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A light, quiet murmur emanated from the stone statue standing before the doorway. Zhou Wu's flaming fists stopped in mid-air, and he took several steps away from the doorway.

The stone statue was still just that, a statue. Even at Zhou Wu's cultivation, he couldn't sense any trace of its presence, nor any signs of life.

He stared at it, eyes bloodshot, flames blazing around him. The fire burned so intensely, the water vapor throughout the remnants of Howling Valley evaporated. The ground dried, then cracked beneath his feet.

"And if I asked you why?"

All eras began, and all eras ended. It had always been that way. However, the heavens left their inhabitants a single chance at survival: the shot at transcendence hidden within the mausoleum.

The mausoleum never turned anyone away. It had always been that way, since ancient times.

It didn't matter whether you were yao, demon, or human. Even liches could enter; no one with the power to reach the mausoleum and attempt to seize its fortune would be turned away.

Zhou Wu!

Throughout antiquity, he was the one and only exception.

If you thought about this from another angle, as the first person ever to be turned away at the door, Zhou Wu was unique. This was, in a sense, a rare honor.

However, his longing for transcendence was too intense to see it that way. He wanted it so badly that he resorted to underhanded methods.

He'd already sacrificed far too much in the name of taking that final step!

This was clearly his final hope, his only chance, yet now, it had been forcibly snatched away from him.

This was hard to accept. No, he couldn't accept it.

He asked about the reasoning only to clear up his confusion. That didn't mean he was ready to give up on this final chance.

"You won't answer?" A long time passed, but the stone statue made no further attempts to communicate.

His gaze calmed down slightly, but an instant later, became indescribably explosive. Waves of steam visible even to the naked eye surged around him. A barrier spread, encapsulating everything within ten thousand square miles, then setting it ablaze.

Everything within the barrier shriveled and burned. The land was now a sea of roiling flame.

The mausoleum baked within the fire, but no matter how intensely the flames burned, they didn't damage the building in the slightest. They couldn't even create the smallest of sparks.

"Give up!" In the face of Zhou Wu's stubbornness, the statue sighed. This time, Zhou Wu saw it; the speaker was the statue on the left.

"Why should I give up?" Zhou Wu glared at the statue and roared!

"How is that even now, you don't understand? You are not fated to transcend. Why do you stubbornly insist on remaining here?" said the statue with a sigh.

Not fated to transcend?

For some reason, Zhou Wu laughed. If anyone else had heard that, especially from the stone statue guarding the transcendent mausoleum, they might really have turned and left in dejection.

But Zhou Wu? He'd never believed in fate!

Back in the day, it was the Five Elements Great Emperor who'd won the Emperor Star's good graces. Back then, Zhou Wu had heard others say he wasn't fated for imperial celestial fate too.

But then what happened? Hadn't he obtained imperial celestial fate anyway? Hadn't he taken the throne and become the God Emperor?

And what happened to the once universally respected Five Elements Great Emperor? He died within his own landscape painting. Even his body was buried within the image on the scroll.

Fate was always there for him to seize with his own two hands!

"What a joke." Zhou Wu's expression was incomparably unsightly. His hair had been perfectly combed and in order, but it was now in disarray. His eyes seemed to shoot flames, and his veins bulged; it was clear just how furious he was.

The dazzling firelight around Zhou Wu made even the countless stars of the night sky seem a few shades duller by comparison.

The towering flames were visible even from millions of miles away, and the dense, fiery aura seemed like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

"What's going on in the Immortal Region?"

Countless immortals gathered near the southern gate of the Heavenly Court. They gazed at the flames filling Howling Valley, and felt a nigh suffocating pressure.

They'd been there to see the red light released when the seal around the mausoleum burst, and they could tell that this fiery presence was something else entirely.

"All-Seeing Eyes, how about you take a look…" Wind Catching ears patted his brother on the shoulder, but to his surprise, All-Seeing Eyes merely shrunk back. He didn't dare peer into the flames of Howling Valley, not even in the slightest.

"Look at you! How cowardly." Wind Catching Ears rolled his eyes, then attempted to listen in on what was going on over at the mausoleum.

However, to his surprise, a barrier soon appeared around him. When he turned around, he saw the Queen Mother decked in golden robes and emerging from the Cloudy Palace of the Golden Arches.

"Queen Mother!" The gathered immortals bowed their heads.

The Queen Mother then waved her hand, dispersing the barrier around Wind Catching Ears. She then fixed her gaze on the distant, towering flames.

"Go back, all of you. During this time, no one is to take so much a half a step outside of the Heavenly Court. If you disobey my orders…. Not even Golden Immortal Daluo can save you. Don't even think about peeking or investigating, either. What you ought to do now is pray, pray that this calamity doesn't descend upon our Heavenly Court."

Those present were at most immortal kings, but due to the Divine Mausoleum' descent, their visitors were peak experts from the Upper Three Realms.

To the inhabitants of this lower plane, this was naturally a calamity.

As the Queen Mother gave her orders, the higher-ups of the Underworld gave similar orders. For the near future, not even envoys of the dead were allowed to leave to collect the souls of the deceased. Then there was the Endless Beast Region and Immoral Region; the locals had already evacuated, and they watched from a distance as the sea of flames expanded. As they felt their immense pressure bear down on them, all they could do was pray, pray that this calamity wouldn't reach them.

"Flames don't suit you!"

Flames so intense, they threatened to burn the heavens themselves surged around Zhou Wu, yet that was the stone statue's evaluation of them.

Perhaps fire really didn't suit Zhou Wu.

Although the flames emanating from him were fierce, if you looked closely, you would discover that he was using force to curb the ambient fire elemental power; it was as if the fire only obeyed him grudgingly.

Using sheer might to suppress and dominate the flames meant that the slightest slip up could lead to a potentially fatal backlash.

"Not suited for me? In my eyes, there's no such thing. Either it submits, or it doesn't!"

As the words left his mouth, Zhou Wu used even fiercer methods to gather the surrounding flame elemental power around him. His power suppressed it so thoroughly that the flames had no choice but to "lower their head" and serve him.

The flames nearest to him even went from orange to luminescent white showing hints of frost.

"Open the door to the mausoleum for me. Otherwise, don't blame me if I destroy the place. If I'm not mistaken, the new Emperor Star is already inside. If you don't want him dead, let me in!"

Explosive! Cruel! Ruthless!

Zhou Wu's expression was incomparably hideous, and the flames under his control only grew increasingly explosive. It seemed that, should Zhou Wu give the order, the flames would burn this entire lower plane to cinders.

"You know, when it comes time to fight off the true gods, your power could be very useful. It can't have been easy to cultivate to such heights, either. I've given you advice out of the goodness of my heart, yet you refuse to listen," sighed the stone statue.

"Drop the nonsense. Are you going to let me in? Or not?"

He seemed as if he'd gone completely insane. So long as the statue refused to allow him entry, he would sacrifice this entire lower realm in the name of achieving his transcendence.

"Go on and try it, then." The good-hearted statue seemed to have run out of patience for this insane, nigh demonic God Emperor. He had nothing else to say to Zhou Wu.

Zhou Wu really didn't hesitate, either. The flames wrapped around the entire mausoleum. This time, the flames were a few grades higher, and the mountain supporting the building actually showed signs of starting to melt.

"Helheim!" A feminine shout suddenly emanated from above.

The searing temperatures in Howling Valley instantly plummeted; the flames blazing around the perimeter of the mausoleum had frozen in place, like icy flowers.

The "flowers" fell, then shattered when they hit the ground. The flames dispersed, vanishing without a trace.

However, the flames around Zhou Wu continued to burn, and as the ice crystals fell, they melted into water, then dissolved into vapor. Soon, the entire valley was shrouded in mist.

"You stupid dog. If you want to ruin the mausoleum, you have to ask us first!" Someone let out a hearty shout, and a wooden longstaff stabbed through the mists. It was aimed at Zhou Wu's back.

As soon as it made contact, the flames burnt it to cinders. It couldn't threaten Zhou Wu in any meaningful way.

"Seriously? Can you do it or not?" another voice appeared. This one sounded rather reproachful.

"Is this my fault?" said the first speaker, the one who'd attacked with the staff. "Big Sister Su, would I have embarrassed myself like that if you'd sealed his back in ice too?"

"What does that have to do with me?" said a cold female voice.

"How could it not have something to do with you? When we got here, I told you that my staff was nothing but an ordinary piece of wood and that you had to do something about the flames before I ambushed him…. Isn't this just great? We wasted our only chance at a sneak attack, just like that."

"I sealed the flames, didn't I? If you keep talking nonsense, I'll seal you, too!"

"Hey, don't take this too far! I'm the Minister of the Right, the second-in-command of the Four Great Auxiliary Stars! You're just the fourth-ranked martial star!"

"It seems you really do want to get sealed in ice."

Due to the mist, Zhou Wu couldn't quite see what was happening, but he could sense the surrounding temperatures dropping. It seemed that this woman, whoever she was, really would attack her companion.

"Big Sister Su, calm down! That's just how that ahoge is. Ahoge, don't provoke Big Sister Su. If it really comes down to a fight, you don't necessarily stand a chance. She's the Martial Star, after all! You can tell how strong she is based on that alone!"

"I'm in no mood to argue with her. Our sneak attack failed, so let's get this over with as quickly as possible. Little Lorie's still waiting for me back at home!"

As they spoke, the mists died down significantly. When Zhou Wu looked up in the sky, he could see four people hovering overhead in a square formation.

"Hey, you down there!" said one of the figures, a young man with a tuft of hair sprouting from his head. "Hurry up and go back to your Divine Mountain. This mausoleum's good fortune isn't for you. You ought to know who we are, too. We're this era's Four Great Auxiliary Stars! If you don't want to die…"

"Is there any point talking to him?"

Before the youth could fire off any clever one-liners, the others already charged towards Zhou Wu.

"Ack, you guys…!" When he saw this, the youth with the Ahoge gnashed his teeth. Although they were all members of the Four Great Auxiliary Stars, they'd barely even met before. They'd only gathered together like this because the former Four Great Auxiliary Stars' divine senses had reached out to them.

They'd originally planned to intimidate Zhou Wu, but now that his companions had already gone down, he had no choice. He pulled a metal staff about the size of a fist from behind his ears.

"Well… In that case, my apologies, but take my staff!"