Primordial Era: Reborn Kong Xuan, Steady Cultivation

Just as Kong Xuan concealed his aura, harnessed his escape light, and quietly flew towards the northwest of the prehistoric continent, a grand and extremely ostentatious procession of carriages suddenly appeared at the horizon where the sea and sky met, slowly moving across the shimmering sea.

Looking into the distance, one could see that those leading the way were rows of shrimp soldiers and crab generals, their armor gleaming, carrying flags, beating drums, and sounding conch shells, stirring up waves.

Even more impressive were the patrolling sea demons, wielding steel forks, their imposing figures moving among them, shouting commands and maintaining order. A display of the elite aquatic tribes.

Behind the ceremonial guard, the most eye-catching sights were five magnificent and extraordinary dragons with gleaming scales!

These five dragons are of five colors: blue, red, yellow, white, and black. Each one is a thousand feet long, with flowing whiskers, eyes like bright lamps, and demonic clouds swirling around them, exuding a powerful yet docile aura.

They are not soaring freely, but rather carrying jade yokes on their shoulders, pulling a massive and breathtakingly luxurious carriage!

The carriage was hundreds of feet tall, and its entire body seemed to be made of some kind of deep-sea divine jade and ten-thousand-year-old agarwood, with carved beams and painted rafters, extremely exquisite.

The vehicle is decorated with various auspicious cloud, wave, and mythical beast patterns, and is inlaid with countless pearls, jade, coral, giant clam shells and other rare treasures, which reflect dazzling brilliance under the sunlight.

The carriage walls were draped with sheer, gossamer-silk curtains, as light as cicada wings and shimmering with light. As the sea breeze blew, the curtains fluttered slightly, revealing glimpses of graceful mermaid women and clam spirits attending to them. The sounds of string and wind instruments drifted out, occasionally accompanied by melodious singing and graceful dancing.

Such a magnificent and extravagant procession is something that no ordinary aquatic demon king could possess.

Kong Xuan glanced at it and immediately made a judgment: this must be an important figure from the East Sea Dragon Palace on an inspection tour!

It's just unknown whether the person sitting in that carriage is a dragon prince or the Dragon King himself.

But in any case, this has nothing to do with him, nor is it a cause and effect he wants to be involved in!

Almost instinctively, the moment he saw the outline of the vehicle, he changed the direction of his escape without hesitation!

He no longer followed the original route, but instead lowered his body even further, reduced his escape light to almost nothing, and sped away into the depths of the distant sea, which was at a large angle to the direction in which the Dragon Palace procession was moving!

At this moment, inside that enormous, luxurious carriage frame, pulled by five-colored dragons, lies a hidden world.

The space is far more expansive than what can be seen from the outside, and it is arranged like a miniature palace in an underwater dragon palace.

The ground was covered with warm jade, the walls were inlaid with luminous pearls, and the air was filled with the calming scent of deep-sea sandalwood and the mellow aroma of spiritual fruits and immortal wine.

On a large bed carved from ancient jade and colorful coral, a young man in fine clothes leaned against the wall.

His face was handsome but pale, as if he hadn't seen the sun for a long time. He had a pair of crystal-clear, jade-like, beautifully forked dragon horns on his forehead. He was none other than Ao Guang, the eldest prince of the East Sea Dragon Palace.

Ao Guang sat languidly, casually toying with a crystal glass in his left hand. The amber-colored spirit wine inside rippled slightly as the carriage frame swayed.

He took a sip of wine, his gaze piercing through the gap in the silk curtains to the rare view of the vast sea and sky outside. A complex, enigmatic smile played on his lips, a smile that seemed both wistful and self-deprecating.

"It is a good thing that the Sage Hongjun is lecturing on the Great Dao of Hunyuan in Zixiao Palace."

Otherwise, how could the top powerful beings and reclusive old monsters of the primordial world have gathered outside the heavens, with no time to spare for anything else?

"I fear I'll have to remain cooped up in that underwater crystal palace for countless more eons before I can find such an opportunity to come to the surface and breathe some fresh air, to see the true light of the sky and the shadows of the clouds."

As the eldest prince of the Dragon Palace, Ao Guang's cultivation has reached the peak of the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm. Looking at the current dragon race, apart from his father, the East Sea Dragon King Ao Qi, he is the one with the most profound cultivation.

However, this cultivation and revered status did not bring him supreme power and freedom, but rather a heavier and more inescapable shackle.

The reason he dared to patrol the East China Sea so ostentatiously at this moment was precisely because he had seized this rare opportunity.

Nowadays, almost all the famous and powerful innate deities and great beings in the prehistoric world have gone to the Great Dao opportunity at Zixiao Palace. There are very few beings left in the prehistoric world who have the strength to disregard the prestige of the Dragon Palace.

Otherwise, given his status as the Crown Prince of the East Sea Dragon Palace, he would never dare to step out of the sea so easily!

The reason is nothing more than the word "karma".

Since the beginning of the Dragon-Han Calamity, the three races of Dragon, Phoenix, and Qilin fought a great war that devastated the prehistoric world, shattered the mountains and rivers, and severely damaged the three races themselves, causing their fortunes to plummet. Even worse, the Heavenly Dao unleashed boundless karma, which entangled the bloodline and primordial spirit of every descendant of the three races!

As the former overlords, the dragon race bears particularly heavy karmic burdens.

As the eldest prince of the East Sea Dragon Palace, Ao Guang was of noble status and pure bloodline. Therefore, the dragon karma he was born with was far greater, purer, and more difficult to resolve than that of ordinary dragon offspring!

He knew all too well what the immense karma he carried meant to certain cultivators.

That is the walking, urgently needed harvest of Heavenly Merit!

For many powerful beings in the primordial world who pursue merit to improve their realm, refine magical treasures, and resolve karmic debts, the heavenly merit feedback they can obtain from killing a dragon prince with such profound innate karma, especially a direct descendant of the Dragon Palace with pure karma, is probably a thousand times greater than that of ordinary good deeds!

Therefore, since his birth and the beginning of his understanding of the world, he has been strictly forbidden from leaving the area protected by the Dragon Palace's protective array, let alone setting foot on the sea.

The ocean floor, though vast, is ultimately a cage.

Just as Ao Guang was immersed in his complex emotions about his own situation and the future of the dragon clan, a series of rapid sounds of water breaking and armor clashing came from outside the carriage.

Immediately afterwards, the curtain was abruptly thrown open, and a patrolling sea yaksha general, wielding a heavy three-pronged fork, exuding a fierce aura and possessing the cultivation of an early-stage Taiyi Golden Immortal, rushed in. He knelt on one knee, his voice loud yet tinged with tension:

"Report! Your Highness, we report from the patrol ahead that the aura of the Phoenix Clan has been detected in the sea 30,000 li away, suspected to be spies!"

"A Phoenix Clan spy?" Upon hearing this, Ao Guang's previously languid expression hardened slightly, and a sharp glint flashed in his eyes.

He put down the crystal glass, and with his divine sense following the direction pointed by the Yaksha, he easily traversed tens of thousands of miles and locked onto the figure that was rapidly fleeing, yet whose residual aura had still been detected by the Dragon Palace's patrol of the sea.

It was Kong Xuan who had just decisively dodged and was now fleeing at full speed!

Almost at the same instant that Ao Guang's divine sense swept over, Kong Xuan felt a divine sense as heavy as an abyss, carrying a faint dragon's might and the oppressive feeling of a peak Taiyi Golden Immortal, like an invisible shackle, precisely landing on him!

This lock-on wasn't a full-force attack; it was more like a condescending scrutiny and confirmation. However, the level of power it contained far exceeded his current mid-stage Golden Immortal realm!

"We've been discovered! It's the dragon clan in that carriage!" Kong Xuan's heart sank, and all hope vanished.

Now that he had been locked on, continuing to conceal himself would only make him appear guilty. He immediately stopped suppressing his escape light, and five-colored divine light surged around his body. His mid-stage Golden Immortal power erupted without reservation, transforming into a dazzling five-colored rainbow. Instead of meandering, he pushed his speed to the limit and fled for his life towards the deep outer sea, far away from the Dragon Palace procession and the mainland!