Across these Nine Summits and within the nine realms, there was only one person who would slaughter an entire city, or even a nation, simply because someone revealed her name.
"That woman..."
"Why would she orchestrate this conspiracy and drag herself into it as well?"
"Could it be that she has also been reborn?"
The so-called Ye Family, Wang Family, and even the Li Family posed no significant threat to Ye Tianxuan.
But her!
Only her!
"My dao companion from the immeasurable kalpa, you've come again?"
A wicked smile crept onto the corner of Ye Tianxuan's lips.
Without missing a beat, he raised his leg and kicked Wang Yueshan unconscious.
The situation was now clear: the reason the Ye, Wang, and Li families were targeting his mother and him wasn't simply to get their hands on the Flesh-Regenerating Creation Pill.
Their true objective was the secret treasure of the Xuanqi Sect—the clues left behind by his father, Ye Tianba!
Ye Tianxuan turned to his mother, Li Wanqing, and asked, "Mother, did Father leave anything with you before he disappeared?"
Li Wanqing lowered her head in contemplation for a moment, then suddenly placed her hand on Ye Tianxuan's shoulder and said with utmost solemnity, "Actually, there is something Mother has never told you."
"That Wang fellow was right; your father truly went to the forbidden ground of the Xuanqi Sect, Yunmeng Mountain, to hunt down and eliminate that band of outlaws, and never returned."
"But in truth..."
"One night after he went there, he suddenly came back."
Ye Tianxuan frowned. The underlying intricacies here were becoming increasingly complex.
"Tianba was covered in wounds, walking like a living corpse when he entered my bedchamber. Before he even rested, he scribbled some peculiar symbols on a piece of stationery and handed me a tightly wrapped bundle."
"He instructed me that it must only be shown to you, not even to me. No matter what I asked your father, he turned a deaf ear and walked back out."
"With that departure, he never came back."
Hearing this, Ye Tianxuan realized it was as he suspected. Valuable though the Flesh-Regenerating Creation Pill might be, the Ye family father and son were not foolish enough to commit the crime of murdering kin just for a body-tempering pill.
What they truly wanted was the secret treasure left behind by his father!
They were using the threat to his life to force his mother to hand it over.
Ye Tianxuan then asked, "Where is the item Father left behind?"
"Follow me."
Li Wanqing led him into a disused alchemy chamber, pointing to an old cauldron.
This alchemy room had long been abandoned and unattended; hardly anyone would ever suspect this place. If anyone came to investigate, Li Wanqing could simply set a fire and burn it all down, burying the secret deep in the earth forever.
She slowly lifted the lid of the cauldron, brushed away the ashes, and retrieved an envelope and a square object wrapped in yellow cloth, handing them over to Ye Tianxuan.
Ye Tianxuan took out the envelope first and glanced through it!
The writing on it was actually heavenly script—ancient elephant script!
How could such characters possibly appear in the lower realm?
Anyone whose spiritual willpower was insufficient would be dragged into an illusion simply by looking at the characters, eventually driving them to madness.
Only someone whose martial arts had reached the absolute pinnacle—reaching the first realm of the Emperor's Heaven and transcending tribulations—could decipher this text.
Yet, with just a single glance, Ye Tianxuan pieced the distorted characters and strange symbols together into a vivid, realistic realm of consciousness.
Before him, it was as if an elderly man with white hair covering his face had appeared. From beneath his white locks, a soul-piercing gaze locked onto Ye Tianxuan as he spoke:
"Who were you a thousand kalpas ago, and who am I a thousand kalpas hence?"
"Two bodies meet to know a single form, the profound arts passed to him who knows the law."
"Brat, this game is now yours."
With those words, the mental projection vanished.
Judging by this immortal, he clearly belonged to a realm above the Nine Heavens.
And yet, he was connected to him.
Could it be that his Nine Revolutions Reincarnation Technique had already been detected by the upper realm?
A seemingly unrelated family feud was actually a trap laid by that woman behind the scenes, and now an immortal had established a connection with him.
Could his identity as the Supreme Emperor already be known to others?
These clues could only be unraveled step by step as he plunged deeper into the chessboard.
Seeing Ye Tianxuan's furrowed brow, Li Wanqing did not dare to ask too many questions.
Never before had she imagined that the child she had raised all these years possessed such a profound and heavy mind.
In just a few brief words, he had seen right through Wang Yueshan's lies.
A sense of indescribable awe toward Ye Tianxuan began to take root in her heart.
Ye Tianxuan slowly unwraped the yellow cloth, and a golden seal abruptly appeared before his eyes.
The Emperor's Supreme Seal!
He stared at the object in utter disbelief!
This very item had belonged to him in his previous life—the Emperor's Supreme Seal, capable of opening any secret realm across the nine realms!
In his past life, it was by relying on this divine artifact that he had stepped, stride by stride, to the imperial throne!
How could this item appear here?!
Such a supreme artifact, following his death, should either have been seized by someone or sealed away within a secret realm.
How could it possibly surface in the mortal world?
Just as he was still lost in doubt, the seal suddenly burst forth with countless rays of golden light.
The released radiance seemed to forcefully pull apart his body and soul, plunging his entire being into a sphere of light.
When the sphere of light finally parted, what came into view was a desolate wasteland.
Countless colossal burial mounds stood tall across this barren expanse.
All around lay inhuman, severed limbs and broken bones.
"Demon race, demon race, human race, elf race..."
Ye Tianxuan swept his gaze across the corpses, identifying them one by one.
Yet these were not ordinary soldiers of a battlefield.
These were the demon gods of the Nine Netherworlds!
Those burial mounds emanated a terrifying demonic power.
If ordinary mortals were to step foot here, a single glance alone would likely drive them mad.
Moreover, the scene before him was intensely bizarre.
The entire wasteland appeared blanketed in yellow sand, the heavens and earth dyed a mysterious dark yellow.
Even the edges of the clouds were stained with a bloody orange-yellow hue.
Looking up, Ye Tianxuan saw that suspended amongst the clouds were numerous pristine bodies.
Their colossal forms were bound by intricate strands of golden light.
Some possessed only half a skull, while others had only half a torso, spreading wings that blotted out the sun and sky.
They all stared in bewilderment at Ye Tianxuan, this "intruder."
At that moment, the ground before Ye Tianxuan began to fracture. As he took a step back, a towering sacrificial altar slowly rose from the ground.
"How audacious! Who gave you permission to set foot in this 'God and Demon Sacrificial Arena'!"
A skull-like divine statue standing before the wasteland suddenly strode toward Ye Tianxuan, holding a magma-like shield in one hand and a frost-like sword in the other.
"Lord of the Charnel Ground?"
Recognizing its form, Ye Tianxuan suddenly recalled certain encounters from his past life within the Demon race.
Even the Northern Nether Demon King beneath the Nine Netherworlds would harbor a shred of awe when mentioning the Lord of the Charnel Ground.
For it was not a creature of this kalpa at all.
Legend had it that before the world was reset prior to the previous kalpa, it had been punished by the will of the Heavenly Dao to guard a certain divine domain throughout this kalpa.
"Could this be the place?"
"The God and Demon Sacrificial Arena?"
The Emperor's Supreme Seal possessed the ability to open any secret realm without requiring the special abilities of a sect's practitioners or a favored child of fortune with rare opportunities.
He never imagined that the secret realm guarded by the Lord of the Charnel Ground would actually be this place...