Perfection: The Eastern Emperor Bell manifests, I am the Golden Crow Heavenly Emperor

Chapter 111 The Current State of the Immortal Realm
Time, in this forgotten ancient realm, flows silently like a long, profound river.

For the Immortal Realm beyond the Boundary Sea, and for those four dormant Dark Quasi-Immortal Emperors, hundreds of thousands of years might just be a fleeting moment.

The shadow of the Great Sacrifice continues to spread, and the embers of resistance flicker intermittently.

But for the beings buried deep within the core of this ancient world, in that faint halo of chaotic light, these hundreds of thousands of years have been a rebirth journey that is a race against death, a struggle against annihilation, and a journey so slow as to be almost stagnant.

The ten thousandth year.

The chaotic halo remained dim, almost blending into the surrounding ancient rock formations.

Inside, Lu Xuan's remaining divine soul imprint was like a candle flickering in the wind, only held together by the anchoring effect of the nameless quasi-immortal emperor's faint true spirit imprint.

The cracks on the Twin Fruit showed no signs of healing; on the contrary, due to the extreme depletion of its essence, it tended to shatter further.

The Chaos Bell fell silent, as still as a dead object, offering no further response.

The rate at which it absorbs external energy is so slow as to be negligible, barely enough to maintain its near-collapse and prevent it from worsening.

This was the darkest and most desperate period. Only the indomitable will in the nameless spirit, like a cold spark, provided a faint sense of direction in Lu Xuan's consciousness as he was about to completely sink into despair.

The 50,000th year.

The changes began to occur in extremely subtle ways.

The nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor's annihilated true spirit imprint, after tens of thousands of years of close contact and resonance with Lu Xuan's broken origin, began to truly integrate.

It was not about devouring or replacing, but rather a kind of complementarity and nourishment at the level of Dao. That pure, desolate meaning aimed at darkness, like a special catalyst, began to activate the fierce fighting spirit and destructive power from the era of the Fallen Emperor contained within Lu Xuan's own Chaotic Battle Immortal Dao.

These two forces, both possessing the attribute of termination yet completely different, produced an extremely slow chemical reaction at the core of the Dao Fruit, which was on the verge of shattering.

At the very finest edges of the cracks on the Twin Dao Fruit, a faint, grayish-golden luster began to emanate, a sign that the Dao of Annihilation and the Dao of Battle Immortals were beginning to attempt to combine and repair themselves. The speed at which it absorbed external energy increased slightly.

The 100,000th year.

The repair has entered the early, visible stage.

The chaotic halo brightened slightly, though it was still faint, it no longer gave the impression that it might go out at any moment.

At the core of the double-path fruit, a new, tiny origin point begins to form.

This origin is no longer pure chaos, nor pure fighting spirit, nor pure annihilation, but a strange origin that is gray and seemingly able to devour all light, yet contains a bit of indomitable golden light, produced after the initial fusion of the three.

Like a greedy black hole, it began to absorb the pure, unpolluted primordial energy deep within the core of the ancient world, as well as the sparse yet eternally existing fragments of laws that permeated the ancient world, at a speed several times faster than before.

Lu Xuan's consciousness awoke slightly from complete silence, and he could vaguely perceive the slow, maddening changes that were happening to him.

The 200,000th year.

The reshaping has begun.

That strange primordial point gradually grew stronger, and began to beat rhythmically like a heart.

With each pulse, it pumps out wisps of gray-gold energy. These energy flows are no longer just repairing cracks, but beginning to attempt to reshape.

The first thing to be reshaped was an extremely illusory, almost transparent skeletal frame. Its material was neither gold nor jade, but presented a chaotic dark gold color. Subtle runes of annihilation and Dao patterns of battle immortals flowed naturally on the surface of the skeleton.

Then came the rudimentary form of the veins, spreading across the skeletal framework like tree roots. What flowed within them was no longer blood, but that gray-gold primordial energy.

Lu Xuan's consciousness became clearer, and he could see the process internally, and feel the faint but real new power growing deep within his weakness.

He began to be able to actively guide the energy absorption and remodeling process, although the efficiency was still low, the initiative was gradually returning.

The 300,000th year.

The restructuring process is accelerating.

The bones solidify, the meridians connect, and the illusory images of the five internal organs begin to condense and take shape in the chest and abdominal cavities. Although still illusory, they have already acquired preliminary form and function.

Flesh and blood began to grow; it was a special body that was directly transformed from the origin and contained the three Daoist principles of chaos, fighting spirit, and annihilation.

A complete, albeit still ethereal, energy body, marked with both old and new Dao traces, began to take shape.

Lu Xuan's divine soul imprint and the nameless quasi-immortal emperor's true spirit imprint merged even more closely at the core of this newly formed body—the newly condensed Immortal Platform—as if becoming the common soul core of this body.

His perception increased significantly, and he began to vaguely sense some things about this ancient world—a world with extremely ancient and solid laws, seemingly damaged by an unimaginable war, with relatively thin spiritual energy, but deep within which lurked some powerful and obscure aura.

Four hundred thousand years.

The energy body solidified completely, transforming into a true Dao body!
No longer an illusory light and shadow, but a brand-new imperial body with a tangible feel and the ability to bear immense power!

This imperial body had a healthy bronze skin tone, yet a faint, chaotic gray-gold luster flowed beneath it.

The muscle lines are not exaggerated, but they contain explosive power, and every inch of flesh is engraved with subtle battle immortal Dao patterns.
On the bones, the runes of annihilation are like natural imprints, deep and restrained.

His appearance returned to normal, but in addition to his former determination and sharpness, his brows now held a sense of age-old vicissitudes and an inner, seemingly desolate quality that could bury everything.

The cracks in the dual Dao Fruits have healed to about 70-80%, and because they have been infused with the nameless Dao of Annihilation and have undergone the extreme tempering on the edge of life and death for hundreds of thousands of years, they have become more condensed and profound than before they were injured!
Although his power has not yet returned to its peak, his understanding of the realm, his comprehension of the Great Dao, and especially his cognition of opposites such as "darkness," "end," and "annihilation" have reached an unprecedented level.

The 500,000th year.

Strength began to recover rapidly.

The newly formed imperial body was like a bottomless pit, frantically devouring the energy of the ancient world's core and the stellar power projected from even more distant starry skies.

The two fruits have completely healed and completed a preliminary, deeper fusion.

Now, it is difficult to clearly distinguish between the Chaos Dao Fruit and the Battle Immortal Dao Fruit. They are more like a brand-new Dao Fruit with gray-gold color and three strange phenomena intertwined and flowing inside: chaotic evolution, war and conquest, and epochal annihilation!

The Chaos Bell remained dormant deep within its origin, but Lu Xuan could sense that its connection with his newly formed origin, which had merged with the three Dao principles, seemed to have become closer and more natural.

His strength has not only fully recovered to the peak of the supreme giant before his injury, but also, because of this experience of breaking through and rebuilding, and merging with the Dao of Annihilation, he has faintly touched the bottleneck to a higher level. The barrier leading to the Quasi-Immortal Emperor has become clearer than ever before, and also... thinner than ever before! From the six hundred thousand years ago to the present.

Lu Xuan had already broken through from the depths of the earth's core and was hiding in a remote and chaotic place in this ancient realm.

He no longer needed to deliberately go into seclusion. His daily breathing and interaction with the ancient laws of this ancient realm were slowly but steadily solidifying his foundation and accumulating the power to break through the final barrier.

He was like a silent observer, wandering on the edge of this ancient realm, learning about its history, perceiving its current state, and also noticing the ancient beings lurking deep within the realm, some sleeping, some dormant.

He even spotted several figures from afar that resembled powerful natives of this realm, their auras strange yet powerful, seemingly different from the cultivation systems of the Immortal Realm and the Boundary Sea.

Hundreds of thousands of years of silence and healing not only cured the fatal wounds inflicted by the Azure Emperor, but also completed a fundamental rebirth and sublimation.

The true spirit imprint of the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor did not disappear, but was deeply imprinted on his new Dao Fruit and the core of his soul, like the most precious inheritance and partner. The profound meaning of the Annihilation Heavenly Technique, the experience of fighting against darkness, and that eternal obsession contained therein have all become part of Lu Xuan's own Great Dao.

Now, his aura is completely concealed, and he walks through the ancient mountains and forests like an ordinary traveler.

But if necessary, the power of the Chaos Battle Immortal, which has been dormant for hundreds of thousands of years, and the newly fused power of the Annihilation Dao will surely be earth-shattering!
He looked up at the gray, seemingly starless sky of the ancient realm, his gaze seemingly piercing through the barriers of the world and once again falling upon the vast and dangerous boundary sea.

"It's time to go back."

The waves of the border sea still surge, swallowing up time and legends.

That vast void, where imperial wars once erupted, nameless beings perished, and alien realms were destroyed, is now covered by new chaos and a deeper aura of darkness.

The aftershocks of the Dark Ceremony have not completely subsided; instead, they seem to have entered a deeper and more secretive stage of brewing.

A faint, almost invisible gray streak of light, almost completely blending into the background radiation of the boundary sea, silently streaked across the dark void.

There was no violent tearing of space, no oppressive force that shook the laws, and it didn't even attract the slightest attention from the increasingly active dark sentinels wandering the edge of the boundary sea.

The gray light had a clear target—the Immortal Realm.

As it approached the barrier of the Immortal Realm, the light paused slightly, as if sensing something.

A moment later, it did not enter through any known, potentially monitored passage or crack, but rather in an extremely mysterious way, like water seeping into sand, briefly resonating with the laws of the Immortal Realm barrier itself, and then silently merging into it without causing the slightest ripple.

The Immortal Realm seemed even more... silent than when Lu Xuan left.

The high morale and rebellious spirit that were briefly ignited by his establishment of the "Chaos War Court" have now largely dissipated.

The sky was still high and the stars still twinkled, but an indescribable sense of oppression and unease always shrouded it.

The auras of many Immortal Kings who once responded to his call and were willing to fight against the darkness are now mostly lying dormant deep within their own dojos, their auras obscure, as if each has its own concerns and dares not easily reveal themselves.

Lu Xuan did not appear directly on the unfinished ruins of the Chaos War Court in the Central Heaven Domain, nor did he return to the ancestral land of the Golden Crow Clan.

He was like a true ghost, silently moving and observing the edge of the immortal realm, the desolate lands where laws were chaotic, and the ancient ruins that no one cared about.

He saw the broken stars, traces of past attacks by dark creatures or defeated alien troops.

He sensed some familiar auras of immortal kings mixed with extremely subtle, almost imperceptible traces of dark erosion—some might have been acquired during battle, while others... were not necessarily so.

He listened to the whispers carried on the wind by the lower-level cultivators and creatures, filled with confusion about the future, fear of the darkness, and speculation and disappointment about the "Emperor of the Land" being nowhere to be found for hundreds of thousands of years.

"really……"

Lu Xuan remained silent.

He was gone for too long, long enough for passion to cool, fear to grow, and for those with ulterior motives to infiltrate.

The source of darkness did not launch a large-scale attack on the Immortal Realm, perhaps because it adopted a more insidious strategy of erosion, division, and intimidation, allowing the Immortal Realm to disintegrate its fighting spirit on its own.

He felt no anger, only a cold clarity.

Having gone through hundreds of thousands of years of life and death, he is no longer the sharp-tongued individual who, upon his return, wanted to sweep across foreign lands with overwhelming force.

He knew all too well that a true catastrophe was far beyond the power of one person to avert, even though he was infinitely close to that level.

He needs to know more.

Several days later, he appeared outside the ancient palace of the Burning Lamp Immortal King, located on the edge of the Immortal Realm and eternally illuminated by the lamp of wisdom.

Without alerting anyone, he slipped in silently, like a shadow blending into the lamplight.

Inside the hall, the Ancient Immortal King Burning Lamp was deep in thought with his eyes closed, facing the flickering lamplight, the lamplight illuminating his increasingly solemn face.

As Lu Xuan's figure materialized beside the lamplight, the Burning Lamp Immortal King's body trembled almost imperceptibly, and he suddenly opened his eyes.

A look of disbelief flashed across his eyes, which then transformed into a complex mix of emotions—surprise, worry, and a sigh of relief.

"Fellow Daoist Lu...?"

The sound of the lamp being lit was slightly hoarse.
"You...you're finally back."

He didn't ask Lu Xuan how he returned, nor how badly he was injured. At their level, they could see through some things at a glance.

He could sense that Lu Xuan's aura was extremely refined and restrained, even making this ancient Immortal King feel an unfathomable chill and... a trace of desolate Dao charm that was different from the past.

"Fellow Daoist Ran Deng, it's been a long time."

Lu Xuan nodded slightly, his voice calm, "In the years I've been away, the Immortal Realm... has changed quite a bit."

Ran Deng gave a bitter laugh and waved his hand to set up layers of restrictions, isolating the inside from the outside.

"It's more than just a big deal... Since your disappearance, the Chaos War Court's discussions have been left unresolved. Although the darkness hasn't launched a full-scale invasion, its oppressive power constantly shrouds the Immortal Realm. Several Immortal Kings... are acting mysteriously, suspected of having connections with the darkness of the Boundary Sea. There are even rumors that dark envoys have secretly contacted certain powerful clans... People's hearts have been scattered."

(End of this chapter)