Chapter 686: Divine Palace Realm
When Lin Langtian stepped into the statue, what appeared before him was an ancient altar.
Around the altar rose stone steps that seemed to reach the heavens, and beyond them there was only endless, pitch-black void.
At the top of those steps, there was a faintly visible, worn, ancient futon.
Lin Langtian glanced around, but did not see Lin Dong anywhere, and his brows furrowed slightly.
"It seems there's more than one inner space in this statue."
After a brief moment of thought, he shook his head and turned his gaze toward the altar above. With a short pause, he leaped upward.
At the top of the altar, the old, worn futon lay in disarray, utterly unremarkable.
Yet strangely, Lin Langtian could sense upon it a lingering aura that seemed to tower above heaven and earth.
It was what the Symbol Ancestor had left behind.
"So this is where I'm supposed to cultivate the Divine Palace…" he murmured, licking his lips slightly. He lowered himself onto the futon and slowly crossed his legs.
In simple terms, forming the Divine Palace meant transforming the Niwan Palace into a "Divine Palace."
But the difficulty of this step was like ascending to the heavens. On the Tianxuan Continent, aside from the Ice Master, virtually no one had ever reached this realm.
However, Lin Langtian had already stepped into the Great Symbol Master stage. Combined with the fact that this was once the Symbol Ancestor's retreat, with time, place, and preparation all aligned, he naturally had to give it everything he had.
He sat quietly, while his consciousness slipped into another world.
There, flames burned, thunder gathered, and gales roared, like the cruel chaos of primordial times.
This was Lin Langtian's Niwan Palace.
His mind floated in that raging, restless space. With a thought, his spiritual power surged together and formed a spiritual avatar.
It was identical to Lin Langtian in form.
He calmly studied the turbulent Niwan Palace, feeling the vast spiritual power surging within it. Yet he could tell that this alone was still far from enough to build a Divine Palace.
All this time he had focused on Yuan Power and demonic qi, and his spiritual cultivation had lagged behind.
To form a Divine Palace now, he had to remedy that deficiency.
It would clearly take time, but for him, time was plentiful.
In this training ground, time flowed ten times slower than in the outside world.
Ten years here was only one year outside, making it twice as extreme as the Heaven Tomb of the Dou Qi Continent.
So Lin Langtian could afford to spend all the time he needed strengthening his spiritual power.
As he settled into meditation, time flowed quietly within the raging Niwan Palace. His figure remained perfectly still.
Dust seemed to gather upon his body. In the blink of an eye, a year had passed.
One day, his eyes snapped open within the Niwan Palace, now deeper and brighter than ever.
He stretched out his slender hand and lightly twisted his fingers. A river of thunder made of pure spiritual power poured down, coiling around him.
The roaring thunder river surged madly. Within it, countless fish leaped and darted about.
Each fish was formed from spiritual power, lifelike and vivid.
Clearly, after a year of bitter cultivation, Lin Langtian's spiritual power had soared.
Boom!
The next instant, the Niwan Palace erupted.
The previously calm river of thunder now roared in fury, like a ferocious tiger ravaging the sky.
Thunder, gales, flames, and hail all reappeared, whirling wildly through the space.
Lin Langtian sat serenely amid that storm. With a movement of his will, the flames, thunder dragons, and gales all began to fuse together.
Rumble!
Violent spiritual power spread in all directions. The vast energy massed together, changing shape over and over.
Hidden in its depths, one could vaguely see the outline of a palace taking form.
Bang!
But just as that palace was forming, the rampaging power buckled under the pressure and exploded. The Divine Palace outline vanished without a trace, another failure.
Lin Langtian's body shuddered, but his face remained calm. Without any hesitation, he once more gathered his spiritual power and tried again.
Bang!
As expected, the spiritual power could not bear the strain and blew apart once more.
The third attempt—bang! Another failure.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
…
Within the Niwan Palace, Lin Langtian drove his spiritual power endlessly, like a perpetual motion machine, trying over and over without success.
The difficulty of forming the Divine Palace was indeed monstrous, akin to piercing the heavens.
The sound of spiritual power detonating never ceased. No one could say when it would end.
Yet the figure seated at the very top remained tireless, wholly absorbed in fusing and scattering his power, heedless of the passing of time.
Days slipped by, and still he did not stop.
Within the training ground, time continued to run. Outside, it crawled.
Yet even in that slow world, the atmosphere grew restless…
…
Chaotic Demon Sea.
With the great alliance led by the Flame God Temple fully formed, the Yimo's rampage was finally being pushed back.
The Demon-Slaying Army, composed of the top experts from every major power in the sea, had become the most terrifying force in the region.
In Tang Xinlian's skilled hands, that power was unleashed to its utmost.
The Yimo's previous unstoppable momentum had been broken. Their attempts to wreak havoc were checked at every turn.
Over time, the two sides became locked in stalemate. Neither could wholly suppress the other.
Just as the Chaotic Demon Sea was stabilizing, however, trouble broke out in the Monster Domain.
Deep within those lands, hordes of Yimo and corpse puppets controlled by the Demonic Prison appeared and began to wreak havoc. The resulting carnage forced the Ancient Masters to head there personally.
As the Demonic Prison's moves grew ever bolder, it was clear that the entire Tianxuan Continent had been set adrift in turbulence.
The so-called second Great War of Heaven and Earth drew ever closer…
…
Inside the Symbol Ancestor's statue.
No one knew how much time had passed. It felt like eternity.
After countless failed attempts to form the Divine Palace, Lin Langtian slowly opened his eyes within his own mindscape. His brows were tightly furrowed in thought.
He remained that way for three full days.
At last, he drew a deep breath and came to a decision.
No destruction, no creation. Break and then rebuild.
Without first shattering the original Niwan Palace, no true Divine Palace would ever be born.
This was both what he had inferred from Lin Dong's path in the original timeline and the lesson of his countless failures here.
To forge the Divine Palace, the Niwan Palace must first explode.
Resolve firm, Lin Langtian floated before the shimmering point of light that was his Niwan Palace, with no hesitation in his heart.
The vast spiritual power within began to compress at an extraordinary rate.
In just a few breaths, all that power shrank into a single spiritual sphere the size of a human head.
He continued compressing it without pause.
When the process reached its ultimate limit, the sphere began to tremble violently.
Cracks appeared across its surface, and beams of annihilating light seeped out.
As that destructive glow reached its peak, the Niwan Palace was engulfed like a mushroom cloud.
In the next instant, his Niwan Palace detonated completely.
Bang!
His body convulsed. Spiritual power burst through the remnants of his mind, flooding out like a waterfall.
Clenching his teeth against the searing pain in his skull, he hurriedly corralled the now-unfettered, rampaging power.
At the same time, he began to guide it exactly as he had before when attempting to form the Divine Palace—fusing it together step by step.
The sea of spiritual power surged wildly as he slowly gathered it in.
Like ocean tides, it flowed and pooled, its currents gradually sketching out the faint lines of a palace.
Guided by his fine control, the Divine Palace's intricate structure grew bit by bit.
Time slipped silently by. Three months flew past in the blink of an eye.
By then, the Divine Palace had taken shape.
It towered majestically, vast and imposing, its inner scenes changing and shifting like a residence for ten thousand gods.
Lin Langtian watched it, a faint smile curving his lips as joy stirred within him.
Yet he knew this palace, though fully formed, was still hollow.
To become a true Divine Palace, it needed one final, crucial element: the Taishang Power.
Without that, the palace would be lifeless, unable to contain his spiritual power, much less become its anchor and amplifier.
He drew a deep breath and formed a series of hand seals, slowly sinking into the Taishang Induction Art. His consciousness drifted outward.
After a long while, strands of ancient, chaotic light appeared.
Thanks to his dual cultivation with Ling Qingzhu, his mastery of the art had grown by leaps and bounds. Even she had been amazed by his progress.
Under his control, that profound chaotic radiance slowly descended upon the Divine Palace.
A clear, ringing cry swept through his mind like that of a mythical bird.
For an instant, the lifeless palace seemed to awaken.
Light ran like water along its walls as a fresh, vital breath spread outward from within.
Seeing this, Lin Langtian smiled lightly and directed his spiritual power to flow slowly into the Divine Palace.
Rumble!
Waves of power poured through its halls, coalescing into an initial, rudimentary cycle.
At the same time, he could sense a subtle connection forming between himself and the distant wellspring of Taishang Power. Threads of chaotic light continued to flow in.
They mingled with his spiritual power.
As they were absorbed, a fundamental transformation began inside that power.
It was a rebirth from within.
Comprehension rose in Lin Langtian's heart. He calmed his mind and sank into a meditative state, guarding the Divine Palace while the sea of power churned through it.
He knew that once the transformation was complete, the Divine Palace would fully replace his Niwan Palace.
It would take a long time, but within the Ancestral Palace, time was the one thing he was not lacking.
All he had to do was wait quietly for the day of the Divine Palace's perfection and nirvana.
…
Outside, the winds of turmoil howled and the undercurrents surged.
Atop the training-altar, a lone figure had been seated for ten full years.
It was Lin Langtian.
Time had eaten away at his clothes, leaving them tattered and thin.
Yet his youthful face had not changed at all. If anything, his handsome features had been refined by the years into something even more perfect, like a flawless sculpture.
No trace of Yuan Power or spiritual power leaked from him. To any casual observer, he would have seemed no different from an ordinary mortal walking down the road.
Only those with truly keen senses, or experts of the highest level, could faintly perceive it:
beneath that seemingly mundane stillness, something unimaginably sharp and terrifying was being contained.
An indeterminate age seemed to pass—perhaps a moment, a day, ten days…
Then, one day, Lin Langtian's body quivered ever so slightly.
His robes crumbled to dust in an instant and scattered like snow.
At the same moment, the eyes he had kept shut for ten years finally opened.
They were as black as ink and deep as the sea, utterly still.
Yet under their gaze, the void around the altar seemed to tremble.
Those eyes were like the gaze of a god. A single, indifferent glance made heaven and earth shudder.
A faint smile tugged at Lin Langtian's lips as he murmured softly:
"So this… is the Divine Palace Realm…"
(END CHAPTER)
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