Projection of the Heavens: I prove my immortality through slaughter.

Deathly silence is the only keynote of this starry ruin.

Everywhere the eye could see was shattered. Colossal stellar debris, like pebbles crushed by an invisible giant hand, floated aimlessly in the cold void. The once-blazing cores had long since extinguished, leaving only jagged, rock-like shells, telling tales of glory and fall billions of years ago. Twisted metal beams, vaguely recognizable as the remains of some ancient civilization, like the skeleton of a colossal beast, frozen in eternal silence. Here, there was no light, no sound, only the eternal void and desolation.

Deep within these ruins, inside a fragment of a star comparable to a small continent, is an indescribable force field.

Lin Xuan sat cross-legged in the void, beneath him on a platform formed from the purest stellar essence. His black hair was loose, his face as handsome as ever, his eyes closed, long eyelashes casting faint shadows beneath them. However, the aura emanating from him was completely out of place in this desolate ruin; it was the pulsating energy of a cosmic storm brewing and about to erupt.

Within his body, the dantian and sea of ​​qi had long since vanished, replaced by a chaotic vortex swirling to its extreme and compressed to the limit. Eight incomparably brilliant Dao patterns, each imbued with the aura of different laws—Power, Star, Silence, Extinction, Life, Emptiness, Illusion, and Killing—like eight divine dragons, coiled around a golden core at the vortex's core, a nascent, restrained golden elixir, undergoing its final, and most perilous, tempering and fusion.

Ninth turn!

This is the ultimate realm of the Golden Core Dao. Throughout history, those who have achieved the Nine Revolutions have all been unparalleled figures who dominated an era, possessing the terrifying potential to be invincible among their peers and even fight beyond their level.

"Freeze!"

Lin Xuan silently chanted the Dao in his heart, his divine soul power like billions of threads, precisely controlling the eight Dao patterns, and fiercely imprinting their final original Dao essence into the core of his golden core.

"boom--!"

The first, earth-shattering roar, as if the heavens and earth had been created, did not originate from the outside world, but from the depths of his soul. His golden core trembled violently, the eight Dao patterns on its surface perfectly merging, transforming into naturally formed, purplish-gold patterns imbued with the ultimate principles of the universe, spreading throughout the core. The color of the golden core also changed from its previous dazzling brilliance to a deep, restrained depth, as if condensing a vast starry sky into a small space, slowly rotating and emanating a majestic Daoist aura of eternity, immortality, and perfection.

The Nine-Turn Golden Elixir is complete!

However, at the very moment when the Golden Elixir was achieved and the Great Dao was initially established, the calamity arrived as expected.

What arrives first is not the external thunder and storm, but the inner demons that originate from the deepest part of the heart.

Lin Xuan felt the scene before him suddenly blur, the surrounding starry ruins vanishing instantly, replaced by a modern metropolis with its dazzling lights and bustling crowds. He, dressed in an inexpensive suit and holding a resume, walked dejectedly out of a skyscraper. His phone rang; the receiver carried the landlord's roar demanding rent and his parents' concerned yet worried inquiries.

"Come back. Don't struggle in the big city anymore. Find a stable job..."

"Lin Xuan, your sales performance this month is at the bottom again!"

"Accept your fate, you're just an ordinary person..."

Countless clamorous voices, countless familiar or unfamiliar faces, filled with mockery, pity, disappointment, and indifference, engulfed him like a tide. These were his memories of struggling to survive as one of the masses before his transmigration, the deep-seated fear of ordinariness, failure, and powerlessness buried deep within his soul.

If one's Dao heart is even slightly flawed, one will sink into despair, believing that the magnificent journey of cultivating immortality is nothing but a dream, and that the mundane and arduous present world is the only reality.

But after a brief moment of confusion, Lin Xuan's eyes instantly regained their clarity, colder than the stars and deeper than the abyss.

"Worldly ties are severed; all mortal concerns are but illusion. My path lies above the stars, at the pinnacle of eternity!"

He didn't even wave his hand; with a mere thought, the bustling city and noisy crowd before him shattered and vanished like a mirage. The inner demon tribulation was broken!

Next comes the Star Tribulation.

The external void remained deathly silent, but in Lin Xuan's perception and even at the level of his physical body, it was as if he had been instantly thrown into the core of the most violent star in the universe.

His left side felt as if he had fallen into the interior of a dying star, where endless "Star Extinction Flames" arose out of nowhere, scorching his flesh, bones, meridians, and even his soul. It was a destructive energy powerful enough to reduce all things to nothingness and shatter the laws of nature, aiming to burn away every trace of his existence.

His right side, however, seemed to have been thrown into the core of a newborn star. The "Star Birth Source Force," like a massive amount of liquid metal, frantically squeezed and permeated him, trying to assimilate him and make him part of the star's growth. This power was boundless and full of creative ferocity, enough to burst any being that dared to peek into its mysteries.

The extreme torment of ice and fire, the double crushing force of destruction and creation.

On one half of Lin Xuan's body, charred cracks appeared, like porcelain about to shatter, while the other half was swollen and on the verge of cracking, with a terrifying light, like the nascent light of a star core, shimmering beneath his skin. His brows were slightly furrowed, and fine beads of sweat seeped from his forehead, but his seated posture remained as steady as a rock.

"I am the universe myself, why should I fear the birth and death of stars?"

He circulated the Nine Revolutions Golden Core Dao, and the newly formed purple-gold golden core within his body suddenly accelerated its rotation. An invisible suction force erupted, and the Annihilation Flame, which was enough to incinerate a Nascent Soul, and the Birth Source Power, which was enough to crush a Deity Transformation cultivator, were forcibly drawn into the golden core by him, like a whale sucking in water.

The purple-gold Dao patterns on the Golden Core lit up, like the veins of a star, rapidly refining and purifying this violent energy, transforming it into the purest primordial elixir energy to nourish itself. The charred and swollen body recovered at a speed visible to the naked eye, the new skin shimmering with a jade-like warmth, yet containing a luster more resilient than star metal.

The Star Tribulation became his best resource for refining his golden core and tempering his divine body!

He didn't know how much time had passed—perhaps a moment, perhaps ten thousand years. As the last wisp of stellar tribulation energy was absorbed and refined by the golden core, Lin Xuan suddenly opened his eyes.

"Buzz—"

An invisible wave, centered on him, spread outwards in all directions like ripples on water.

This is not sound, but divine thought! It is the infinite expansion of the realm of perception brought about by the essential transformation of the soul after a leap in the level of life!

Wherever divine sense passed, the cold fragments of stars became "clear," their internal mineral structures and energy veins appearing as if on the lines of a palm. The remains of ancient civilizations became "vivid," their mottled engravings and broken runes seemingly telling tales of the past. The energy turbulence and spatial traps hidden in the folds of the void also became "visible."

The divine thought continued to spread, transcending this star ruin and covering a wider expanse of the starry sky.

A desolate star field, with three long-extinguished white dwarf stars orbiting a belt of stardust, came within the range of divine perception. This was the first star field.

The divine thought did not falter in the slightest, continuing forward. It swept past a nebula that was giving birth to a new star; the brilliant colors and violent energy sketched a magnificent picture in the divine thought. This was the second star field.

Continue forward! Traversing a "galaxy" formed by a broken asteroid belt, they sensed faint signs of life on several larger fragments, seemingly the habitat of some exiled race. Finally, the edge of their divine sense touched the edge of the third star field, where a robust star was erupting with solar prominences.

Three star systems!

Its scope was so vast that all the astronomical figures of his past life seemed pale and powerless. Within this scope, all matter, all energy, and all spiritual fluctuations, strong or weak, were like reflections projected into the sea of ​​his mind, crystal clear.

This is the power of the newly formed Nine-Turn Golden Elixir and the initial emergence of divine consciousness!

Lin Xuan slowly rose to his feet. There was no dazzling light or terrifying aura emanating from him; he simply stood there quietly, yet he seemed to have become the absolute core of this starry wasteland, and even those three vast star fields. His dark eyes were deep, as if nebulae were being created and destroyed, and the universe was undergoing cycles, more distant than the ancient starry sky.

He slightly raised his hand, feeling the immense power contained within the Nine-Turn Golden Pill in his body—a power capable of eclipsing the stars and causing all things to tremble. Compared to his Foundation Establishment stage, it was more than a million times stronger. It was a fundamental leap, a transformation from "utilizing" the rules to beginning to "touch" and even "influence" them.

"Power..." he murmured to himself. His voice did not travel in the absolute vacuum of the ruins, but it resonated with the laws around him. "This is the foundation for pursuing the Great Dao and controlling one's own destiny."

His gaze swept across the boundless starry sky. In his divine sense, he sensed several places within those three star regions emanating subtle yet powerful energy reactions, seemingly disturbed by his recent attainment of the Golden Core, his tribulation, and the sweep of his divine sense. Cold divine sense tentatively touched him, carrying scrutiny and apprehension.

Lin Xuan's eyes were indifferent, without the slightest ripple.

He knew that with the end of his seclusion, the peaceful days were over. This Xuan Tian Star Domain, and even the vast myriad worlds beyond, would be stirred up with new waves because of his unparalleled Nine-Turn Golden Pill.

"It's time to establish the Dao Xuan Sect." He took a step forward, and his figure disappeared from the depths of the star ruins. The next moment, he appeared in the void at the edge of the ruins, his gaze fixed on a life star with relatively abundant spiritual energy in the distance—Kunwu Star.