Chapter 331: Seeking Immortal Classics in the Ruined Scripture Pavilion, the Chaos Path Continues the Great Dao

The moment he stepped into the Chaos Gate, Wang Ping felt the world spin; the surroundings were not a steady passage but a violent, chaotic spacetime torrent!

Before his eyes, light and shadow twisted, colors vivid then swiftly faded; his body felt as if kneaded and pulled by an invisible giant hand, his viscera seeming to shift, even his Chaos Nascent Soul trembled.

He seemed to hear Cangxuan and Youying's startled cries nearby, but the sound was instantly stretched, warped, and dissipated.

This was a spacetime transfer far more violent and unfathomable than ordinary spatial transmission within the Azure Void Heavenly Realm!

Obviously, the internal spatial structure of the Void-Suppressing Immortal Palace had become extremely complex and unstable after long ages of interaction with sealing power.

He did not know how long had passed—perhaps an instant, perhaps a long moment—but the nauseating weightlessness and distortion suddenly vanished.

Wang Ping grunted, suppressing dizziness and discomfort, steadied his form, his Chaos Domain instinctively unfurled, and he vigilantly scanned his surroundings.

The sight before him was utterly unlike the resplendent, aura-filled hall he had imagined.

This was a……broken, floating, silent 'sea of books'.

The place he stood on was a piece of dark-gold flooring no more than several zhang across, its edges ragged, as if torn violently from some massive structure.

The floor's surface bore intricate cloud patterns and star motifs, somewhat resembling the markings on the armor of survivors like Yunhao, but far older and deeper.

Yet now, these patterns were mostly dim and dark, even fractured and incomplete.

And as he looked around, in every direction—up, down, left, right—were similar broken flooring, shattered jade pillars, collapsed bookshelf remnants……they floated, weightless, scattered in the boundless void whose colors continually shifted.

This void was not pure darkness but flowed with a hazy, grayish-white 'background' like countless fine light motes; at times it glowed faintly with gold, azure, blue, vermilion, and yellow, at times it twisted into strange vortices, emitting faint spacetime undulations.

Here, it was obviously a fragment of ruined space formed after the collapse of a vast Scripture Pavilion or Archival Hall!

What was even more striking was that amidst this broken, floating wreckage, countless specks of variously colored light drifted like summer night stars.

Only upon close inspection could one discern that they were the carriers of scriptures—some intact, some damaged, some scrolls, some jade slips, some gold books, some bone fragments.

Most of them, like the surrounding ruins, were dust-covered and dim, even riddled with cracks, their spirituality lost; they seemed to crumble to powder at the slightest touch.

The air was thick with a mix of aged paper, rotting spirit-wood, and a faint sandalwood scent, yet threaded through it was an indescribable sense of decay and extinction, as if from the end of time.

The space was unnaturally silent; even his own breath and heartbeat seemed amplified, yet were swiftly swallowed by the vast emptiness.

"The Scripture Pavilion……has actually been shattered to this extent." Wang Ping's heart was shaken.

Judging by the scale and material of these remains, the library here must once have been as vast as a sea of smoke, priceless beyond compare; sadly, in the disaster of the Immortal Court's collapse and spacetime chaos, the vast majority could not be preserved.

He tried to move; though the place seemed weightless, it was not entirely uncontrollable. With a thought, a faint exhalation of spiritual power beneath his feet let him drift slowly between these broken 'floating islands'.

He carefully avoided the obviously unstable spatial folds and the occasional hair-thin spacetime fissures that flickered into view, beginning to explore this ruined scripture-space.

His goal was clear: to find valuable scriptures that were relatively well preserved!

Especially records possibly continuing his cultivation of the Chaos Immortal Classic, or concerning the Immortal Palace itself, or concerning the sealed 'Great Terror'.

His divine sense cautiously swept over the drifting scripture fragments; the rune structures inside almost all jade slips and gold books had already collapsed, information lost, leaving only empty husks.

A few retained extremely faint spiritual light, but what they recorded was mostly incomplete low-grade techniques, alchemical notes, travel musings—of little value; and the slightest touch would extinguish that light entirely, reducing them to ash.

Wang Ping felt a sinking heart. Could it be that such a vast Scripture Pavilion, after countless ages, truly left behind nothing worthy of inheritance?

Unwilling, he pushed his divine sense to the utmost while simultaneously stirring the Chaos Nascent Soul in his dantian.

The Chaos Nascent Soul possessed an extraordinarily keen sensitivity to energy, especially high-level, orderly energy fluctuations.

The murky Chaos Spiritual Sense, like mercury poured onto the ground, slowly permeated every corner of this broken space, finely sensing any lingering 'Dao resonance' and spirituality within the floating objects, no matter how faint.

Time passed bit by bit. Wang Ping was like a patient gold prospector, searching the endless waste for possible grains of gold.

He avoided several areas suspected of harboring hidden seal fluctuations; though most were likely defunct, caution never harmed.

He also detoured around some fragments exuding an ominous aura, stained with blackish grime.

Finally, when his Chaos Spiritual Sense swept over a relatively dense cluster—formed from several larger flooring fragments and a number of broken jade pillars—his Nascent Soul suddenly sent a faint throb!

The source of that throb was not any specific tome, but came from beneath an inconspicuous dark-blue square stone slab, half-buried in wood chips and dust at the center of the 'floating island cluster'.

Wang Ping's spirit lifted; he immediately drifted closer. He carefully brushed away surface debris and dust, revealing the slab's full appearance.

The slab was about three feet square, its surface smooth, bearing no text or pattern; its material was neither metal nor stone, warm and moist to the touch, with a faintly inward-turning spiritual light circulating within.

More importantly, around its edges, several nearly color-matched, extremely fine cracks could be faintly seen, from which brighter light seemed to seep.

"Does it contain a universe within?" Wang Ping observed closely, discovering the slab was not naturally formed but a meticulously refined 'Sealed Chest'!

The cracks on it might have been caused by the great quake back then. He tried to slowly infuse Chaos Spiritual Power into the finest crack at its edge.

"Hum…"

The slab trembled slightly, its surface rippling like water; instantly, the light at that crack flared for an instant, as if something had been triggered.

Immediately after, the slab's center silently slid open a palm-sized opening, revealing a small dark compartment of the same material beneath.

Inside the dark compartment lay nothing else but three jade slips, resting quietly.

These three jade slips were utterly unlike the broken, drifting jade slips outside!

The first was uniformly a hazy, grayish tone like undifferentiated chaos—neither jade nor crystal, its substance hard to discern; the slip was a seamless whole, unadorned, yet naturally exuded an ancient Daoist resonance that embraced all things and derived the heavens.

On its surface, faintly, there flowed an extremely fine primordial Dao pattern, as if existing since the heavens and earth first opened; these patterns were not fixed but constantly arose and faded like living things.

The second was warm, creamy white jade, crystal clear, within which seemed to flow misty spiritual vapor; its surface naturally grew vein-like pale gold patterns, exhaling a fresh yet vigorous vitality, and a rhythm proper to wood spirits, resonating with heaven and earth.

The third resembled neither silver nor silver, like molten star-sand, presenting a deep dark-silver hue; its body was covered with fine, dust-like brilliant points that were not static but slowly moved, tracing an exceedingly profound stellar orbit pattern, emitting a cold, vast, lonely cosmic resonance of the stars.

All three jade slips were enveloped by a layer of extremely thin yet remarkably tough immortal light.

This immortal light was not a later-added protective seal; rather, it resembled the natural external manifestation of the Dao inherent in the slips' material and inner content—this very layer allowed them to survive the ages and the shattering of space.

Wang Ping stifled his excitement; he knew that to be preserved so perfectly in such dire straits, and to spontaneously form such a wondrous appearance, the contents recorded in these jade slips could hardly be trivial!

He first carefully picked up the grayish jade slip. It felt heavy in hand, its touch strange, as if grasping a lump of solidified chaos. As he slowly extended his divine sense into it——

"Boom!"

It was as if a heaven‑splitting, earth‑shaking roar exploded in his sea of consciousness! Countless profound runes, images, and thought currents pointing straight to the source of the Great Dao surged in like a breached river!

"Chaos Immortal Classic·Second Volume (Fragment)!"

The opening presented the outline: "Chaos is the mother of all things, the root of the Great Dao. Volume One, Nascent Soul, derives the five phases, fixes yin and yang, forms the foundation of Chaos. Volume Two, Spirit Transformation, requires taking in the pure and turbid, uniting the false and the true; within Chaos one opens heaven and earth, manifests the primordial spirit, and the Dao unites with nature……"

This second volume of the Chaos Immortal Classic was astonishingly a cultivation method leading straight to the mid‑Spirit Transformation realm! Although it is a fragment, lacking some key points for breaking into late Spirit Transformation and a few supporting great divine abilities.

But its exposition—from breaking through from Nascent Soul perfection to Divine Transformation, to the key points of early and mid-stage Divine Transformation cultivation, the bottlenecks, the method of divine soul metamorphosis, and the further refinement and application of chaotic immortal essence—was all subtly profound and wondrous, far surpassing any cultivation method Wang Ping currently knows!

It details how to take the chaotic Nascent Soul as a 'seed', absorb the pure and turbid qi of heaven and earth, and in the void chaos 'open up' one's own 'inner world' (the mark of a Divine Transformation cultivator—the primordial spirit domain), then based on this, gradually imprint one's own laws and Dao rhythm onto heaven and earth, achieving the preliminary stage of 'union with the Dao' and 'words follow law'. It also discusses how to fuse and derive the basic laws of the Five Elements, Yin-Yang, and even more elements at a higher level within the chaotic framework, so that chaotic power is no longer mere inclusion and division but possesses the embryonic form of 'creation' and 'establishing rules'.

For Wang Ping, this was nothing short of opening a door before him to a higher, vaster realm! Though his self-created Five Elements Divine Light is wonderful, it is mostly about application; its guidance on the fundamental Dao remains insufficient.

And this fragment of the second volume of the Chaotic Immortal Scripture precisely fills the theoretical foundation and concrete path for him from Nascent Soul to Divine Transformation and even higher realms! Its value to him even exceeds that of eight or nine top-tier treasures!

The jade slip also records three incomplete supporting divine abilities:

Chaotic Heaven-Opening Seal: It simulates the scene of heaven and earth being split, condensing a Dao seal with supreme chaotic will; one seal is like the initial opening of a miniature cosmos, with boundless power, specially breaking all kinds of solid defenses and domains, but it demands extremely high purity and total amount of chaotic power from the caster.

2. Return-to-the-Abyss Draw: Not an attack, but an extremely exquisite drawing, banishing, and disintegrating divine ability. It can draw a thread of 'Return to the Abyss' power (not the true Return to the Abyss, but a simulation of its 'all things end' intent), directing the enemy's attacks, treasures, and even part of their techniques directly into the void, or temporarily banishing them into the chaotic crevice.

Myriad Phenomena Renewal: A healing and restorative divine ability. Using the principle of chaotic transformation of all life force, it quickly repairs physical and divine-soul damage, and can even to some extent 'renew' the source corrupted by filth and curses, but it likewise consumes greatly.

Wang Ping immersed himself, dazed and intoxicated, in this vast and profound scripture until his divine sense felt waves of swelling pain, forcing him to temporarily withdraw.

He carefully put away this jade slip of the second volume fragment of the Chaotic Immortal Scripture, his heart filled with indescribable joy and exhilaration. With this scripture's guidance, his path to breakthrough into Divine Transformation will no longer be blind groping, but will have a clear beacon!

After calming his emotions, he picked up the second jade slip, white as mutton-fat jade.

His divine sense entered, and a fresh, gentle, all-encompassing vitality surged forth. Before his eyes unfolded a boundless, splendidly wondrous scroll—the mountains and rivers, strange flowers and herbs, and rare birds and beasts of the immortal realm!

The Immortal Realm Spirit Medicine Compendium!

This is not a simple catalogue or illustrated book, but a heritage nearly an artwork!

Using divine-sense imagery, it vividly records thousands of kinds of immortal realm spirit medicines, immortal fruits, and immortal herbs that have long vanished from the spirit world and exist only in legend!

Each one details its form, color, growing environment, maturation cycle, medicinal properties and theory, harvesting method, storage method, and its primary efficacy and use!

For example, the Nine-Revolutions Soul-Returning Immortal Herb: it grows where the pure qi of the nine heavens gathers, matures once every ten thousand years, resembles a nine-leaf lingzhi, crimson as blood. It has the miraculous effect of raising the dead, reshaping the flesh, and stabilizing the immortal soul, and is the chief ingredient for refining the top-grade immortal pill, the Nine-Revolutions Soul-Returning Pill.

· Chaotic Azure Lotus Seed: said to be produced where chaos first opened, the seed is green and contains the primordial life force of chaos. Consuming it can cleanse the spiritual roots, improve aptitude, with a certain chance to shift the spiritual roots toward the chaotic attribute, and it can also prolong life for myriad years and solidify the Dao foundation.

· Stellar Fruit: grown on a strange ancient tree that absorbs the essence of the heavenly stars, the fruit resembles a miniature star, brilliant and eye-catching. It contains pure fragments of stellar law, aiding comprehension of the Stellar Dao and greatly strengthening the physique, awakening the meridians.

· Lunar Laurel Seed: produced by the divine cassia of the Moon Palace, utmost yin and cold, shaped like ice crystals. It can be refined into an elite pill to ward off heart demons and purify the divine soul, and is also a supreme treasure for cultivating yin-attribute divine abilities.

· Solar Fusang Leaf: the leaf of the divine fusang tree, utmost yang and rigid, like burning golden flame. It helps condense true solar fire, temper the physique, and dispel all yin, evil, and cold poisons.

Besides these, there are countless immortal varieties of diverse and unheard-of efficacy. This scroll is not only an invaluable trove of knowledge, but also a revolutionary boost to Wang Ping's alchemical arts!

He does not often practice alchemy, and what he usually knows is mostly based on spirit-world known medicinal materials.

But with this compendium, he might begin to try alchemy. Or if he finds similar immortal seeds in some desperate place, he could attempt to forge the immortal pills that appear only in legend!

Even in the spirit world, some of its ideas on medicinal property pairing and the ruler-minister-assistant concept are enough to let his alchemical skill advance further beyond the hundred-foot pole!

What further delighted Wang Ping was that at the end of the compendium there is also a short piece, 'Preliminary Explanation on Identifying and Cultivating Immortal Medicines', which mentions some ideas of using chaotic qi and the five elements' cyclic power to simulate specific environments, to cultivate or induce certain spirit plants with demanding environmental needs; this might also inspire him in nurturing the Fusang tree seed within his dantian.

Wang Ping treasured and carefully stored this jade slip of the Immortal Realm Spirit Medicine Compendium. For any cultivator aspiring to the Dao of alchemy or needing to discern heavenly materials and earthly treasures, it is a dream-come-true supreme treasure!

Finally, he picked up the jade slip that was dark silver and covered with starlight specks.

His divine sense entered, and the scene shifted again. No longer concrete images, but as if he were placed in the boundless starry sky! Countless stars moved along profoundly mysterious orbits, linked by dazzling stellar-energy beams, forming a vast, complex, and precise stellar-array network so intricate it leaves one awestruck!

Explanation of the Heavenly Stars Grand Array (Part)!

This transmission of the array method is not the complete layout of the Heavenly Stars Grand Array (a complete array would require mobilizing the power of the heavenly stars, beyond human capability, and is of the level of the ancient celestial court's world‑protecting grand array), but rather records this array's 'basic principles', 'core node construction', 'partial stellar power guidance and transformation methods', and 'the application of three simplified variant arrays'.

At the outset it expounds the foundation of the Heavenly Stars Grand Array: 'Observing the heavens above, examining the earth below, taking the law of the stars' motion, borrowing the power of the heavenly stars and constellations, transforming the void into the solid, forming the array to become a realm.'

'Once the array is formed, the inside and outside are separated, self-contained as a domain, offense and defense unified, performing all the marvels of creation and slaughter…'

Its content is profoundly deep, involving astronomical phenomena, spatial geometry, energy transformation, law resonance, and countless other fields. Even as merely a 'partial' explanation, it is vast as a sea of smoke.

It details how, using specific materials, runes, and the cultivator's own stellar-type spiritual power, to construct a 'array foundation' and 'array eye' that can resonate with particular stellar mansions or star regions in the heavens.

How to guide, transform, and store stellar power; how to use stellar power to form defensive barriers, spatial labyrinths, stellar slaughter-light, and so on.

The text records three relatively 'simplified' variant arrays that, in theory, could be set up by multiple high-level cultivators (requiring at least several Divine Transformation or even Void Refining cultivators to lead, with many Nascent Soul assistants).

1. Minor Heavenly Stars and Constellations Protective Mountain Array: focused on defense and concealment, it can draw the power of 108 major stars to form a strong barrier covering a radius of ten thousand li, with astonishing defensive power and the ability to warp space and hide the mountain gate.

2. Northern Dipper Exterminate Evil Refine Demon Array: focused on attack and purification, it draws the power of the Northern Dipper Seven Stars to condense an irresistible stellar sword-gale that specially breaks heterodox evil and heresy, with tremendous might.

3. Stars Shift and Dipper Turn Immortal-Trapping Array: focused on entrapping foes and spatial displacement, it uses stellar power to disturb, solidify, and warp space, forming a complex stellar labyrinth from which escape is extremely difficult.

Although Wang Ping's current cultivation and resources are far insufficient to set up any of these variant arrays (the required heavenly materials and earthly treasures alone are an astronomical figure), the array principles, rune structures, and energy-utilization ideas contained therein are, for him, tantamount to opening a wholly new window!

For him, it offers invaluable guidance in perfecting his own chaotic domain, understanding spatial and energy structure, and even in the future laying arrays for his abode or faction. Especially the parts concerning 'stellar power' and 'space stabilization', 'energy transformation' could perhaps combine with the 'space-stabilizing' trait of his Fusang tree seed to derive new means.

Wang Ping carefully stored this jade slip of the Explanation of the Heavenly Stars Grand Array (Part) as well. Although currently unusable, its strategic value may even surpass that of the previous two jade slips!

Having harvested three priceless immortal scriptures, Wang Ping's heart surged with excitement that was hard to calm. But he soon grew composed.

This place is not suitable for lingering; he must quickly explore elsewhere to find a way to leave this scripture space, rendezvous with his companions, and delve into the core of the immortal palace (of course avoiding the sealed zone).

He again meticulously scanned the entire scripture space with his chaotic divine sense, confirming that no similar high-value, well-preserved scriptures remained, and then began to seek an exit.

This space seemed to be a sealed fragment with no obvious doorway. But in one attempt to trigger the residual pattern on the dark-gold floor beneath his feet with chaotic spiritual force, Wang Ping discovered that when he infused a thread of chaotic immortal essence (in its embryonic form) into a specific, transmission-like damaged rune node, that node faintly lit up, producing an extremely subtle resonance with an unstable light spot in the distant void.

'A spatial node?' Wang Ping's heart stirred. He tried increasing the input of chaotic immortal essence and adjusting its frequency, attempting to simulate a vibration matching that light spot.

Gradually, that light spot began to rotate and expand, ultimately forming an oval ring of flickering unstable silver light just large enough for one person to pass through—a temporary, extremely unstable spatial passage! The scene at the other end was blurred and distorted, hard to discern.

Wang Ping did not know where this passage led—perhaps another region of the immortal palace, or perhaps a more dangerous spatial turbulence—but he had no alternative; lingering here was not a long-term plan.

He finally glanced at this shattered scripture pavilion that had lain silent for myriad ages, tucked the three jade slips close to his person (into the deepest part of his Qiankun One-Qi pouch), took a deep breath, hesitated no more, and stepped into that silver ring of light.

His figure vanished, and the light ring swiftly contracted and dissipated.

The scripture space again returned to its ancient silence; only the dust of countless tomes drifted and fell soundlessly in the illusory motes of light, whispering the lingering echo of a glorious era's complete end.

Stepping into the silver ring, the familiar sensation of spacetime distortion surged again, but much gentler than when he first entered the immortal palace, as if passing through a layer of viscous water curtain.

When his vision cleared again, Wang Ping found himself in a strange and lengthy corridor.

This corridor differed from any architectural passageway he had seen.

Both sides of the corridor were not solid walls but composed of countless flowing, shifting light-shadows. These shadows twisted, overlapped, fragmented, and recombined, like reflections on water stirred by a gale. On the left side, the light-shadows at times displayed the magnificent sight of jade towers and flying immortal cranes.

At times they turned into the grim battlefield of beacon fires blazing to the heavens and gods and demons falling; at times they became the apocalyptic scene of shattered stars and collapsing void.

While the right-side light-shadows were even more uncanny, resembling countless fragmented memories, distorted spacetime fragments, and even projections from deep within the mind of fear and desire—phantasmagoric and indescribable.