Crack—crack!
The Five-Prison King Cauldron burst up from the depths, only to slam into a ceiling of ice. A thick, iron-hard sheet sealed the entire ocean surface, like a steel lid clamped over the world. Nothing could pass through it—anything trapped beneath would simply suffocate and die.
But the cauldron was far from ordinary. With a violent surge, it smashed upward. Shards of ice exploded outward, daylight flooding in.
Fang Han shot out of the cauldron. The world around him was nothing but white—white sky, white wind, white sea. A massive frozen crust blanketed the ocean, and the cold felt like knives flaying the air itself. The wind howled so fiercely it lifted snow in sheets.
It was still summer.
Everywhere they had traveled up to this point had been sweltering. But the northern ocean was a different world entirely—one ruled by an unforgiving, ancient cold.
Even with the power of the Yama Golden Body and his understanding of the Earth-Store realm, Fang Han felt the biting chill gnawing at his bones. Only by circulating the Wood Emperor's True Qi could he steady himself and resist the cold.
Long Xuan had long since activated her qi. Though she possessed the formidable Asura physique of a dark witch, even she needed her magic garments to withstand this land of eternal frost.
The environment here was so brutal that anyone below the Divine Ability Realm simply couldn't exist. Even a peak Body Transformation cultivator—no matter how fierce their will—would freeze to death.
"In a place like this, you see the limits of the body." Fang Han exhaled, frost spiraling from his lips. "No wonder people say that once you enter the Divine Ability Realm, it's like stepping into the heavens. In conditions like these, only Divine Ability cultivators can survive. Those below… have no chance."
"Many disciples from immortal sects come here with cold-resistant treasures," Long Xuan said. "They use the extremity of this place to temper their minds before attempting a breakthrough. Before I formed my Divine Ability, I trained here as well. The Frost-Wyrm that powers my Cold-Drake Sword—I found it inside a glacier."
"You know this region better than I do," Fang Han said. "Tell me—how do we enter the Void?"
"The Void was scarred open during the ancient war between immortals and demons," she replied. "Many sections inside connect to other worlds. I know one passage. It's infested with celestial demons—thousands of them. And deeper within lies a corridor that leads to outer realms. If we went too far, we might end up on some demonic battlefield among the stars… and never return."
Fang Han nodded. "Didn't you say that ancient cultivators once left behind caves and treasure vaults in the depths of the Void? Places full of artifacts, magic tools—even Dao Artifacts?"
"They exist," she said. "But they're unimaginably dangerous. Spaces distort. Time twists. Even Senior Sister Jialan—a golden core powerhouse—wouldn't come back unscathed. Better to focus on killing celestial demons. The more demons the cauldron absorbs, the stronger its power becomes."
She didn't know that eight million demons would fully awaken the cauldron's grand formations, but she had clearly sensed a change. The demon labor force inside the cauldron was refining pills, powering arrays, and polishing her qi. In the past few days, she had even produced several top-tier Foundation-Building Pills.
"Even Jialan can't breach those ancient ruins… then I won't try either," Fang Han agreed. Her cultivation was at least the seventh layer of Divine Ability—far, far above him. If she couldn't risk it, he had no business thinking about it.
"Good. Then let's head for the demon nests," Long Xuan said. "The more we kill, the better."
Fang Han prepared to return to the cauldron to travel deeper. But then—
something inside him stirred.
"Fang Han—help me! We need the cauldron's array to finish refining the Saint-Level Dharmic Relic!" Yan's voice echoed from the Yellow Springs Diagram.
"That fast?"
Fang Han's mind entered the diagram. Yan had wrapped the Water-Gu Demon in Forgetful Water, forming a cocoon. The demon no longer struggled—it had already been stripped of all memories.
"Did you force out the cultivation method for the Great Severing Technique?"
"Of course," Yan said casually. "Its willpower is strong, but I've mastered more than a hundred and sixty demonic interrogation arts. No demon can resist forever. It knew many celestial-demon spells too. Tsk, tsk… the demon race truly is the root of all demonic cultivation."
A surge of strange insights poured straight into Fang Han's mind—the demonic runes, mantras, and formulas of the Great Severing Technique.
Even though he couldn't practice it yet, the way the technique manipulated qi was exquisite. If he applied its cutting principles to the Wood Emperor Qi… it wouldn't slice through space like the true technique—but it could absolutely cleave low-grade artifacts clean in half.
The remaining lesser magic spells he stored away mentally for when he reached the Celestial Realm.
Now that the most powerful art was in hand, Fang Han didn't hesitate. He triggered one of the cauldron's suppressed formations—the Purgatory Array.
Under normal circumstances he could never have activated it. But with fifty-thousand celestial demons acting as labor inside the cauldron, the array slowly roared to life. A tide of purgatory flames surged into the Yellow Springs Diagram, enveloping the Water-Gu Demon and refining it to essence.
Piece by piece the impurities burned away.
At the end, what remained was a fist-sized relic with 1,296 facets, glowing like a perfect, flawless diamond.
But the power radiating from it was overwhelming—an ocean of force rolling in waves.
"So this is a Saint-Level Relic… It holds the strength of ten thousand stampeding horses—no wonder it's considered a top-tier earth-grade pill." Fang Han's voice trembled. His qi wrapped around the relic almost hungrily.
The moment he touched it, the relic dissolved into pure energy.
The medicinal force surged into his qi. Waves of brilliance crashed through his meridians. Even the Wood Emperor True Qi thinned as the relic's essence tore through him like a flood.
Fang Han gathered every shred of power he had and drew it inward—
Boom.
A torrent of divine force slammed into his consciousness.
The power of ten thousand stampeding horses exploded within him.