Volume 1, Chapter 84 – Empress Qingxuan

Faced with the enormous azure dragon claw that covered the firmament and radiated an aura of destruction, Gu Han’s eyes remained as calm as an ancient well and as deep as a bottomless pool.

She did not even raise her head to look at the colossal dragon phantom blotting out the sky. She merely lifted her right hand and slowly closed it toward the empty air.

The movement was gentle, like plucking a flower.

Then…

“Hum!”

An invisible, boundless force beyond description suddenly descended.

It was neither an eruption of spiritual power nor the manifestation of a divine ability. It was a more fundamental and domineering Power of Laws.

It was as though heaven and earth themselves had submitted to her will at that moment.

In the sky, the colossal azure dragon claw charging forth with enough force to tear apart the stars suddenly froze.

The enormous azure dragon phantom behind it froze as well, along with the nine Azure Dragon Guards below who had formed the battle formation and linked their auras together.

Their movements and expressions remained exactly as they had been in the previous instant, completely fixed in place.

It was as though spacetime itself had been forcibly stripped away and frozen.

Everything within a hundred zhang, whether the falling dust, the flowing spiritual energy, or the horrified expressions on the faces of the distant onlookers, fell utterly still.

Even sound and light ceased to travel.

Only Gu Han, along with A-Yao and Ye Ling’er, whom she shielded behind her, remained unaffected.

“Master…”

Ye Ling’er stared blankly at the scene before her, which surpassed everything she understood. Her mind went completely blank.

Spatial confinement?

What level of power was this?!

A-Yao also widened her eyes and parted her little mouth. Looking at the motionless “black-armored people” in the sky, who seemed to have turned into statues, she found the sight extremely amusing.

At that moment, the soul of the Azure Dragon Guard captain, a Tribulation Transcendence expert, was trembling violently.

His thoughts still functioned, but he had completely lost control of his body. He could not even blink.

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Unprecedented turmoil surged through his heart, along with endless terror.

The Laws of Time? The Laws of Space?

How profound did one’s mastery over those two Laws have to be to use such a technique?!

This was probably something only Her Majesty the Empress could accomplish!

Just what cultivation did the Palace Master of Yaochi Immortal Palace possess?!

Gu Han’s gaze fell upon the imprisoned azure dragon phantom and the ten Azure Dragon Guards beneath it.

“Since you dared attack me…”

She spoke slowly. Her voice was not loud, yet it echoed clearly through the frozen spacetime like a decree of the Heavenly Dao.

“Then… you can all die.”

As her words fell, the five fingers of her loosely clenched right hand slowly began to close.

Following the movement of her fingers…

“Crack… Crack…”

Dense, grating sounds of space shattering rang out.

The frozen space surrounding the Azure Dragon Guards began to collapse violently inward with them at its center.

It was as though an invisible hand were treating that entire region of space and everything within it like a sheet of wastepaper, crushing and crumpling it mercilessly.

“No!”

The Azure Dragon Guard captain screamed in despair from the depths of his soul.

He could clearly feel the Azure Dragon Armor on his body, which was sturdy enough to withstand an earth-rank artifact head-on, groaning under the unbearable strain.

Death!

He sensed the utterly real and irresistible aura of death.

Since becoming an Azure Dragon Guard captain, he had never been so close to death.

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Yet the other party had not even truly “attacked.” She had merely closed her hand from afar.

At that critical instant, just as the ten Azure Dragon Guards were about to be completely “erased” together with that region of space, the ancient jade pendant worn close against the captain’s chest, carved with an exquisite mystic-bird pattern, suddenly erupted with dazzling golden radiance.

“Screech!”

A clear, resounding phoenix cry that seemed capable of piercing beyond the Nine Heavens rang across heaven and earth.

From within the jade pendant, the hazy phantom of a noble woman suddenly appeared. She seemed to embody all the honor, dignity, and majesty in the world.

The instant the phantom emerged, a vast and ancient pressure that seemed to stand above all living beings erupted with overwhelming force.

This pressure was not directed at the physical body or the soul. It was more like a manifestation of existential rank and will.

The golden radiance intertwined with the pressure and forcibly resisted Gu Han’s invisible power of spatial collapse.

The region of space on the verge of total destruction briefly stopped collapsing.

Although it remained covered in cracks and seemed ready to crumble at any moment, it did not immediately perish.

“This is…”

Sensing the golden radiance and pressure, Ye Lingyun and the other Ye family higher-ups were stunned at first. Then uncontrollable joy and reverence erupted across their faces.

“It is Her Majesty the Empress! It is Her Majesty’s Imperial Talisman!”

“Her Majesty sensed it! Her Majesty has intervened!”

“The Ye family is saved! The Ye family is saved!”

The cultivators watching from afar were shaken even more deeply. Many involuntarily bowed toward the golden phantom.

Empress Qingxuan!

The ruler of the Eastern Region and a legendary Immortal Ascension expert!

Even though this was merely the manifestation of a wisp of power sealed in the jade pendant beforehand, its might was enough to make all living beings bow their heads.

Gu Han’s brows shifted upward almost imperceptibly.

She looked at the golden phantom radiating majestic pressure, and a faint trace of surprise flashed through her eyes.

“Mid-stage Immortal Ascension? Not too weak, I suppose.”

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She murmured softly, her voice audible only to herself.

No wonder this woman could rule an entire region and make an aristocratic family like the Ye family willingly serve as her hunting dogs.

At the same moment that the golden Imperial Talisman manifested and blocked Gu Han’s attack, deep beneath the Qingxuan Imperial Dynasty at the very center of the Eastern Region, within a secret realm shrouded in chains of Dao Laws…

A woman dressed in nine-colored, phoenix-patterned palace robes sat cross-legged upon a Dao platform wreathed in chaotic qi.

She possessed a peerlessly beautiful and regal appearance, as though all the brilliance and nobility between heaven and earth had gathered upon her.

Endless visions of stars appearing and vanishing and the sun and moon alternating surrounded her. Her aura was as deep as an abyss, as though she had already merged with the Great Dao of heaven and earth.

She was none other than one of the rulers of the Eastern Region, Empress Qingxuan.

Suddenly, her beautiful eyes, which seemed to contain endless galaxies, slowly opened.

A trace of displeasure at having her secluded cultivation disturbed flashed through them, followed by unmistakable surprise.

“Hmm?”

With a slight movement of her thoughts, she instantly sensed that the “Imperial Talisman” she had bestowed upon the Azure Dragon Guards had been activated.

Moreover, it was enduring an extraordinarily powerful pressure, one strong enough to surprise even her.

“To force out the Imperial Talisman and make it manifest on its own…”

Empress Qingxuan murmured. Her voice was ethereal and pleasant, yet carried a trace of puzzlement.

“Since when did such a figure appear in the Eastern Region? Could that fellow Baiyun have returned from the Eastern Sea?”

The Baiyun she spoke of was another Immortal Ascension expert of the Eastern Region, Venerable Baiyun.

He was also the figure who had once played a game of Go alone beneath the peach blossom tree on Penglai Immortal Isle in the Eastern Sea when Gu Han broke through to Immortal Ascension.

Empress Qingxuan’s divine sense spread like an invisible tide, crossing tens of millions of li of mountains and rivers in an instant as it extended toward the Ye estate in Tianfeng City.

With her mid-stage Immortal Ascension cultivation, covering the entire territory of the Qingxuan Imperial Dynasty with her divine sense was not difficult.

However, when her divine sense was about to reach Tianfeng City, especially when it descended toward the silver-haired figure before the gates of the Ye estate…

For the first time, obvious astonishment appeared on Empress Qingxuan’s beautiful face, along with a trace of solemnity.

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She could not see through her!

When her divine sense came within a zhang of the silver-haired woman, it was completely blocked by an invisible barrier.

Forget probing the depth of her cultivation. Even the woman’s aura remained vague and indistinct to her senses.

It was as though the figure standing there was not a real living being, but a severed region of empty space or an incomprehensible mass of mist.

“This…”

Empress Qingxuan’s pupils contracted slightly.

Since attaining Immortal Ascension and ruling the Eastern Region for tens of thousands of years, this was the first time she had encountered an existence she could not see through at all.

Even among the old fellows of the other regions who stood at the same level as her, they could still roughly sense one another’s strength.

But this woman before her…

“The Southern Region… Yaochi Immortal Palace… Gu Han…”

She softly repeated the information she had just captured from the fluctuations in the minds of Ye Lingyun and the others below.

Since when had such a powerful expert appeared in the Southern Region?

Moreover, judging from the way Gu Han had casually confined spacetime and forced out her Imperial Talisman, her strength was probably no weaker than her own.

“Interesting…”

The surprise and solemnity in Empress Qingxuan’s eyes gradually transformed into a trace of interest.

At her level, there were far too few things left in the world that could make her feel surprised or intrigued.

She slowly rose to her feet.

The radiant visions surrounding her quietly faded, while her nine-colored palace robes fluttered without wind.

She took a single step forward, and the space before her rippled like water.

In the next instant, her figure vanished from the secret realm.

…