Chapter 194: They promised you must become an Immortal after the Heavenly Emperor Realm—how can the Supreme Realm be enough?

……

……

Primordial Immortal Realm, various Daoist traditions.

They think.

The Gu Family is a bit strange.

What is strange about it?

One moment they seal off the clan, the next they organize a gathering of myriad tribes.

It makes people wonder if the Gu Family is holding back something big.

Although the Gu Family's overt combat power far exceeds theirs by a huge margin.

They also established an Immortal Court.

But in truth, no faction wants a father figure looming over them.

And now, the Gu Family is that father.

Just as they were pondering how to probe the Gu Family's details.

"This aura... what's going on?!"

Ji Family Divine Island.

Wan You True Immortal, while in seclusion contemplating the insights sent by the Gu Family, suddenly felt a pang of palpitations.

She burst out of the cave dwelling, looked up toward the direction where the Gu Family is.

Above that star region, blood Qi surged like a dragon, piercing heaven and earth.

A rule of True Immortal, though still juvenile, yet extremely ferocious, was wildly coalescing.

"Someone else has attained the True Immortal path?!"

Wan You True Immortal shouted hoarsely, her eternally flawless beautiful face filled with disbelief,

"How is this possible! How long has it been since Gu Lin Tian attained the Dao? At most, not even a month, right?"

"Is a True Immortal like a big cabbage? If you want to plant it, you can just plant it?"

Moreover, this aura...

It's far too crude!

Rough as an unpolished raw jade, even carrying a whiff of earth.

Yet within that earthy scent lies a suffocating sense of power.

"It's that reckless Gu, Gu Zhan!"

Pantheon.

The Prime Origin Divine Lord knelt in the center of the great hall, holding in his hands the incorporeal substance bestowed by the Gu Family, carefully refining it like a miser.

The moment he sensed that aura, his hand trembled, nearly scattering the incorporeal strand.

"Gu Zhan? The Supreme of the 18th Realm?"

The Prime Origin Divine Lord felt his mind was no longer sufficient.

"How could he directly skip the 19th Realm Heavenly Emperor and attain True Immortal? That defies the iron law of cultivation! It contradicts the Dao's logic!"

"Cheating! This is definitely cheating!"

He roared, his eyes reddening with jealousy.

He, a bona fide True Immortal, killed his own younger brother to appease the Gu Family, just to secure a meager chance of survival.

And now a mere gatekeeper thug of the Gu Family transforms and is about to become a True Immortal?

In these times, is there still any heavenly justice?

Is there still any secular law?

It's not just these two families.

The Purple Palace Immortal Sect, the Great Unity Imperial Dynasty, and even those ancient cultivators hidden in deep mountains and forests were all shaken out by this disturbance.

Countless Daoist divine thoughts interwove in the void, forming a massive net brimming with shock, doubt, and panic.

"Gu Family... this is defying Heaven itself."

"Two True Immortals within a year?"

"Let the Gu Family patriarch become immortal, that's one thing; he's only half a step away from True Immortal, but what gives Gu Zhan the right?"

"No! Look!"

Suddenly, someone shouted, pointing at the heavens.

"What is that?"

Above the sea of blood Qi, layer upon layer of ink-black calamity clouds silently converged.

That is not an ordinary thunder tribulation.

Within those clouds, there is no lightning, no sound, only a pure rule-force representing the erasure of will.

It is the wrath of the Heavenly Dao.

It is the judgment upon violators.

Skipping from the 18th Realm, bypassing the 19th, directly breaking through to the 20th Realm.

In its eyes.

That is a violation!

"It is heavenly punishment!"

An ancient cultivator who had lived for countless epochs trembled as he said,

"Gu Zhan's ascension and Dao attainment, with an unstable foundation, is a provocation of the Dao's rules! The Dao will not tolerate! This aims to utterly erase him!"

Hahaha! I told you, there's no way it's that easy!

If you take steps too big, you'll easily pull your balls! The Gu Family messed up this time!

Such a heavenly punishment might even overwhelm a true immortal at the pinnacle, let alone a fledgling who just broke through.

For a moment, the crowd, who had been shocked, had their thoughts stir again.

Perhaps…

Is this the turning point where the Gu Family's rise turns to decline?

…

…

Above the Gu Family Divine Island, the atmosphere was so oppressive it made people want to vomit.

That pitch‑black calamity cloud wasn't huge; it only covered an area of ten thousand li in radius.

Within those ten thousand li, light was devoured and laws stripped away, as if it had become a dead land abandoned by the universe.

Gu Zhan's figure staggered out from the shattered wooden door.

He had changed.

His once bear‑like, hulking frame was now lean and well‑proportioned, each muscle sculpted with perfect lines and shimmering with a faint golden sheen.

All the scars on his body had vanished, replaced by an immortal divinity faintly radiating beneath his skin.

Yet he looked frail.

He was like a newborn infant—though he possessed an adult's soul, he hadn't yet had time to adapt to this world.

Huff… huff…

Gu Zhan gulped air, greedily inhaling the atmosphere of the Ancient Immortal Realm.

"True Immortal… is this what a true immortal feels like?"

He clenched his fists.

That power, that sense of being able to smash a star with a single punch, made him want to raise his head and howl.

But he could feel it.

The peak of this power was brief.

He had obtained it by destroying his supreme foundation!

Worse still, a massive sense of crisis emanating from deep within his soul made every hair on his body stand on end.

He looked up.

Directly above, he met an eye in the heavens that was slowly opening.

It was the vortex formed by the calamity cloud, like a cold, merciless eye of the Heavenly Dao, staring fixedly at him, the stowaway.

"Is this… heavenly punishment?"

Gu Zhan froze for a moment, then broke into a grin.

That smile carried a hint of helplessness, but mostly a bare‑footed, fearless ferocity.

"I risked half my life just to climb up here, and now you tell me I'm breaking the rules?"

"Screw your rules!"

Gu Zhan reached out; the Destined Great Axe that had fallen onto the training ground sensed its master's summons, transformed into a streak of light that shot upward and landed in his hand.

"Come! Let me see whether it's you, the cheating heavens, that's hard, or my axe that's hard!"

He had no intention of defending.

Because he knew that, in his current state, defense was a joke.

The only way to survive was to attack!

Boom—!

The Heavenly Dao seemed provoked by this ant's provocation.

From that eye, the first attack fell.

It wasn't thunder.

It was a sword.

A black long sword, forged from pure destruction law, silent and swift to the extreme, slashed straight toward Gu Zhan's Heavenly Spirit Cover.

When the blade fell, the void did not shatter, because space itself was killed by it.

"Heaven's Opening!"

Gu Zhan roared; the great axe in his hand erupted with unprecedented golden light, his newly reborn true immortal essence, his entire spirit and vigor.

Clang!!!

A sound sharp enough to shatter a mortal's eardrum.

The great axe in Gu Zhan's hand, the supreme weapon that had accompanied him for over a hundred thousand years, upon touching the black long sword, split like a block of tofu cleanly in two.

The sword, undiminished, sliced straight across Gu Zhan's shoulder.

Puff!

Golden true‑immortal blood gushed out like a fountain.

Gu Zhan was cut by the blade, falling from mid‑air and crashing hard into the ground of the Gu Family Divine Island.