Lord of the Rending Stars

In the Seven Peaks Workshop of the Bing Character in the Forging Star Pavilion.

Qingyang's Time Shadow Beast true form slowly opened its eyes, already aware of the situation of the human true form with Venerable Guyi.

Before the Time Shadow Beast's true form, the Zhuochen Cauldron still hovered in the void, its hundreds-of-foot-long body remaining unmoved. The dark blue aura at the cauldron's core had become much more solid than it had been a few days ago, like a newly born star, quietly and gently emitting its faint light.

The Time Shadow Beast used its divine power to lift the halo, and the divine power surged into the Zhuochen Cauldron like a tide.

Qingyang no longer tried to tame, suppress, or even "refine" the Time Shadow Beast. Instead, he transmitted all of the Time Shadow Beast's perception of the Time-Space Flowing Gold's "Time Reversal" through the soul connection between the main body and the clone into the dark blue halo without missing a single detail.

That was the torrent at the beginning of the universe, the purest power of time, unrestrained by any laws or tamed by any path.

What Qingyang wanted to do was not to lock it in the palace, but to make the palace the riverbed through which it flowed.

Within the Zhuochen Cauldron, billions of stardust rearranged themselves along an ancient and unfamiliar trajectory, like stars in the night sky slowly piecing together a brand new star map under the guidance of an unnamed hand.

Qingyang closed his eyes slightly, trying to forget his identity as a weapon refiner and imagine himself as that river.

At this moment, in the main hall of Venerable Guyi, the true form of the Qingyang human race raised his hand, and the Time-Space Flowing Gold Ore emitted a deep humming sound like ancient thunder.

Venerable Guyi suddenly stood up, his eyes, which were like dry wells, bursting with an unbelievable light. At that moment, the Time Flowing Gold Ore seemed to be responding: it was not being suppressed, but responding voluntarily.

The countless streams of light no longer charged recklessly, but instead slowly wove together into intricate patterns along the spacetime laws seeping from Qingyang's palm. These patterns were neither those of any secret rune school familiar to Venerable Guyi, nor any existing structure recorded in the history of human weapon crafting.

That is Qingyang using time and space as its bones, and the flow of time as its spirit, to contain the Dao that has flowed for billions of years without ceasing, in a palace that is about to be born.

Venerable Guyi stared blankly at the gradually forming patterns of laws. He suddenly understood the reason for his five failures: "My path was too full and too biased!"

The Venerable Lonely City poured all his life's experience in weapon crafting into the palace he was to create, attempting to overwrite the essence of Time-Space Flowing Gold with his own will. But that was not resonance, it was conquest.

Time-Space Gold is a rare mineral from the beginning of the universe, and it disdains being conquered. Having understood the 'resonance' property of Time-Space Gold ore, Venerable Gu Yi breathed a sigh of relief and slowly sat back down on his meditation cushion.

A few days later, the Time-Space Gold in Qingyang's palm was no longer in the shape of a ore, but instead took the form of a palace, slowly rotating in his palm.

The palace was extremely small, no bigger than the palm of your hand, and completely transparent like solidified crystal. There were no carvings or decorations on the palace body, only countless streams of light flowing endlessly inside, as if trying to gather the entire river of time into the small palace.

The Venerable Lonely Village gazed at the emerging palace, his voice hoarse, "Is it complete?"

Qingyang did not answer directly, but instead looked at the miniature palace in his palm with a slight frown.

"It seems... there's just one last step left."

Qingyang said softly, "This palace has a river, flowing water, and space to accommodate the rushing water," he paused, "but no door."

Venerable Guyi was taken aback for a moment, then nodded. "Palace-type treasures are essentially 'realms,' and require a gate."

Qingyang agreed, "A realm must have a gate, not just a gate for people to enter and exit, but also a gate that allows this flowing spacetime law to freely enter and exit."

Qingyang looked at Venerable Guyi and said, "This palace is the culmination of your hard work, senior. How the door is opened should be decided by you, senior."

Venerable Guyi remained silent for a long time. He stood up, walked to Qingyang, and stretched out his withered hand to cover the miniature palace.

Venerable Guyi slowly closed his eyes. Tens of thousands of years ago, he accidentally entered the spacetime turbulence and survived by the skin of his teeth. However, he unexpectedly discovered the ruins of a cosmic secret realm at the core of the turbulence. At that time, six pieces of spacetime gold ore floated quietly, like seeds that had been waiting for endless years.

When Venerable Guyi took them, he was filled with anticipation of successfully refining the palace treasures. However, tens of thousands of years have passed, and of the original six pieces of flowing gold, five have become waste.

Without dwelling on the heart-wrenching pain of five failed attempts at treasure forging, Venerable Guyi slowly conjured a portal of light in the palm of his hand, at the main entrance of the miniature palace. The portal was simple, without any decorations, bearing only two characters: "Gui Xu" (Return to Ruins), the name of the star field where he had discovered the ruins before its destruction.

"The door opened, it's done!"

Venerable Guyi spoke very softly, as if afraid of shattering a long dream.

Qingyang withdrew his hand, looked back at the palace's nascent form that finally possessed a "gate," and said softly, "Congratulations, Venerable Guyi."

"King Liefeng, please wait a moment. Here's the promised 'Moment Sand' material. The 30 Treasure Points will be transferred to your account shortly."

"I am extremely grateful for King Liefeng's assistance this time. If you need anything in the future, you can come to me at any time." In an instant, the sand material turned into a stream of light and disappeared into Qingyang's spatial ring.

"Thank you," Qingyang said, bowing and turning to leave the main hall.

Inside the Forging Star Pavilion's mission hall, in front of the mission light screen, Qingyang clicked to complete the mission. Subsequently, the news that he had assisted Venerable Guyi in successfully refining an ordinary palace treasure was pushed out by the Forging Star Pavilion system.

[Notification from the Virtual Universe Star Forging Pavilion]

The first-class weapon refiner, King Qingyang, assisted Venerable Guyi in completing the refinement of the ordinary palace-type treasure, "Guixu Palace".

According to the system evaluation, the quality of the finished product is: medium grade.

In light of the mastery of spacetime laws and innovative ability in weapon crafting demonstrated by the assistant, King Liefeng, during the mission, the Forging Star Pavilion hereby registers that King Liefeng Qingyang possesses the theoretical qualifications to independently undertake the crafting of ordinary palace-type treasures.

Deep within Qingyang's soul, several lines of light appeared on the mysterious ancient scroll, the Primordial Refining Treasure Scroll:

[Yuanshi Refining Treasure Urn]

[Host detected participating in the refining of the ordinary palace-type treasure, 'Guixu Palace']

[Special Note: The host can only claim the reward for independently crafting a palace-type treasure. The task is currently ongoing, with a remaining time limit of 0.99 epochs.]

Qingyang scanned the two messages that arrived almost simultaneously with his consciousness, his expression calm.

As Qingyang had expected, "As expected, the Primordial Refining Treasure Scroll will not give me a chance to exploit any loopholes."

"Now that I have the ability to refine ordinary palace-type treasures, I should go and prepare the materials," Qingyang thought to himself.

"And the weapon-refining workshop should be able to apply to move to the Jia-character mountain area now, as the Bing-character mountain area can't keep up with the pace of weapon refining," Qingyang thought, and sent an application in the virtual universe Forging Star Pavilion system, which quickly gave a reply of approval.

[Notification from the Virtual Universe Star Forging Pavilion]

[The refining location of Rank A Refiner, King Qingyang, has been changed from the C-rank Seven Peaks Workshop to the A-rank Nine Peaks Workshop.]

Upon receiving the notification from the Star Forging Pavilion, Qingyang smiled and said, "Now I am finally qualified to call Venerable Peng Gong and the others 'fellow Daoists'."

At the Jiazi Jiufeng Workshop, before the carving of the Chen Ding.

Qingyang slowly moved forward, pondering his next plans and intentions. "The materials obtained from the Kunwu Secret Realm are far from enough to refine an ordinary palace treasure. The human body still needs to collect materials to refine an ordinary palace treasure, including some auxiliary materials. He can also take on refining tasks entrusted by others, ensuring that he can complete the refining alone."

"The Time Shadow Beast's main body will continue to comprehend the laws of time and space, while the Wandering Kunpeng avatar will remain in the Divine Kingdom, constantly comprehending the laws of thunder and time." After the plan was temporarily settled, Qingyang let out a soft breath.