscure, magnificent, or strange auras were slowly "taken" out from under his seemingly empty gray robe, or rather, from the secret realm of the sea of ​​suffering within his body, as if by magic.

First, there were some strangely shaped, unidentifiable fragments of metal, exuding an aura of toughness or heaviness. Some were dull and lifeless, while others still shimmered with a faint luster of laws, clearly indicating their extraordinary origins.

Next came several pieces of animal bones and hides of different colors and sizes, each engraved with strange and twisted patterns that looked like ghostly scribbles.

Those patterns were not engraved later, but rather grew naturally, carrying a primitive and wild sense of law.

Then there was a small section of an ancient tree branch, charred black as if struck by lightning, yet still brimming with an astonishing vitality, and several pieces of jade slips and gold silk, dark in color but warm in texture, clearly having endured countless years, with densely packed ancient characters or patterns on them.

Then, there were countless tiny, faint points of light, each brimming with vitality and fluctuating with different attributes! Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be countless seeds of various exotic flowers, rare herbs, spiritual roots, and divine medicines! Some were like grains of rice, some like pearls, and some were even like a wisp of light.

These seeds have clearly been nurtured by him for a long time with the essence of his own life in the sea of ​​suffering, maintaining their peak activity. Once planted in suitable spiritual soil and given sufficient spiritual energy, they will immediately take root, sprout, and grow rapidly!
The sheer variety and sheer quantity of these creatures are astonishing! It's likely that only an ancient being like the Celestial Venerable of Immortality, who has lived for countless millennia and dedicated himself to the study of immortality, could have accumulated such a terrifying fortune.

Finally, there were some magical artifacts and treasures that shone with precious light and varied in strength, and even a few embryonic magical treasures that were not yet fully formed but already possessed initial power.

The Celestial Venerable of Longevity silently took things out one by one.

He has lived for far too long, spanning more than one era, and the wealth he has accumulated is like a moving ancient treasure trove. Although most of his possessions are no longer of use to him, or are "byproducts" and "collections" from his research on the path to immortality, their overall value is enough to drive any holy land or ancient family mad!
As he continued to take things out, the core area of ​​the Undying Mountain, which had become flat and empty after being refined by the Heavenly Gang and Earthly Fiend Array, actually grew back into a small mountain made up of various treasures, materials, books, and seeds! The treasures shimmered, the spiritual energy was mixed, and the aura of the fragments of laws intertwined, forming a hazy halo.

Ying Xuan's divine sense had already scanned this "treasure mountain" inside and out, just like the most sophisticated scanner.

He was also slightly surprised by the abundance of the Celestial Venerable of Immortality's "stock".

However, he remained outwardly calm, though a thought flickered in his mind.

"receive."

Without a sound, the mountain of treasures, along with the soil beneath it, vanished without a trace, as if they had never existed. Naturally, they had been absorbed by Ying Xuan into the independent, time-stagnant "Stone Gate Space" deep within his primordial spirit.

With so many miscellaneous items, he simply didn't have time to organize them now. He planned to take them back to the Qin Dynasty world and then slowly sort, classify, and utilize them.

However, in the instant his divine sense swept over her, Ying Xuan's heartbeat quickened slightly for a moment.

It wasn't because of the vast amount of seeds or the seemingly precious scriptures and artifacts, but because of those few pieces of animal bones and hides engraved with strange runes!
Those runes… he recognized them! Or rather, he found similar traces in the fragments of his inherited memories! They weren't the characters or Dao patterns of the era of the Shrouding the Heavens world; their origins were far more ancient, closer to the manifestation of the laws of the very origin of heaven and earth! They were inherited items from the "Perfect World," which was closely related to the Shrouding the Heavens world and might even be one of its sources!

"The rudimentary runes of the laws of nature..."

Ying Xuan was shaken.

These runes are themselves fragments of the laws of heaven and earth, and are the supreme treasures of cultivation!
Although the laws of the world of Shrouding the Heavens are now broken and declining, their inheritance was clearly not completely severed in the more ancient and chaotic eras. These laws fell into the hands of certain cultivators with top-tier comprehension, becoming the best "textbooks" and "keys" for them to forge their own paths and climb to the pinnacle! The value of these things far surpasses that of specific resources! They are the carriers of the "Dao"!

This might be the biggest unexpected gain he made on this trip, besides plundering resources and testing his strength!

Thoughts raced through Ying Xuan's mind, but his face remained calm.

He shifted his gaze from the Celestial Venerable of Immortality to the Stone Emperor beside him, whose face was ashen and whose breathing was erratic.

"He's done. It's your turn."

Ying Xuan's tone was calm, yet carried an unquestionable commanding air. At the same time, a hint of eager fighting spirit flashed undisguisedly in his eyes.

Since cultivating the Heaven-Covering Technique, especially after his physical body broke through the Sea of ​​Wheels, the Dao Palace, and touched the Four Extremes, the instinctive urge to use his powerful physique to crush, collide, and fight to his heart's content has been popping up from time to time.

Although the Stone Emperor before him was isolated from heaven and earth by the formation and his senses were restricted, his physical essence was still at the level of an ancient supreme being. His blood and qi were as vast as the sea, and his physical strength was absolutely at the peak of this world! He was the perfect opponent to test the power of his own Heaven-Covering Technique's physical body!
However, the thought only flashed through my mind.

Ying Xuan immediately suppressed it.

This is his home turf, where he has a huge advantage, so there's no need to risk close-quarters combat.

Moreover, he could clearly sense that within this array space, each of the 108 star islands was like an independent Great Saint-level pressure source, locking onto the Stone Emperor and the Eternal Heavenly Venerable.

This is equivalent to 108 beings with strength approaching that of a "pre-ultimate sublimation Stone Emperor" simultaneously exerting pressure on them! Moreover, this pressure also contains the power of stars, not just simple physical or energy oppression, making it even more difficult to resist.

In this environment, even with the Stone Emperor's formidable physical strength, he could probably only unleash six or seven tenths of his full power, and he would also have to constantly be distracted by the omnipresent suppression of the array and the erosion of the star power. On the other hand, I can use the array to amplify and stack my attack power.

"In future battles, especially against these ancient monsters who have lived for countless years, we should rely on formations to crush them and never give them a chance to get close."

This time we benefited from the other party's carelessness and information asymmetry; we might not have such a good opportunity next time.

Ying Xuan silently warned himself, completely suppressing the fighting impulse that arose from the surge in power.

Looking at Ying Xuan's calm yet commanding gaze, and then glancing at the silent and seemingly even more dejected Changsheng Tianzun beside him, Shi Huang's chest heaved violently a few times before finally squeezing out a single word through gritted teeth.

"……it is good!"

He also raised his hand, and the light of the Bitter Sea appeared and disappeared as he began to take things out.

However, compared to the vast "treasure trove" of the Eternal Celestial Venerable, the items taken out by the Stone Emperor appeared rather meager in both quantity and variety. (End of Chapter)