Li Yan had already found the 93rd Immortal ruin, and was now the second person in the trial by fire to have exceeded Sir Fan.
He and Meng Hao were the focus of the attention of the entire Ninth Mountain and Sea.
Three more days passed. Meng Hao coughed up some blood, and his vision went blurry. During the more than twenty days that had passed, he had sustained injuries on multiple occasions as he forced himself to continue to contemplate the nine bridges, and imprint their image on his mind.
It was difficult, but with his intense willpower, he was slowly but surely able to continue to grind away. He was not so wildly ambitious that he intended to commit all nine bridges to memory, only the first one.
Finally, the twenty-first day arrived. In this special location, contemplating enlightenment for that amount of time was like spending more than two hundred years on the outside. Rumbling filled Meng Hao’s mind, and his eyes shone with the glow of enlightenment as the full image of the first bridge materialized in front of him.
In that instant, deep within his mind, he was able to sense exactly how damaged the bridge was. Suddenly, ninety-nine percent of the bridge actually vanished, and he found that the first bridge was actually… nothing more than a fist-sized rock!
It was a mere stone, but even looking at it caused Meng Hao to cough up blood, and he knew that if he approached it, he would be destroyed in body and spirit. These more than twenty days of contemplation were like two hundred or more years in the outside world.
In the moment that he understood the real situation regarding the first bridge, and the outline of the bridge itself appeared in his mind, images began to appear in his eyes, a vision.
Within the vision were nine enormous suns hauling an astonishing statue. They seemed so large that they were impossible to see the ends of. An army of countless cultivators lashed out with attacks that ripped a huge hole in the air, which they then entered.
Behind the shocking statue were nine astonishing bridges that shook the heavens. Boundless light that covered everything radiated off of them.
The scene caused Meng Hao’s mind to tremble, and reminded him of the things he had seen back in the Immortal Ancient Daoist Rite Temple. Some of the images were almost exactly the same. 1
Then, the vision changed. He saw a world-shaking war. Countless living things were being slaughtered, and heavenly bodies collapsed. The starry sky shattered, and in every breath of time, endless numbers of lives perished.
The nine bridges exerted incredible pressure, causing the starry sky to begin to collapse. Next, Meng Hao saw three enormous figures appear up above. When they joined forces, the starry sky disappeared, and the world went black, as if all the auras in existence were absorbed, condensed to form nine mountains, which then crushed down toward the nine bridges.
The bridges… shattered!
The vision abruptly ended. Meng Hao had no time to thoroughly analyze the images before they vanished. He was left standing there, his jaw slack, his eyes wide. His mind was blank and trembling.
“Those nine mountains….” Meng Hao was panting. From what he could sense, he had only been able to glimpse a tiny bit of some huge secret.
“Why does the world I live in consist of only nine mountains and nine seas, with four planets circling around each of those mountains?!
“I never thought about it too much before, but how come Planet South Heaven is so special? Why did that Outsider want my parents to guard it?!
“Also, what about that place I went to underneath the Ancient Dao Lakes on Planet South Heaven? That being which was crushed and then sealed there said something like… Immortals are the source of all chaos! 2
“What exactly does that mean?!” Meng Hao’s breathing was unprecedentedly ragged, and he was shivering all over. He now had an idea of what it all meant, but didn’t dare to consider that it was true.
As his mind trembled, the nine bridges in front of him vanished. This time, they really were gone; even when Meng Hao searched with his divine sense, he was unable to find them.