Chapter 1197: Clues

The situation was unclear, so Meng Qi didn’t rashly enter. Instead, he activated his Dharmakaya, condensed his divine sense into an indestructible golden light, and extended it forward like flowing water into the depths.

With a resounding boom, his divine sense trembled, and his perception shifted dramatically. The dark vortex revealed an endless expanse filled with collapsing black holes formed from destruction. They drew close to one another, devouring each other and growing ever larger—both majestic and terrifying.

More importantly, in this vast, dark realm, even the infinite heights seemed to collapse downward, disintegrating and lowering the essence of legends. Without omnipresence, he couldn’t fully survey the area with divine sense alone to find clues.

After gaining a preliminary understanding of the situation, Meng Qi felt confident in handling it. He took a light breath, adjusted his Taoist crown, and from his mud-pill palace emerged a chaotic, primordial auspicious cloud. Dark light cascaded like a water curtain, within which countless golden lamps and lotuses floated and sank.

Taking a step forward, Meng Qi entered the dark vortex brimming with destruction and finality. The chaotic dark light around him rippled gently, dissolving and absorbing the storms of annihilation and rays of termination. He smoothly passed through the “passage” and entered the boundless, cosmic expanse.

After leaving a mark to trace his path, he navigated the edges of the expanding black holes, probing deeper. The terrifying gravitational pull only caused faint ripples in the primordial auspicious cloud’s descending dark light.

Just as he was about to bypass the black hole “galaxy” blocking his divine sense, Meng Qi suddenly felt a stirring in his heart. The Daoist Lamp of Singularity appeared in his eyes, illuminating the darkness to his left.

At a distance equivalent to a star system, a shadowy figure seemed to drift!

This wasn’t detected by his senses, currently suppressed by the environment, but by the subtle premonition of the Legendary-level *Eight-Nine Arcane Art*.

—Although Meng Qi had only obtained the first three chapters of the *Eight-Nine Arcane Art* in the Jade Void Palace, and the path to Legendary status required his own exploration—with the subsequent chapters still out of reach—he had nonetheless stepped into the Legendary realm. His ability to obscure heavenly secrets had strengthened, and his premonitions surpassed those of ordinary Buddhas, nearing the unity of the nine consciousnesses. Even distant scrutiny would trigger his awareness.

Auspicious clouds formed beneath his feet as he tore through the void with his hands. Guided by his senses, Meng Qi directly descended to where the shadow had drifted—only to find emptiness. It was a boundary where several expanding black holes pulled at each other, distorting space-time and creating countless illusions.

“Was it an illusion?” Meng Qi frowned slightly. Was the *Eight-Nine Arcane Art*’s sensitivity too acute?

Reviewing his thoughts and recalling the moment, he didn’t dismiss the possibility of a real shadow.

If this shadow truly existed, was “it” a native of this realm, or a spy who had secretly followed him to investigate the whereabouts of the Primordial Heavenly Venerable?

Growing more cautious, Meng Qi gripped the hilt of the Peerless Heavenly Saber in his sleeve and searched the vicinity.

Finding nothing, he remained vigilant and pressed onward.

After bypassing the black hole “galaxy,” Meng Qi’s vision suddenly cleared, revealing a churning expanse of red, azure, black, and white.

It exuded an ancient, distant aura, like the primordial forces of earth, fire, wind, and water before the Taiji Diagram stabilized them. Beyond these four forces, matter cycled between creation and destruction, never forming stable shapes.

From a distance, Meng Qi quietly observed this scene, gaining new insights into his *Four Symbols Seal*. He then skirted the raging primordial forces, traversing the void with spatial shifts.

After an indeterminate time, Meng Qi abruptly froze. The earth, fire, wind, and water were veiled in a hazy boundary, half-overlapping and half-isolated from the surrounding endless darkness. It was bizarre, as if one side belonged to the past and the other to the present, forcibly merged by some profound and mighty power.

“Is this a fragment of the past? The primordial forces from this realm’s creation?” Meng Qi was filled with doubt, having never encountered such a phenomenon before.

He considered consulting Gu Xiaosang but decided the current findings were insufficient. Instead, he relayed his observations and pressed forward.

Beyond the primordial forces that could shred even his current form, Meng Qi found the path ahead growing increasingly eerie. The depths of the darkness resembled a kaleidoscope, filled with fragments of varying colors—mostly real, tinged with illusion. Some exuded desolation, with stars burned out and frozen in “ice”; others held nothing but endless chaos, solidified at its peak—supreme disorder yielding eternal silence. Still others were cataclysmic explosions ravaging every corner of their fragments…

These fragments seemed like different possibilities of the world’s end. Though closely packed and interconnected, covering the entire realm, they were separated by illusory barriers, barely overlapping.

After detouring around this area, Meng Qi saw something resembling both a sheet and a point—true chaos, locked in mutual devourment with a “void” of nothingness. The void’s edges shimmered with red, azure, black, and white, exuding the aura of an epoch’s end.

As Meng Qi approached, he suddenly felt himself rapidly aging. Even the *Supreme Ultimate Primordial Auspicious Cloud* couldn’t stop it. The illusory River of Time manifested around him, slowing the loss of his lifespan.

Startled, he swiftly retreated to his previous position, halting the aging. In just two instants, he had lost a century of life!

With the illusory river flowing and the ancient lamp glowing, Meng Qi carefully examined the area. He realized the space-time around the “chaos” and “void” was shattered into disorder—some places experienced a century in an instant, others a millennium in a moment. The images from the “chaos” and “void” spanned thousands of years or mere instants, their changes measured in millennia, making subtle differences hard to detect.

“Even space-time is completely shattered…” Meng Qi marveled silently. Recalling how the infinite heights of his true spirit had been dragged down, he formed a tentative theory.

This seemed like a battlefield of the Nirvana Realm!

With this speculation, he relayed everything to Gu Xiaosang.

After a rare moment of contemplation, Gu Xiaosang remarked with uncharacteristic emotion, “Past and future have both been shattered… truly a battle of the Nirvana Realm.”

“Past and future shattered?” This single statement clarified everything for Meng Qi. The primordial forces he’d seen were indeed from the realm’s creation—a fragment of the past. The kaleidoscope-like fragments were various apocalyptic futures, originally unrelated and distinct. But with the local River of Time shattered, they now coexisted bizarrely in the “present.” The fragmented space-time that had cost him a century was the “wreckage” of that river.

Fortunately, he could sense the flow of the real world’s River of Time and manipulate fate to a small degree, borrowing its power to avoid being consumed by this realm’s broken timeline.

The epoch-ending “void” with its four colors and the all-encompassing “chaos” felt familiar. In an instant, Meng Qi pieced it all together and declared solemnly, “This was a battle between the Primordial Heavenly Lord and the Lingbao Heavenly Lord!”

The Primordial Heavenly Lord, symbolizing nothingness and creation; the Lingbao Heavenly Lord, symbolizing existence and destruction.

Gu Xiaosang’s ethereal voice responded, “They actually fought in the Qingwei Heaven… after the fall of the Celestial Court…”

The so-called Thirty-Three Heavens did not encompass the Great Scarlet Heaven of the Daoist Deity of Virtue, the Qingwei Heaven of the Primordial Deity, or the Yuqing Heaven of the Numinous Treasure Deity—collectively referred to as the “Great Luotian Beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens,” which were not formed by the Sea-Calming Pearls.

“The Qingwei Heaven has been utterly annihilated, leaving only scattered remnants outside… No wonder Yang Jian referred to this as the Qingwei Realm…” Meng Qi was initially awestruck by this revelation before catching the deeper meaning in Gu Xiaosang’s words.

After the Primordial Heavenly Venerable’s whereabouts became unknown, Yang Jian began searching for Him and discovered the fallen Qingwei Heaven deep within the myriad realms—this very battlefield.

In other words, after disappearing, the Primordial Heavenly Lord had battled the Lingbao Heavenly Lord here, despite the latter having vanished earlier.

Recalling the sight of the Biyou Palace on Mount Kunlun, along with the *Primordial Golden Chapters* and the nine seals obtained by Chong He, Meng Qi vaguely surmised: The disappearances of the Primordial Heavenly Lord and the Lingbao Heavenly Lord were linked!

The following text is translated into English:

This was the clue revealed by the Qingwei battlefield.

Even Yang Jian, with his power at the time, couldn’t restore this battlefield and could only seal it. Thus, if other clues existed and could be taken, Yang Jian would have taken them.

Why did the two ancient Heavenly Venerates battle? Where did they go afterward? Countless questions arose in Meng Qi’s mind, but he knew one thing clearly: the next clues likely lay in the highest layer of the Nine Heavens!

Suddenly, his heart stirred again. At an immense distance, the shadowy figure he’d seen earlier seemed to be watching once more!

But when he focused his senses, the shadow vanished again.

“There really is a shadow… really a spy…” Meng Qi weighed his options and, prioritizing caution, carefully retreated to the exit, leaving the battlefield behind.

Upon returning to the valley, his vision blurred. Amid lush, exotic flora stood an illusory, glass-like figure with a double topknot, a slightly yellowed beard, and an air of gaunt elegance—no overwhelming aura, as if just a mirage.

It was the shadow from earlier! With the Primordial Auspicious Cloud enveloping him, Meng Qi understood and asked solemnly, “Who are you?”

The Taoist smiled faintly:

“This humble one is Zhunti.”