Chen Yan thought it was a miracle that he was still alive.

During the decades of sect warfare, Azure Sky True Person fought bravely and had once severely wounded several Ascended cultivators, giving Qingxuan Immortal Sect an early advantage in the conflict.

Sky Dome True Person remained stationed atop Qingxuan Mountain, assisted by Elder Xu Heng, who had reached half-step Immortal Ascension and perfected the Dao Union realm.

Because of this, Qingxuan Mountain had not suffered much disturbance in the preceding decades.

As for Chen Yan, over those decades he had raised his openly known cultivation level to the early Unity realm.

With the sect’s top forces almost completely mobilized, Chen Yan, now at Unity, had clearly become a backbone of Qingxuan Immortal Sect.

Under normal circumstances, Unity cultivators are not permitted to meet with Ascended stewards.

But in the present crisis, Sky Dome True Person and Elder Xu Heng had no choice but to put Chen Yan to heavy use in helping them manage the gates of the mountain.

After they discovered Chen Yan’s governance methods were highly effective, Sky Dome True Person and Elder Xu Heng began to truly trust this “young” junior.

In fact, even though the twelve Immortal Sects had already erupted into all-out warfare, the most severely affected things were the spirit stone veins, spirit farmlands, and other external facilities.

The mountain gates of the sects themselves remained peaceful.

After all, Ascended cultivators were stationed as guardians.

This held true until the domain’s heavenly principles became overcrowded.

Those cultivators who had perfected the Dao Union began to forcefully ascend to Immortality. As they did so, the domain’s Heaven’s Dao started to collapse, and the Ascended cultivators’ Dao Basis began to be corrupted by the collapsing laws, their dao resonance falling into ruin and annihilation.

As for those Dao Union cultivators who forced ascension, because they could not truly occupy a single Great Dao by themselves, they could not forge a genuine Immortal Platform atop their Dao Basis.

The world called Ascended cultivators who had not forged a true Immortal Platform false Immortals.

And those Ascended cultivators whose Dao Bases were damaged and polluted were called fallen Immortals.

Sky Dome True Person was the first fallen Immortal Chen Yan had witnessed.

At that time Chen Yan was inside Cangji Hall, reporting recent sect matters to Sky Dome True Person and Elder Xu Heng.

Chen Yan was explaining that recently all the local mineral veins had been severely damaged, causing shortages of ore, and that Qingxuan Mountain’s spirit ore supply would likely face a shortfall in the near future.

In a daze he thought he heard something snap.

When Chen Yan raised his head and looked at Sky Dome True Person, his entire body froze.

He saw something he had never seen before—

The threads of cause and effect connecting Sky Dome True Person began to fracture, then dissipate, finally turning into nothing and vanishing.

Elder Xu Heng, as a Dao Union cultivator, was naturally highly sensitive to shifts in the heavenly laws.

Realizing that all the Dao Union cultivators were starting to fight over the forty-nine Great Daos, Xu Heng immediately took a desperate gamble and forcefully ascended.

From that day, Sky Dome True Person gradually sank into ruin and lost himself.

There was no causal connection left, as if he had come from endless nothingness.

Such beings would quickly be expelled by the world’s Heaven’s Dao.

These Ascended cultivators, severed from cause and effect, gradually lost their sanity and could only become walking corpses.

They were the fallen Immortals.

Not only Sky Dome True Person, but every original Ascended cultivator in this domain was undergoing the same fall.

Meanwhile, Dao Union cultivators who forced ascension all became false Immortals.

After forcefully ascending, Elder Xu Heng quickly made his judgment.

As a false Immortal, he obviously did not have the ability to slay Sky Dome True Person, who despite being almost a walking corpse still had an Immortal Platform forged.

False Immortals could retain rationality, but with the collapse of the heavenly laws and without a true Immortal Platform, their dao resonance eroded at a rate more than ten thousand times that of ordinary Ascended cultivators.

In other words, false Immortals could at most live for ten years.

When all forty-nine Great Daos were occupied, there would be no true Ascended left in the world.

By the present time, even the false Immortals in this domain had already perished, leaving only fallen Immortals drifting between heaven and earth like empty shells.

Because those hollow fallen Immortals had completely severed their causal ties with this world, they were rejected by Heaven’s Dao.

Consequently, their remaining dao resonance was treated as filth by Heaven’s Dao, polluting the domain’s spiritual energy.

This caused cultivators in the Nine Realms Below Immortality to begin descending into madness.

The higher the realm, the faster the descent into madness.

Chen Yan had originally believed that although the Sage might not fully control the domain’s situation, once Zuo He intervened he could stop the collapse of the heavenly laws.

But the Sage never appeared.

He simply allowed the heavenly laws to collapse and the world to be destroyed.

He allowed the cultivators of this realm to become irrational madmen.

Until events developed into the current state.

Now Qingxuan Mountain had almost become ruins.

Chen Yan checked again with his spiritual sense and confirmed that there was not a single living person left on Qingxuan Mountain.

In other words, Chen Yan was the only survivor.

Thinking this, Chen Yan lowered his head and looked at the three corpses on the ground.

They were Unity cultivators who had gone mad.

Qingxuan Mountain had become ruins because of the actions of these three.

In the bitter battle that had just ended, Chen Yan had almost exhausted the clear-colored Martial Spring within him. He had even lost an arm, but only then had he managed to kill the three Unity cultivators.

Chen Yan continued to circulate his Martial Spring to let the pure clear spiritual energy once again fill his energy sea.

After restoring his breath, he stood up and walked away from Qingxuan Mountain.

Since enrolling in Qingxuan Immortal Sect, nearly three hundred years had passed.

He had acquired sufficient understanding of this domain.

Chen Yan raised his head again and gazed at the countless pitch-black rifts of various sizes tearing through the sky.

So why, after all, had the Sage of Uncarved Simplicity not appeared when this domain’s heavens were about to utterly collapse, even to the point of possibly being destroyed like Chenping Continent during the Great Chaos of the Immortals?

Could it be possible that…

The Ultimate Sage of Uncarved Simplicity might also be affected by the theft of the Immortal Dao?

No, Chen Yan thought the possibility was small.

Because back when Chenping Continent had been destroyed, Mr. You had forcefully ascended and seized the Immortal Dao from Qiu Siruo and Yin Xia and ascended.

Mr. You’s true cultivation was at the peak of Returning to Void Realm, or he had already touched the threshold of Uncarved Simplicity.

And the Ultimate Sage of Heaven’s Extremity was even higher than Mr. You—how could he have his Immortal Dao plundered?

Or…

Many conjectures surfaced in Chen Yan’s mind, but they were only blind guesses without any solid evidence.

Finally Chen Yan shook off the thoughts in his head and made up his mind—

It was time to face this cruel world.