I established the Eternal Immortal Clan by taming beasts.

Several months later, in the northwest direction of the Ten Thousand Demon Sacred Mountain, the deepest part of the Fallen Soul Mountains.

The morning mist covered the valley that was shrouded in a thick, grayish-white fog all year round.

The fog was as thick as cotton; even at the height of midday sunlight, it could only barely penetrate a few feet below the surface, leaving only a chaotic gray-white expanse below.

No wind could stir this fog, and no birds or beasts dared to approach its edge.

Around this valley, predators from within a hundred miles would deliberately avoid this area, as the faint spiritual energy fluctuations here instilled in them an indescribable awe from the depths of their instincts.

Three forces arrived at the outer edge of the valley from three different directions.

The first to arrive was the group led by Venerable Qingluan.

Five streaks of blue light streaked across the southern horizon and landed on the edge of the grayish-white mist.

Bi Yu, who was in the lead, walked at the front, followed by four of her clansmen. Their green robes were slightly fluttered by the weak air currents at the edge of the mist, and the feather patterns embroidered on their hems flickered like breathing scales at an extremely slow frequency.

After they stood on a protruding rock, no one spoke; they simply waited quietly, their gazes fixed on the slowly flowing gray-white border at the edge of the mist.

After a short while, the Crimson Serpent Venerable's procession emerged from the back of the hills in the northwest.

Chi Lin walked at the front, his dark red, narrow-sleeved robe glowing with a warm hue in the morning light that seemed out of place with the surrounding gray-white mist. Each step he took left a brief, darker mark on the gravel ground than the surrounding area.

Behind him followed four figures dressed in dark red robes. Each of them was more upright than a normal human, and the proportion between their shoulder width and stride revealed a kind of almost regular symmetry honed over a long period of time.

Two of them had more angular facial features, with obvious protrusions at their brow bones, and fine scales that had not completely faded from the sides of their necks, occasionally flashing a luster similar to but slightly different from their clothing as the angle of the light changed.

They stopped on the north side of the edge of the fog, about ten feet away from the Azure Phoenix procession. They did not greet each other, nor did they deliberately avoid each other; they simply maintained a state of non-interference and coexistence.

The last family to arrive was the Lin family.

As a blue-green flying boat passed through the eastern ridgeline, its speed was much slower than normal. The spiritual light array on the boat operated at a reduced power in the morning light, leaving only a very faint blue halo at the edge.

The airship did not land directly at the edge of the mist, but hovered about twenty feet above the ground. The hum of the engine continued for several breaths in the morning light at a suppressed frequency, and then gradually weakened to the point that it was almost blended into the sound of the wind.

Three figures leaped off the deck of the airship in turn.

Lin Che walked at the front, wearing a dark blue robe, a jade belt around his waist, and his hair was neatly styled. The sound of his boots hitting the gravel was very soft, leaving almost no extra sound in the morning light.

Half a step behind him, the Burning Heaven Sacred Sparrow still looked like a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl.

The crimson-gold long dress stood out against the gray-white mist, and the flame patterns on the hem flickered rhythmically as she moved. The tip of the crimson feather hairpin in her hair shimmered with tiny points of light in the morning light, and each movement left a brief trace of warm lingering in the air.

After landing, she first looked around, and her gaze finally landed on the Azure Phoenix Venerable's group, stopping on Bi Yu.

The latter also looked over at the same moment. Their eyes met for less than a moment in the morning light before they looked away simultaneously.

Clearly, both sides felt a resonance from the noble bloodline of the avian race within each other.

Next was Yazi, who was walking behind them.

After transforming, he looked extremely old and frail. He was half a head shorter than Chi Lin, with a slightly hunched back. His gray hair was casually tied up with a dark wooden hairpin, making him look like an ordinary elderly cultivator, without any of the imposing presence he had in his beast form.

However, as a fellow member of the dragon race, he immediately drew the attention of Chi Lin and the others the moment he stepped into the edge of the mist.

Finally, there's Lin Xuanqing.

Today she changed into a dark blue outfit that was easy to move in, her long hair was tied into a ponytail with a plain-colored hairband, and several jade slips of different colors and a spirit pen hung at her waist.

Her face was still covered by that veil, the edges of which fluttered gently in the wind, obscuring most of her face and revealing only a pair of calm eyes.

After landing beside the Burning Sky Sacred Sparrow, she didn't look around. Instead, she glanced down at the mist beneath her feet and nodded slightly, as if confirming whether the geological conditions of her landing spot matched her prediction.

The three teams formed an equidistant distribution of about ten zhang at the edge of the fog.

Bi Yu stood at the very front of the Azure Phoenix procession, nodding slightly to Lin Che from a distance: "Greetings, True Lord Lin. I extend my greetings on behalf of Venerable Azure Phoenix." Her voice was not loud, but it clearly pierced through the gap between the morning light and the mist, reaching Lin Che's ears.

Lin Che responded with a nod: "I am Lin Che, the head of the Lin family. I hope to have a pleasant cooperation with you all."

Chi Lin stood at the forefront of the Chi Lian team, arms crossed, his gaze sweeping over the Lin family's group. He sneered, "Your Lin family only sent four? Are you looking down on us, or is it that your Lin family can only send four fourth-tier experts?"

After half a month of negotiations among the three parties, it was finally agreed that each party would send five fourth-level cultivators to explore the Myriad Beasts Sect's secret realm.

The Lin family actually sent their fifth Nascent Soul cultivator.

The one that hasn't appeared yet is naturally the Azure Profound Realm Spirit that uses Absolute Emptiness.

In order to deal with any unforeseen circumstances, Lin Che did not let him show himself, as a backup plan.

"The four of us from the Lin family are more than capable of handling this, so there's no need for True Lord Crimson Scale to worry about us."

"Arrogant!"

"Alright, everyone's here." Bi Yu interrupted the conversation, drawing their attention back to the edge of the mist. "Let's activate the tokens simultaneously as agreed."

"Hmph, fine, I won't stoop to their level!"

The place where everyone is now is called the Ruins of Ten Thousand Beasts.

Located in the deepest part of the Fallen Soul Mountains, about 300 miles northwest of the Ten Thousand Demon Sacred Mountain, it is a depression surrounded by three natural canyons.

From the surface, this is just an ordinary valley shrouded in thick fog, but according to Venerable Bai Ze, this is the location of the ultimate inheritance.

Even if someone who doesn't possess the Three Tokens walks up to it, they will only see a pile of rocks, and their divine sense will find nothing unusual.

Lin Che took out the Azure Token from his sleeve. The jade-colored token gleamed with a warm luster in the morning light. The patterns engraved on its surface lit up slightly the moment they came into contact with the surrounding air, before quickly returning to its standby dark blue color.

Bi Yu took out a black jade token. The token was darker in color than the Cang Xing token, almost like old jade that had been dyed with ink. There was a narrow dark gold border around the edge, which shone with a warm color in the sunlight, different from the surrounding mist. The gold glowed and faded at an extremely slow frequency.

Chi Lin took out the moon-white jade token. The silver patterns on the token's surface flowed at an extremely slow speed, like moonlight pressed into the jade and circulating along a fixed path. Each complete cycle took about twenty breaths.

The moment the three tokens were raised at the same time, the mist at the edge of the valley changed for the first time.

The edge of the originally still grayish-white mist began to slowly shrink inward, as if being squeezed inward from the edge by an approaching, invisible force.

The contraction was initially very slow, almost imperceptible, but as the distance between the three tokens gradually decreased, the contraction began to accelerate synchronously, expanding from a few inches to several feet, and then from several feet to several feet.

This gray-white boundary retreated at a steady pace as it contracted, each step exposing new ground to the morning light.

First came the layer of gravel, then the finer sand, and finally the outline of the entrance made of bluish-gray stone.

The entrance, hidden beneath the fog, is slowly but irreversibly emerging from its shroud.

Finally, when the three tokens were raised to the same level, a complete entrance, large enough for three people to pass side by side, appeared in the center of the fog.

The mist on both sides of the entrance is suspended with vertical cuts, neither closing forward nor spreading backward, as if fixed by some force on an invisible boundary line. The edges of the cuts have a smooth appearance, as if cut by a sharp blade, and in the morning light, they have a denser grayish-white tone that is different from the surrounding mist.

Inside the entrance is a downward-extending stone staircase, made of bluish-gray stone with a smooth, mirror-like surface. Each step maintains the same height and width.

"Let's go." Biyu took the lead, and when the soles of her boots landed on the first stone step, they made a very soft, compressed sound.

Lin Che followed Bi Yu about three steps into the entrance.

The moment he crossed the boundary line, the aura that had been blocked by the mist suddenly disappeared, replaced by a dry, mixed scent of old stone and some indescribable spiritual plant.

The scent wasn't strong, but it had a persistent, penetrating power. With each inhalation, you could feel the aroma slowly spreading from your nasal cavity to the depths of your throat, like the residue of diluted old paper after being repeatedly turned over in a closed space.

On the stone walls on both sides of the stone steps, a spirit ore is embedded at intervals.

Over the long course of time, the light from these spirit ores has been greatly diminished, leaving only a warm and dim amber glow that barely illuminates the stone steps beneath our feet and the slowly emerging outlines on the walls on either side.

At first, they were just blurry dark lines, appearing and disappearing in the light of the spirit ore. But as the depth of the descent increased, those lines began to appear on the stone wall surface in a clearer and clearer manner.

Those are portraits of the successive sect leaders of the Ten Thousand Beasts Sect.

Starting from both sides of the first stone step, every nine steps there is a human figure carved into the stone wall in the form of a bas-relief.

Each portrait maintains a uniform height and width. The faces of the figures are varied: some are thin and refined, some are square and upright, some have smiles in their eyes, and some have serious expressions. But regardless of their appearance, their gazes are all fixed on the direction of the stone steps in the same way.

The way he looked at her wasn't sharp, but it carried a weight that was consistent, as if it had been repeatedly confirmed by time.

Below each portrait is a line of small characters indicating the sect leader's Daoist name and the number of years he led the sect. The style of the characters has changed over time; the early ones are more forceful, the middle ones are more elegant, and the later ones are more restrained.

The writing dates back tens of thousands of years to the near ancient period, like an unfolded old book, each page recording a piece of history that has ended in its own way.

Lin Che's gaze lingered on a portrait for a few more moments.

That was a portrait of the last sect leader, Qingming. Unlike the other sect leaders, his eyes did not have the maturity that comes with the passage of time; instead, they carried a weariness that was incongruous with his age.

There are no inscriptions below the portrait, only an old mark that has been worn away to the point of being almost invisible, as if something was originally engraved but was deliberately erased at some point, leaving only a shallow, almost unrecognizable indentation extending along the natural texture of the stone.

When everyone had climbed all 360 stone steps, the massive stone gate appeared before them.

The stone gate is about five zhang high and four zhang wide. It was carved from a single piece of grayish-white stone, with no trace of splicing on the surface.

A huge relief is carved on the facade.

Nine mythical beasts of different shapes are linked together, forming a circle. In the center of the circle is a silhouette of a person and a beast standing side by side.

The emblem of the Myriad Beasts Sect.

The stone door has three grooves arranged in a triangular pattern in the upper center of the door. The three grooves are different in shape: the first is long and smooth, the second is square and heavy, and the third is an arc that looks like a cloud blown by the wind.

Lin Che stepped forward and inserted the Cangxing Token into the long groove on the left.

The moment the token fell into the groove, a cyan light spread outwards from the surface of the token along the edge of the groove, like a thin stream flowing into a dried-up riverbed, extending outwards along a predetermined path. Tiny specks of light flickered briefly and then went out along the path of diffusion at the edge.

The cyan light spread along the patterns on the stone gate for a distance, paused briefly on the outline of a mythical beast in the relief, a creature whose form was somewhere between a lion and a tiger, and then continued to move forward.

The relief of the mounts and spirit beasts on the stone gate "came to life" the moment the blue light passed by.

The stone-carved spirit beast slightly turned its head, and a short, sharp hissing sound, as if coming from an extremely distant place, lingered on the surface of the stone door for less than a breath before dissipating.

Bi Yu then inserted the Crimson Battle Token into the square, thick groove on the right side.

The red light flared up the moment the token touched the stone surface, spreading along the patterns on the stone gate at a faster speed than the blue light.

The diffusion path exhibits a more rapid rhythm, different from that of the blue light, with each diffusion completing the next distance at shorter intervals.

The red and blue lights converged once at the center of the stone gate. They neither canceled each other out nor merged. Instead, they each proceeded along their predetermined paths in a parallel manner, forming a brief two-colored light trail at the point of intersection.