Starting as the heir of a marquis's mansion, I gained access to a summoning system.

In the first month after the merging of heaven and earth, the door of the old house in the northern district of Baidi City was never opened again.

Dongfang Weiwo has gone into seclusion. Yan Kuangtu returned from Dongzhou on the third day, covered in dust and carrying a message:

Dongfang Wudi has been found. After being knocked off the cliff by the gray-clad man's palm, the Marquis fell into an underground river and drifted three hundred miles downstream. When he was pulled up by the underworld's secret agents, seventy percent of his meridians were broken, but his life was saved.

Pang Ban personally sent him to Ten Thousand Snake Island to reunite with Qin Lanyin and her daughter. He also used his Celestial Realm cultivation to reconnect his meridians. Now he has awakened, but his cultivation level has dropped to the Grandmaster Realm and he cannot recover in a short time.

After Yan Kuangtu finished his report, he sat down cross-legged on the roof without waiting for the young master to open the door.

He was on the verge of achieving the half-step into the realm of creation; what he lacked was not cultivation, but a sudden enlightenment. He turned the task of protecting the Dharma into his own spiritual practice, sitting motionless on the roof tiles of the old house, letting the wind, frost, rain, and snow come and go.

In the second month, both Ximen Chuixue and Ye Gucheng went into seclusion.

The concentration of spiritual energy in the new continent caused a qualitative change in their bodies, and the bottleneck of the ninth level of the Grandmaster realm was no longer an obstacle. The two of them took only seven days to step into the half-step Celestial Realm, and with the Sword Heart Clarity Realm, they broke through three barriers in half a month and entered the initial stage of the Celestial Realm.

The sword intent was as cold as frost and snow, and the air temperature within a radius of 100 feet of the old house dropped by 30% out of nowhere.

In the third month, the first thing Ye Gucheng did after emerging from seclusion was to practice his swordsmanship.

With a single horizontal slash, he cleaved a dilapidated tower in the northern district of Baidi City in two, the cut as smooth as a mirror.

Ximen Chuixue stood under the withered locust tree in the courtyard, his eyes closed, his sword still sheathed. Simultaneously, all the fallen leaves in the courtyard froze in mid-air, motionless. Then, all the leaves shattered into dust.

In the fourth month, Baidi City suddenly became lively.

After the merging of heaven and earth, the four forces finally extended their reach to this border town.

The Primordial Divine Sect sent an official envoy to invite the "Demon Sealing Bloodline Successor" to the Tianxuan Mountains as a guest, in the name of the number one sect in the Central Plains.

A blank letter arrived from Wanjie Valley. The paper was extremely thin and icy to the touch. Even with his Celestial Realm cultivation, Ye Gucheng couldn't see through the enchantment attached to it. Finally, Yan Kuangtu reached down from the roof and squeezed the enchantment, revealing a line of text: "Zhenwu is here. Waiting for you."

The messenger from Starry Manor came from the heavens—a meteorite the size of a palm fell from the sky and embedded itself in the courtyard ground. Xingyan's voice appeared on the stone: "Descendant of the Sealed Demon Bloodline, relics of your people exist from the Era of Gods and Demons. Come to Starry Manor for a chat."

The Taiyuan Dynasty sent a team of bronze-armored guards who silently waited outside the courtyard gate for three days and three nights before finally handing over a scroll of animal hide map, which marked the location of a giant bronze palace deep in the far western desert.

The patterns on the palace are of the same origin as the patterns on the right arm of the Eastern Unique Right Arm.

I haven't seen any of these messengers from the East. The door to the old house remains tightly shut, but the dark gold patterns on his right arm have spread from his shoulder to his entire back, forming a complete array on his spine.

In the fifth month, Pang Ban reached the peak of the Celestial Realm.

On Ten Thousand Snake Island, this Eastern Ghost Emperor used the spiritual energy tides after the fusion of heaven and earth as a guide to absorb the water spirit yin energy accumulated in the East Sea over millions of years into his body. He swallowed the entire seabed spiritual vein in one gulp, and his realm broke through from the mid-stage of the Celestial Realm to the peak.

He stood on the cliff of Wanshe Island, with the sea three thousand miles behind him freezing and thawing simultaneously, the whole process completed in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, Guan Yutian sat cross-legged on the western front of the wasteland for a hundred days, and the golden bell phantom formed by his innate qi enveloped the entire defensive line.

The scouts of the Bright Heaven Palace were replaced seven times in a hundred days, but none of them could break through that layer of golden light.

One hundred days later, the golden light shattered like a cocoon breaking free. When Guan Yutian rose from the fragments of the golden bell, his aura had already broken through the peak of the Celestial Realm, officially stepping into the initial stage of Creation.

He stood on the wasteland and glanced in the direction of the Bright Heaven Palace. In just one glance, the Pure Light Dharma King, thousands of miles away, stood up from his prayer mat, and the sun wheel mark between his eyebrows throbbed violently.

Xiong Ba broke through to the spiritual core on the west side earlier. He refined that radiant light of heaven and earth into the Three-Part Returning Origin Qi, and the three elements merged into one to become "Creation Returning to Origin".

In the fourth month, he entered the initial stage of the Creation Realm, and the territory of the spiritual core expanded westward by five thousand miles in one go, directly swallowing up four oasis city-states in the Western Continent. The Bright Heaven Palace did not send troops to intercept him, and the Pure Light Dharma King closed his palace and did not come out. Xiong Ba then raised the flag of the Azure Dragon Society on those four cities.

At the end of the fifth month, Yan Kuangtu fell from the roof. The sound of his landing was very light, as light as a withered leaf, but the moment he stepped on the blue bricks of the old courtyard, the spiritual veins of the entire White Emperor City trembled for a moment.

The threshold of half-step into creation shattered. The door he had been stepping on for five months finally opened to him, and he stepped through it in the most reckless way—without seclusion, without gathering strength, without sitting cross-legged in meditation, he simply walked down from the roof, and it shattered.

"Young Master," Yan Kuangtu stood outside the door, his voice deeper than before, "I have entered a period of great fortune. You should come out now."

The door to the old house opened on the first day of the sixth month.

When Dongfang Weiwo walked out the door, he had changed a lot.

His face still looked like that of a twenty-two-year-old, but the dark golden light in his eyes was solid and tangible, and his aura was restrained and not released. Standing in the courtyard, he was like a sword sheathed.

The lines on his right arm had faded from the visible color of the skin and disappeared into his body, but the dark gold Dao seed deep in his dantian had become a complete world.

The ninth level of the Celestial Realm. Half a year of seclusion propelled him from the third level of the Celestial Realm all the way to the peak of the Celestial Realm, and his Demon-Sealing Bloodline and the "Celestial Treasure Scripture" were completely integrated into one.

More importantly, he condensed a "key seal" made entirely of array patterns at the deepest part of his Qi Sea—a copy of the ancient array of Baidi City, which he incorporated into his own flesh and blood.

The door opened.

Many people were standing in the courtyard. Ximen Chuixue, Ye Gucheng, and Yan Kuangtu stood at the very front.

Outside the courtyard wall, Shi Zhixuan, who had come from the secret agents in Baidi City, was leaning against the courtyard gate, smiling as he looked at him.

Further away, the sky above Baidi City was filled with communication jade slips from various forces, densely packed like a swarm of locusts, each one waiting for a response after the door opened.

Dongfang Weiwo stood in the courtyard, the spring breeze stirring up the fallen leaves beneath the withered locust tree. He looked up at the sky. Stars revolved in the heavens, and pillars of spiritual energy rose and fell across the continent. The fusion of heaven and earth triggered by the dark golden light from White Emperor City half a year ago had now completely changed the face of this continent.

"Issue the order," he said, his voice low but clear enough to reach everyone's ears, "All those above the Celestial Realm level in Tianxuan Prefecture are to proceed to Baidi City within three days. I want to see everyone."

As he finished speaking, a thin streak of light flashed across the sky outside the courtyard wall and landed in his palm. He looked down—it was a message from Wu Zetian.

The jade slip contained only one word: "to declare oneself emperor."

Dongfang Weiwo crushed the jade slip, and his lips twitched slightly.

"Okay," he said.

"Finally, they're all moving."

In the sixth month after the merging of heaven and earth, the Tianxuan Continent was completely reshuffled.

Various forces redefined borders, established order, and revealed their true intentions on the new continent, ultimately forming an unprecedented and comprehensive landscape.

The Creation Realm is no longer a legend—the surge in spiritual energy allowed dozens of ancient beings who had been trapped at their peak for thousands of years to break through that door simultaneously, and many more hidden forces that were originally only recorded in ancient books also awoke from their slumber, raising the martial arts level of the entire continent to a whole new height.

【Eastern Continent - Great Zhou Dynasty】

At the end of the fifth month after the merging of heaven and earth, Wu Zetian officially ascended the throne and proclaimed herself emperor, establishing the Great Zhou dynasty with its capital at Zhongdu, the center of the four prefectures north of the Huai River.

On the day of her coronation, Wu Zetian, dressed in a black and gold imperial robe and with a broad-backed long sword hanging at her waist, walked onto the temporary imperial altar amidst the throngs of people in Zhongdu.

She wore no crown or jade tablet, her long hair was tied into a high ponytail, and when her gaze swept over the dark mass of officials and soldiers below, the pressure emanating from her caused several newly recruited half-step celestial beings to kneel on one knee.

Her first words were: "The Great Zhou Dynasty has no harem, no crown prince. Before I die, the world belongs to me alone. After I die, the world will be returned to you."

The court officials remained silent for three breaths. Then, the entire army shouted in unison, "Long live the Emperor!"

Wu Zetian's first edict after ascending the throne was directed northwards.

After the Nine Ice Plains Tribes were defeated and forced to retreat to the Black Ice Continent, the Northern Desert forces reorganized. Frostbone of the Xuanming Tribe sent a letter seeking peace, offering three ancient ice beasts as tribute in exchange for the Great Zhou not to march north for three years.

Upon reading the letter, Wu Zetian immediately chopped off the skulls of the three ice beasts and hung them on the city wall, replying with four words: "Surrender or fight."

Frostbone did not reply.

The Northern Desert retreated to the edge of the Black Ice Continent, forming a stalemate with the Great Zhou, and temporarily held its ground.

But what truly drew attention was Wu Zetian's second edict issued on the second day after her ascension to the throne:

The Great Zhou Dynasty recognized the "Tianxuan Palace" as an equal ally, with both sides agreeing to non-aggression, non-interference, and mutual trade. This decree signified that the Great Zhou officially regarded the Azure Dragon Society, the most powerful organization in the Eastern Continent, and the forces of the Underworld as equal partners, rather than objects to be annexed.