Moreover, have you not heard that when Heaven confers a great task upon a person, it first must strengthen their resolve, tire their muscles and bones, starve their body, and empty them of everything.... These are all trials which will be greatly beneficial in the future!"

The donkey snorted two streams of white air from its nostrils, knowing that the master was painting big dreams again.

Over the years, it had traveled all over, not only drinking enough of the northwestern winds but also eating its fill of the master's stories, and was long used to it, unfazed as if the words just passed by like the wind.

"Master, let's find a place to sleep first. It seems the weather is turning, and Heaven is preparing to strike you with thunder again."

Qiu Changtian raised his head to look at the dark night sky, where the dark clouds were hanging low, and grumbled:

"I refuse to believe it! I won't lose to you! If you wait until I'm the Master of Divine Weapons, I will cut a huge hole in you then!"

His words had barely fallen when a bolt of brilliant lightning, the size of a millstone, crashed down with a thunderous roar. Luckily, the donkey was quick, its four hooves flying as if oiled, darting several yards away in a flash.

"Quick, move, quick!"

Qiu Changtian glanced at the smoking, charred pit and felt a bit startled, urging the donkey to run faster:

"Ahead, there's a place about ten miles away, heavy with yin energy where corpses are buried, let's make do for the night!"

The donkey bared its large teeth disdainfully:

"I wonder how unlucky that child must be to have caught your eye, Master!"

...

...

Rustling sounds like endless tides surged through Bai Qi's mind, leaving him dizzy and unable to control himself.

It felt as if his whole being had fallen into a vast ocean, beaten by wave after wave.

The Cross-Sea Incense burned, rising and transforming into a mass of clouds and mist, enveloping Bai Qi and allowing him to retain a sliver of clarity, uninfluenced by the chaotic noise.

The bizarre and fantastical scenes twisted and blurred, like dyes blending together and pouring onto a clean canvas, indistinguishable, only roiling violently.

"Don't look too much."

Bai Qi instinctively guarded his original self, and after an unknown amount of time, the vast void finally revealed concrete outlines.

An endless library emerged, with towering bookshelves reaching eighty or ninety yards high, like mountains rising from the ground, densely packed with bamboo and jade scrolls.

"If these suddenly collapsed, I'm afraid they'd bury me alive."

Bai Qi clicked his tongue, feeling like a tiny speck of dust traversing the incomprehensibly vast library, just as a mortal trying to measure heaven and earth with mere feet, unable to reach the end in a lifetime.

"Guardian Vault? So this Inner Scenic Land is called 'Guardian Vault.'

I wonder which Ghost Immortal created this place. Perhaps the predecessor must have loved books in life, otherwise why transform a lifetime of cultivation into an endless library?"

He craned his neck with great effort to see the enormous plaque hanging like stars.

Sweeping his gaze across, he noticed the same writing carved on each stack of bamboo and jade slips.

"The Words of the Grand Historian Family"!

"Such a huge Guardian Vault filled entirely with... history books? Didn't I obtain a copy of a fragmentary transcription from an assassin in some Hidden Pavilion?"

Bai Qi's heart stirred; how many endless years must be recorded to fill this place to the brim?

Millennia? Tens of thousands of years? A hundred thousand years? A million years?

Faced with such a vast span of time, he couldn't help but feel a deep sense of awe.

A mortal reaching the end of life barely lives a hundred years, and a Divine Power Giant lives but two hundred.

Looking at historical evidence, the longest unified empire before the Dao perished lasted only eight hundred years.

The phrase "a thousand autumns and ten thousand generations" seems ordinary but holds unspeakably profound meanings like the vicissitudes of time.

"Only truly Immortals might casually look upon it, might calmly consider it. After all, they are existence with the same longevity as heaven and earth, as radiant as the sun and moon."

Bai Qi did not think himself overly surprised, even if he could someday break through the Fourth Qi Cultivation Barrier to enter the Divine Power Secret Realm.

Two hundred years of life, compared to millennia and eons of history, what difference lies between that and the ephemeral life of a mayfly?

"Therefore, even a powerful Divine Power Giant, who can control a province, call the wind and rain, would tirelessly seek immortality.

To live is the most primal obsession of all living beings, and immortality is the culmination of all desires."

Bai Qi mused as he searched carefully for a while but did not see any trace of his younger brother, Bai Ming, or know where he was taken.

"Since I'm here in the Guardian Vault, I might as well look at some books. With three thousand years since the Dao perished, too much of the past is buried... without any chronological overview, looking at these stacks of bamboo and jade slips, who knows what comes first and what comes after."

Speaking idly to himself, he, like a little dwarf, slipped into the boundless mountains of books, climbing constantly upward.

Occasionally he'd pull out a bamboo slip, read it, then continue on.

The first thing that came into view was eight large characters—

"Infinite Ten Thousand Heavens, Dao Court Reigns Supreme!"

The words engraved on the bamboo slips appeared and disappeared, requiring an extremely focused mind and spirit to discern them clearly.

If it weren't for Bai Qi cultivating the first level of the "Flood Dragon Subduing Yellow Springs Sutra" to some success, he might not have been able to hold it and read.

"Such a boastful claim! Dao Court... I've only heard of the Dragon Court, is there any connection between the two?

At first, I thought what the Grand Historian recorded was merely several thousand years since the Dao perished, but now it seems to trace back even further, perhaps to an unimaginably ancient era?"

Bai Qi continued reading, but his brows furrowed tighter as he went; this history book was concise to the extreme, requiring word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence comprehensions, translating into plain language:

"The Four Saints hid during the Taichu Dao Chronicles, the Twelve Immortal Heads each had their roles.

The Immortal heads are also Daoist Monarchs, lesser monarchs of the Infinite Ten Thousand Heavens, and leaders among all true beings.

They each governed the Ten Thousand Heavens, appointing and bestowing titles on true divine beings, engaging in expeditions that were ablaze like wildfire.

Until the Taishi Dao Chronicles, when the Dao Court inexplicably collapsed, with the Turbid Tide sweeping the universe, severing the Infinite Ten Thousand Ways.

It seems... the words here are written very uncertainly and obscurely, as if afraid to mention them."

Bai Qi paused, grabbing the remaining bamboo slips to quickly browse through.

His perfect literary skills, creating Dragon Tactics and Tiger Strategies, flowed with the mysterious words from the stack after stack of bamboo slips entering his mind, allowing progress that had once stalled to slowly increase again.

"It seems an Immortal Head betrayed the Dao Court, the ruler of several hundred Heavens, defiant and unrighteous, who was struck down by another Immortal Head."

Bai Qi was enlightened; so there was internal strife in the Dao Court.

Yet the contents recorded in these stacks of "The Words of the Grand Historian Family" were too abridged.

Whenever it involved the Daoist Monarch, it was erased or smeared with ink, making it impossible to see clearly.

He couldn't help but criticize inwardly, being a historian and still afraid of retribution?

Show some courage, wield the pen of history like iron!

"Hey, why is there nothing more?"

Moments later, when Bai Qi was reading with relish, he found that each subsequent bamboo slip was marked with the same sentence:

"The name and deeds of the Daoist Monarch cannot be spoken directly, nor can they be recorded, nor imagined... The Twelve Immortal Heads possess supreme forms and names, mysterious and immeasurable, born in accord with the Dao, merging with the true Dao.

As historians, how can we frivolously discuss, willing to face demotion, enter a barren land, endure ten thousand years of suffering through cold and heat."

Barren land?

Bai Qi raised an eyebrow, hesitating:

"Red County Divine Land?"

Then he shook his head in disbelief.

Before the Dao's fall, Red County Divine Land was a place of outstanding people and abundant resources, giving rise to all Saints' Dao Lineage like bamboo shoots after the rain.

This is far from what is implied by unproductive barren land.

Thunk.

While pondering, Bai Qi unknowingly walked to the highest point of the bookshelf, where a jade slip fell to his feet.

He bent down to pick it up, and another line of small characters emerged:

"The powers of the Daoist Monarch are unfathomable, reigning above all divine beings and Heavens. Hence, accurate histories do not record it.

This lowly one, inadequate, is willing to renounce the position of Grand Historian, to compose unofficial histories of the Infinite Ten Thousand Heavens, solely to earn a smile from the world."

Well, then!

Can't write official history about the Daoist Monarch, so they straightforwardly used Spring and Autumn Pen Technique to create unofficial histories?

"I must see how wild this can get!"

He continued to select and, finally, found a jade slip he could read without much difficulty.

"After the Turbid Tide, the Twelve Immortal Heads either disappeared or fought among themselves; they dominated dozens of Heavens, some in Lu State, some in the universe, others in the Upper Realm.

Among a few Daoist Monarchs, ambitions arose to re-establish a Dao Court with five hundred Heavens... thus, rumors spread that the Six Supreme Celestial Daoist Monarchs of Taixuan intended to take over the Four Saints' Immortal undertakings."