The Imperial City, eternal and unyielding, stands dominant over the borderlands!
All could only look up in awe, deeply feeling their own insignificance—before it, they were but specks of dust.
As they drew near, the colossal walls soared beyond the heavens, their ends invisible even with divine sight.
“Why build something so vast?” someone murmured.
“To suppress an entire realm—how could it not be massive? Moreover, it is inscribed with supreme immortal runes, layered with boundless arrays, the culmination of countless generations’ toil,” an elder explained.
The city was truly beyond comprehension, transcending the very notion of a city. Up close, it resembled a scene of creation, shrouded in primordial mist.
Moreover, stars and even entire galaxies orbited its exterior—a sight defying reason, beyond imagination.
According to the sages, this Imperial City was built upon the most crucial spatial node of this realm. Without its suppression, the otherworldly invaders would march in unhindered.
“Using stars as its foundation!”
At close range, all could only marvel.
The walls were constructed from nothing but celestial remnants—fallen stars, piled into the greatest fortress of all time.
Standing before it was like an ant gazing at the heavens—vast, boundless, and eerily silent, as if a city of the dead.
At a certain distance, their bodies ached under an unseen force, threatening to split apart—such was the might of the Imperial City, dominating heaven and earth.
In the distance, small towns, markets, and tribes thrived—descendants of the city’s supreme guardians, dwelling peacefully outside its walls.
Some among them had become mere mortals, no longer cultivators.
The true defenders, once they entered, would never leave—bound by an ancient covenant. Many great sages, nearing the end of their lives, came here to guard it with their blood and souls.
“Enter the city!”
The sages each produced a bone fragment, solemnly assembling them into a mysterious white-bone altar.
An altar requiring multiple keepers, each holding a piece—proof of its significance, for it alone granted passage into the Imperial City.
Activated in unison, the altar glowed.
“Hum!”
Bathed in immortal light, they vanished, transported into the colossal city.
A dim wasteland, veiled in black mist, littered with bones—this was their first sight. With each step, skeletons crumbled into white dust.
And among them, celestial remnants!
“Is this the city’s interior?” Some gasped, finding it nothing like they imagined.
“This is merely the outer city. There is an inner city beyond!” an elder pointed ahead.
This time, the elders assembled golden bone fragments into a circular altar—a key to the inner city.
**Boom!**
They finally entered the Imperial Pass. Instantly, overwhelming divine senses swept over them like monstrous shadows, chilling their hearts.
These were the city’s mighty defenders.
Yet, life remained scarce. Enormous celestial bodies lay strewn across the ground, some with cultivators seated atop them, motionless, covered in dust—meditating for untold years.
Others were overgrown with weeds, their life force faint—engaged in deathly seclusion.
“Still not what I expected,” sighed Princess Yaoyue.
The hundred young cultivators surveyed the inner city, searching for something.
“This is but a fraction. The inner city is vast beyond measure—you will understand in time,” an elder said.
Those they saw were half-dead, unmoved for years—guardians of this stretch of the wall.
“Onward, to the depths!” A sage led the way, a golden path unfolding beneath their feet, carrying the hundred youths forward.
The golden path spanned starry domains, yet traversing the inner city took an eternity—proof of its immensity.
Along the way, they witnessed wonders beyond belief.
“Isn’t that a Devouring Sky Beast? I thought they were extinct! Yet here it is in the Imperial Pass!” Cao Yusheng exclaimed.
A gargantuan beast gnawed on a meteor in the sky, its size blotting out the heavens.
“Indeed, dozens reside here. They are formidable war beasts, mounts of the mightiest knights,” an elder on the golden path explained.
True enough, atop the beast sat an armored knight, cold and unmoving, as if petrified—tending to his mount, feeding it stars.
All were speechless.
Soon, they saw a disheveled man practicing archery, firing black arrows into the void.
“What is he aiming at?” Chang Gongyan whispered, himself an archer.
The elder sighed. “He is one of the city’s Ten Divine Archers. His targets? Stars in distant galaxies—each arrow shatters one, no matter the distance.”
The youths gaped, awed by such terrifying skill.
Further on, life flourished—lush vegetation, towering mountains.
Yet, shockingly, many “mountains” were fallen stars, now colossal peaks.
The young cultivators were dumbfounded—this place defied all logic.
Ahead, the gloom lifted, revealing verdant lands, rolling hills, sacred peaks, and majestic waterfalls.
“This isn’t a city—it’s a world,” one youth murmured.
“Only because the city is so vast,” the elder replied.
Suddenly, the earth trembled as dozens of monstrous beasts charged forth, each towering a hundred thousand zhang tall. Among them were Devouring Sky Beasts and even fiercer creatures.
Mounted knights rode them, dragging bloodied prisoners and corpses.
“What is this?”
“Returning knights—they’ve slain enemies and taken captives,” the elder said.
“These are the warriors fighting the otherworldly invaders?” Many were stunned. How formidable were the defenders of this city?
Yet, they had heard of crushing defeats elsewhere.
“Victory and defeat walk hand in hand,” the elder sighed.
Soon, they encountered tens of thousands bearing coffins, half the procession drenched in blood.
“So many dead?”
“And these are only the retrievable bodies,” the elder said grimly.
The recent reinforcements had bolstered the city’s forces, but daily losses were staggering.
The youths fell silent.
Much later, they neared the inner city’s heart—a forbidden zone.
In the distance stood a withered tree stump, vaster than celestial mountains, its cracked bark occasionally sparking with black lightning—silent, yet terrifying.
“Immortal Lightning,” the elder murmured.
“What is this stump?” Shi Hao asked, his heart stirring.
“Legends say it is the remains of an immortal from the Ancient Immortal Era—a tree in life, now a stump, its body still ravaged by the otherworldly lightning of the invaders.”
“Are there no surviving tales?”
“Too many. Some say the tree is not dead, that it may one day revive. Others claim it severed itself, attempting a deathly seclusion—and failed. Still others whisper it was the mightiest sacrificial spirit of its age.”
Shi Hao stared, lost in thought at the desiccated relic.
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