Chapter 566: Supreme God Emperor! The Trial

"A future Heavenly God subordinate?" Li Yuan was stunned.

"The trial of the Ancient Universe Realm left behind by the Master has a final requirement for the third stage: that you completely master the Ancient Universe Realm." The giant purple beast laughed. "In the future, if you become the commander of the Ancient Universe Realm, all the Heavenly Gods born in this universe will naturally be your subordinates."

"There are currently over a hundred Heavenly Gods in the Ancient Universe Realm."

"These Heavenly Gods can also be considered a force the Master prepared for you," the giant purple beast said. "I hope they will be of some use to you."

Li Yuan nodded inwardly.

Looking across the entire Divine Domain, most Divine Monarchs probably didn't have so many Heavenly Gods following them... though he knew that once he stepped into the Heavenly God realm, these Heavenly Gods would likely be of little help.

But at least before reaching the Heavenly God realm, they would still be an asset.

Moreover, no matter how strong he became in the future, he would ultimately be just one person... having a group of Heavenly God subordinates would make handling miscellaneous tasks much more convenient.

Great existences like the God Emperor Heart Dream and God Emperor Chaos—why did they still establish their own Divine Courts? This was the reason.

Whether it was collecting treasures, gathering intelligence, or traveling to special places with restrictions, having a large number of followers was very important.

"The Ancient Universe Realm was crafted by the Master. The hundred races of life within were moved here by the Master from the outside world long ago. They all have their own histories and are all connected to the Master in some way... In the future, when you become their leader, you will also have the responsibility to protect them," the giant purple beast said.

Li Yuan nodded slightly. "Understood."

"Of course."

"Whether it is the Heavenly God subordinates, the hundred races of life, or the many treasures within the Ancient Universe Realm, these are all just incidental," the giant purple beast said. "The most precious thing is the Ancient Universe Realm itself."

"The Ancient Universe Realm itself?" Li Yuan's heart stirred.

This was, after all, a universe.

In the Divine Domain, many God Kings and even Heavenly Gods would open up worlds. For instance, God Emperor Juexing had once sliced through space to form the 'Juexing Continent Space'. But regardless of the situation, these were still part of the Divine Domain and had not separated from the original universe.

But the Ancient Universe Realm was truly independent.

One could imagine the methods of God Emperor Heart Dream.

"Holy Spirit, what would you have me do?" Li Yuan asked.

"Follow me." The giant purple beast's towering body rapidly shrank, eventually becoming about a hundred zhang tall. It arrived before Li Yuan and shook its head. "I'm really not used to shrinking my body this small."

Li Yuan was speechless. Every move the giant purple beast made reminded him of Senior Dongmang.

He, too, had a massive body and felt that even the palaces in the Heart Dream Divine Realm were too small.

"I haven't even become a Heavenly God yet, and I haven't truly begun to tap into the potential of my physical body. In the future, if I cultivate the 'Universe Divine Body' to a higher level and reach the level of a physical world, my true form will probably be extremely massive as well," Li Yuan thought to himself.

Just like Liu Bing, who liked to transform into his true form when fighting.

Strong practitioners fought using their true forms to unleash their greatest strength. The giant purple beast shrinking to a hundred zhang was clearly out of consideration for Li Yuan.

Hum~ An invisible force enveloped Li Yuan.

Swish! Their flight speed easily broke the speed of light and continued to rise.

"Holy Spirit, did we break the speed of light?" Li Yuan noticed and was quite startled.

"The speed of light?"

"Hehe, void shifting is not allowed within the Sovereign Hall; one can only fly," the giant purple beast said. "Don't look at the palace in the distance and think it's close; it's actually hundreds of millions of kilometers away... If we flew slowly, it would take a long time. Naturally, I must break the spatial restrictions to arrive as quickly as possible."

"When Heavenly Gods unleash their speed instantly, it is generally tens of thousands of kilometers per second. Through long-term acceleration, they can usually reach sub-light speeds," the giant purple beast said.

"But going from sub-light speed to the speed of light is a hurdle that many Divine Monarchs can only achieve."

Li Yuan listened. The speed of light was a limit under the operation of the laws of heaven and earth.

Theoretically, normal speed could not exceed the speed of light.

"Exceeding the speed of light."

"One way is to break the law with force, using absolute power to burst forth, which naturally allows one to break the speed of light. A Ten-Star Heavenly God Body can do this," the giant purple beast explained. "Another way is to cultivate a perfect-level escape-type Star Art. For example, the 'Nine Heavens Feathers' you cultivate—if you cultivate it to the seventh-rank extreme, your flight speed can also exceed the speed of light."

"Can the Holy Spirit tell that I cultivate the 'Nine Heavens Feathers'?" Li Yuan couldn't help but ask.

"I can't tell just by looking at your appearance," the giant purple beast said. "But ever since you entered the Ancient Universe Realm, I have been receiving guidance and observing you in secret. Naturally, I knew when you used your escape technique."

Li Yuan suddenly understood.

No wonder that ever since he entered the Ancient Domain, he had felt as if he were being guided by some unseen force... Now it seemed it had come from the Sovereign Hall.

"And these two methods generally only allow one to break it slightly," the giant purple beast sighed. "The third situation is the Realm!"

"Realm?" Li Yuan was curious.

"Cultivating a God King-level escape secret technique and comprehending the complete laws of space," the giant purple beast laughed. "These all belong to the Realm reaching the God King level... If the Realm is high enough, one can easily break the restrictions of heaven and earth, reaching three times the speed of light, five times the speed of light..."

"If one opens up an Eternal Dao."

"Even the weakest kind of Dao... is completely above the laws of heaven and earth. Flying at speeds exceeding ten times or even a hundred times the speed of light is effortless."

"This is the advantage of a high Realm," the giant purple beast said.

"Flying at a hundred times the speed of light?" Li Yuan sighed inwardly.

Flight and void shifting were two different concepts... If one's speed could reach such a level, any single attack would have an unimaginable level of power.

Was this the Realm of a God King?

"Your Star Veins are unimaginably powerful, forging a supreme foundation that is the extreme under the laws of heaven and earth," the giant purple beast said. "This will give you a huge advantage. At least during the True God and Heavenly God stages, you will find it hard to find an opponent at the same level... because even Heavenly Gods are still comprehending the laws of space and are still under the laws of heaven and earth."

"Your inner world will be nearly perfect, and comprehending the laws of space in the future will be very easy."

Li Yuan listened.

Why were Ten-Star Veins considered destined to become God Kings? It was because after they became Heavenly Gods, their inner worlds were perfect enough that their efficiency in comprehending the laws of space was much higher than that of ordinary Heavenly Gods.

And Li Yuan was even stronger—a perfect Ten-Star Vein.

"But in the future, when you become a God King, everything will be different."

"Many God Kings, even if their divine bodies are far weaker than yours," the giant purple beast said, "if their Dao is strong enough, they can toy with you even if they aren't as good as you in a head-on fight."

"Dao! It is crucial," the giant purple beast said.

Li Yuan thought of God King Huanxin, who was clearly only an Eight-Star Vein God King, yet had suppressed an entire era of the Divine Domain through the power of his Dao.

The giant purple beast carried Li Yuan, its flight speed constantly soaring—ten times the speed of light, twenty times the speed of light... Such a terrifying flight speed did not affect the surrounding space in the slightest.

Before long, the two arrived at the continuous palace complex in the distant land.

Up close, Li Yuan realized just how towering these palaces were.

Each ancient palace exuded an endless aura of antiquity and vicissitudes. A single divine pillar was tens of thousands of kilometers long... Many stone walls were engraved with numerous patterns. Some patterns depicted scenes of large groups of strong practitioners fighting; some scenes showed a vast number of figures kowtowing and worshipping a towering figure... Others seemed to recount the growth years of a certain strong practitioner...

Patterns represented history.

It was as if, crossing hundreds of millions of years of time, they were conveying to Li Yuan the vicissitudes of time these palaces had experienced.

Those auras made Li Yuan hold his breath.

"Can you feel it?" the giant purple beast said in a low voice.

"The person who engraved these patterns was very strong," Li Yuan couldn't help but say. "And these palaces must be extremely ancient. They probably have a history of hundreds of millions of years, right?"

"Hundreds of millions of years?" The giant purple beast smiled mockingly. "You are wrong. The palaces here have a history of over ten billion years."

"Ten billion years?" Li Yuan was shocked. "How is that possible!"

Even though his home Divine Domain was incredibly ancient, its traceable history did not exceed two billion years.

Like the Chaos Divine Court, it had only had a history of a little over a billion years since God Emperor Chaos opened the Imperial Palace.

Ten billion years?

It was too distant! So distant it made one's heart tremble.

"Don't be surprised. In the vast universe, there are many things you don't know," the giant purple beast said slowly. "The many palaces here were actually collected by the Master from a dangerous place in the dark regions of the universe... That dangerous place contained some ruins left behind by the previous universe era."

"The previous universe era? Ruins?" Li Yuan felt a bit dazed.

"The universe is vast and has many universes. The Heart Dream Universe is just one of them... And where there is the birth and prosperity of a universe, there will naturally be its decline and death," the giant purple beast sighed. "In this universe, the Master was the first life born and the first God Emperor born, so it was named after the Master. It has existed for over two billion years."

"But before the Heart Dream Universe, there was once a vast universe under this same starry sky, which eventually perished... When a universe perishes, everything is annihilated. Countless star regions are destroyed. Even strong beings like God Emperors cannot resist the natural aging and destruction of a universe," the giant purple beast said.

"However, the universe is vast and its civilizations are brilliant, so they naturally leave behind many ruins and traces."

"These palaces were left behind by the previous universe era," the giant purple beast said.

Li Yuan listened, holding his breath.

This was definitely an incredible secret.

Whoosh!

The giant purple beast carried Li Yuan, as if deliberately letting Li Yuan feel something, and walked deeper along the palaces.

The deeper they went.

Gradually, Li Yuan could feel that the emotions conveyed by the murals on the outer walls of the palaces had changed.

The palace murals he saw at first gave a sense of high-spiritedness and vitality.

Later, they slowly turned into dominance and transcendence.

And then, they gradually revealed a sense of despair and reluctance... Even across ten billion years of time, the invisible will of the engraver still influenced Li Yuan through the patterns.

"Despair?" Li Yuan felt silently. If some ordinary Void Gods or ordinary True Gods walked outside these palaces, they would probably be influenced by this powerful will until they completely sank into it.

A long time later—

Finally, the giant purple beast carried Li Yuan to the end of the palace complex, where only a huge stone tablet remained.

The stone tablet stood tall, with no more patterns on it, but instead, some mysterious characters were left behind.

They were Dao patterns!

Different civilizations had different characters, but Dao patterns originated from the laws of heaven and earth and were exactly the same... Through Dao patterns, even if languages and characters were vastly different, one could still communicate with each other.

Just one glance.

"Boom!" A powerful will instantly struck Li Yuan's soul and consciousness.

The scene before Li Yuan's eyes changed completely.

It was no longer stone walls or Dao patterns; it was as if he were in a vast, endless starry sky... In the starry sky, there was a towering, endless figure whose eyes were filled with despair.

Beneath his feet was the endless universe of stars, with countless life-bearing planets... But a terrifying wave of great destruction was gradually being transmitted from the other side of the starry sky.

Destroying the starry sky, destroying all things, destroying all life...

"Destruction!"

"The universe perishes! The River of Time collapses. Haha, in the end, no one can break free..." the towering figure said in a low voice, his voice filled with a trace of desolation. "What of a God Emperor? What of being supreme in the universe?"

"Without becoming eternal, one is ultimately just a fish in the river..."

"The day the river dries up is the day of death... Unable to transcend! Unable to transcend..."

The powerful will contained in this voice was filled with intense unwillingness, despair, and sorrow... constantly influencing Li Yuan's emotions.

It made Li Yuan's soul spontaneously give birth to a sense of despair and sorrow...

"Li Yuan, wake up." A voice suddenly exploded in the depths of Li Yuan's soul, causing him to wake up quickly.

"Me?" Li Yuan woke up, only to be shocked to find that he was already covered in tears, clearly having been completely influenced by this will.

Li Yuan was shocked.

It was too terrifying!

One had to know that Li Yuan's soul will was already at the Heavenly God level, and his mental void world was also extremely powerful... But just some Dao patterns on a stone wall, across ten billion years of time, could influence him?

What kind of strong practitioner had left this stone wall?

If he were to truly face their true form, he would probably sink into it in an instant.

"Holy Spirit, who left this behind?" Li Yuan couldn't help but ask. He didn't even dare to look at the stone wall again.

The giant purple beast looked directly at the stone wall. It was the one who had awakened Li Yuan just now. As the Holy Spirit of the universe, it naturally would not be influenced.

However, even though it had seen the stone wall countless times, when it felt the emotional will conveyed by the stone wall again, the giant purple beast still felt a bit suppressed.

Hearing Li Yuan's words, the giant purple beast said slowly, "The one who left these palaces was God Emperor Supreme Hong Ying. He was a Supreme God Emperor and the supreme ruler of the previous universe. He left his legends all over the universe."

"Supreme God Emperor? God Emperor Supreme Hong Ying?" Li Yuan was stunned.

He had never heard of him at all!

"God Emperor represents that one has perfected their own Dao to an extremely high level, representing the ultimate of cultivation," the giant purple beast said. "But God Emperors also have differences in strength. Those who reach the absolute peak are collectively honored as 'Supreme God Emperors' by the strong practitioners of the many universes in the vast universe."

"Supreme God Emperors—they are probably already very, very close to the legendary 'Eternal'," the giant purple beast sighed.

Eternal?

Li Yuan held his breath. God King Life had once set foot in the ruins of the Eternal Realm, and the 'Eternal Divine Palace' that was related to him also seemed to have been left behind by an Eternal God Emperor.

"It's just a pity that he died!" the giant purple beast said.

"Died?" Li Yuan was startled. "Did his lifespan end?"

"No!"

"Most God Emperors die when their lifespans end," the giant purple beast said in a low voice. "But Supreme God Emperors completely master time and space and are completely above the River of Time. As long as they themselves do not wish to die, they can completely stop their own time. Crossing fifty billion or a hundred billion years is very normal. It is almost impossible for their lifespans to end."

"They are either killed by strong enemies."

"Or, their home universe perishes, and the River of Time they are in completely collapses."

"In endless years, many universes have given birth to brilliant and talented strong practitioners who have shaken the universe... But when a universe perishes, no one belonging to its River of Time can escape, and all of them fall," the giant purple beast shook its head. "Supreme God Emperors are no exception."

"Only by becoming eternal can one transcend everything," the giant purple beast sighed with emotion.

Li Yuan was lost in thought.

So, even if one was as strong as a God Emperor, or even a supreme existence among God Emperors, if their home universe completely collapsed, they would also completely fall.

"The current Heart Dream Universe, although it has given birth to many God Emperors, including the Master and God Emperor Chaos, none of them can compare to God Emperor Supreme Hong Ying," the giant purple beast said in a low voice. "Before God Emperor Supreme Hong Ying fell, he left behind many powerful ruins to prove the traces of his existence... This ruin was obtained by the Master and eventually combined with the Master's own strength to be refined into the 'Ancient Universe Realm'."

"The Sovereign Hall specifically preserves these palaces and stone tablets."

"It is also to remind you candidates," the giant purple beast looked at Li Yuan. "Do not slack off."

Li Yuan nodded, feeling a heavy weight in his heart.

He vaguely understood the pursuits of God Emperor Heart Dream, God Emperor Juexing, and his other masters... Eternity.

Without becoming eternal, everything will be annihilated.

Whether it is oneself, one's race, one's power, or one's younger relatives and friends... at most, one can only leave behind a few ruins like God Emperor Supreme Hong Ying.

"Holy Spirit."

Li Yuan suddenly spoke: "Does the Eternal Realm truly exist in this vast universe?"

"Eternal Realm?" The giant purple beast was also startled.

It glanced at Li Yuan.

"I am only the Holy Spirit of the Ancient Universe Realm, and I only have a half-understanding of these things," the giant purple beast said. "When you can completely take charge of the Ancient Universe Realm and traverse the Divine Domain... and have the qualifications to be listed in the 'God King Hall' of the Heart Dream Divine Realm, many secrets will be opened to you."

"Mm." Li Yuan nodded.

Whoosh!

The giant purple beast did not linger. It carried Li Yuan across the stone tablet and continued forward.

They walked on the vast land for a while longer.

Whoosh~

Space suddenly rippled. On the originally empty land, a huge arena and a towering mountain suddenly appeared.

This huge arena was pitch black, made of an unknown material, and was about a million kilometers across.

And that towering mountain was about a million kilometers high, shrouded in countless clouds and mist, and exuded a purple light.

"Li Yuan, the trial in the Sovereign Hall is divided into two parts," the giant purple beast carried Li Yuan to the edge of the huge black arena and smiled. "The first trial is to win against Luli."

"As long as you win against him, you will have the qualifications to become the Master of the Ancient Universe Realm and command the many Heavenly Gods within the Ancient Universe Realm."

"Only by passing the second trial can you attempt to completely master the Ancient Universe Realm itself. But I must remind you that you must pass both trials while in the True God realm. If you become a Heavenly God before passing the trials, it will be considered a failure," the giant purple beast said.

"Must be in the True God realm?" Li Yuan nodded inwardly.

"Don't worry about the second trial for now; pass the first one first," the giant purple beast said. Then, it looked at the black arena and let out a low roar: "Luli!"

"Luli!"

"Luli!"

"Luli..." The sound transmitted and echoed in the arena at an astonishing speed.

"Luli?" Li Yuan looked at the black arena.

Boom~ A human figure appeared out of thin air above the arena. With one step, he arrived at the edge of the arena.

He arrived before Li Yuan and the giant purple beast.

This human figure was about a hundred zhang tall. He was bald, his skin seemed to be cast from ancient bronze, and he wore heavy black battle armor with many mottled marks, indicating how many battles he had experienced.

"Holy Spirit." The black-armored bald man bowed slightly to the giant purple beast.

Then, his gaze fell on Li Yuan. "It's been over thirty million years; finally, another candidate has come."

"It's just a pity."

"Judging by your life aura, you seem to be the weakest candidate—only an Eight-Star True God." The black-armored bald man grinned. "Holy Spirit, are you sure you want him to fight me? I'm afraid I might accidentally smash him to death."

Boom!

The black-armored bald figure stood in the void, exuding a terrifying aura that caused the space to distort slightly.

This aura made Li Yuan's expression change slightly.

So strong!

Just in terms of life aura, it seemed that even Heavenly God Xia Haotian was not as strong as him... Of course, that was referring to Heavenly God Xia Haotian without using his body-refining Star Art.

"The weakest candidate?"

"Luli, I think you've been asleep for too long and have become confused. Take a good look again," the giant purple beast shook its head. "This candidate is currently only in the Void God realm."

"Void God realm?" The black-armored bald man was suddenly shocked. "How is that possible! In the Star God cultivation system, even a Ten-Star Vein Void God's divine body is only comparable to a Seven-Star True God."

He was indeed shocked.

He was certain that his sensing was correct.

But the giant purple beast no longer paid attention to the black-armored bald man and turned to look at Li Yuan. "Li Yuan, Luli is a life puppet left behind by the Master. His strength is quite powerful."

"You are currently only in the Void God realm, so your hope of defeating him is very slim."

"I suggest you first break through to the True God realm before attempting to fight him," the giant purple beast said.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 567 =====