“Nine rings…”

When Zhou Yuan stepped out from the large bronze doors, he heard the sound of a melodious old bell echoing within the mountain. His mouth hung slightly ajar as shock appeared in his eyes.

Even the person himself had not expected that his results would reach the nine bell level.

“Is it because the divine grindstone smashed apart the golden sun? That’s why the evaluation is so good…” Zhou Yuan awkwardly scratched his head. He did not feel overly proud, because he only needed seven rings to achieve his goal.

Of course, the additional two rings would naturally not be rejected by him. It was after all still a form of acknowledgement of his performance.

Now that he knew the outcome, he breathed a deep sigh of relief as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The bell represented that he had successfully passed the three trials.

As Zhou Yuan suppressed the surging emotions in his heart, he raised his head and saw a mountain path that snaked upwards, with streams flowing to its left and right. 

There was no mist here, and Zhou Yuan was clearly already quite deep in the main peak.

By following this path, he should be able to reach his destination.

Zhou Yuan wet his lips as he cast away his hesitation and walked forward, slowly following the mountain path.

After a few dozen minutes, his footsteps began to slow. The path had ended some distance to the front, where an ancient large hall silently towered within the mist.

The hall looked quite simple, and was covered in the mottled scars of time.

This hall was the main hall of Saint Genesis Peak!

Zhou Yuan stood in front of the hall, as he looked upon it with burning eyes. The second Saint Rune he deeply yearned for should be hidden somewhere inside.

After a quick scan of the surroundings, he was just about to step forward, only for his foot to come to an abrupt stop. His gaze darted towards the front in amazement, where faint cracks could be seen in the air.

An indescribable feeling of danger spread from it.

“There’s still such a terrifying seal outside the main hall?” Zhou Yuan’s expression was grave. The dangerous aura from this seal was even more frightening than the ones outside the mountain.

He had no doubt that a brief contact with the undulations from the seal was all it would take to completely obliterate himself from existence. In fact, even a Heavenly Sun stage expert would likely share the same fate.

This seal was obviously the last defense of the main hall.

An awkward look appeared on Zhou Yuan’s face. It had not been an easy task for him to pass the three trials, and he had thought everything would be smooth sailing from then onwards. Why had a seal suddenly appeared? Was he going to have to call for sect master and the rest? But if they came, they would likely discover the existence of the Saint Rune...

Zhou Yuan fell silent for a moment. A thought suddenly struck him all of a sudden as he smacked his head and said, “I almost forgot about it.”

With a pat of the spatial bag at his waist, a glow rose from his palm. It was a white jade token, the signet patriarch Cang Xuan had left him in the Saint Remains Domain.

Patriarch Cang Xuan had mentioned that this signet could undo the seal.

“I’ll just have to give it a try…” Although he did not know if it would work, there was nothing else Zhou Yuan could think of.

He raised his hand as the white jade token slowly rose into the air. It moved towards the seal outside the hall and slowly made contact.

Zhou Yuan nervously watched while on full alert. He was ready to dash off the moment he felt something was wrong.

Warm, gently rays were reached out from the white jade token. As the light spread, the seal swiftly dissolved like snow that had met magma.

In a short few minutes, the seal around the main hall had completely faded away.

The distorted space gradually returned to normal.

“So simple…”

Zhou Yuan was stunned, as he involuntarily wet his lips. He was thankful that the patriarch had left him this signet. Otherwise, given his current strength, even breaking his head open would have been nowhere near enough to even give this seal a tiny shake.

He extended his hand as the white jade token fell back into it.

He looked towards the front again. There were no more obstructions outside the main hall. Hence, he quickly walked forward and pushed open the heavy doors that had been tightly shut for who knew how many years.

Creak

The doors slowly wobbled open as an ancient aura assaulted his senses.

The interior was very spacious and surprisingly still lit by burning altar lamps. The stone floor seemed to gleam like a mirror, not a single speck of dust to be seen.

Zhou Yuan’s gaze paused at the center of the hall, where a green jade statue stood. It depicted a handsome and mysterious young man whose looks were not unfamiliar to Zhou Yuan. It was the one and only patriarch Cang Xuan he had met in the Saint Remains Domain.

The jade statue of the patriarch was very lifelike, its eyes appearing deep and kindly as a mysterious aura spread from them. The statue also possessed an indescribable dignified presence.

As the once number one expert in Cangxuan Heaven, even a mere jade statue of him clearly possessed a certain aura.

“Patriarch, we meet again…”

Mumbled Zhou Yuan as he gazed at the statue and sighed.

If he had not met the fragment of patriarch Cangxuan’s Spirit in the Saint Remains Domain, he may not have come to the Cangxuan Sect. However, when he looked back now, he felt very grateful for the patriarch’s guidance...

He bowed to the jade status, before raising his head to ask, “I’m here patriarch. Where’s the second Saint Rune?”

There was no response from the statue, its warm and deep gaze merely continuing to stare at Zhou Yuan.

Zhou Yuan chuckled awkwardly. “So I have to find it myself?”

After speaking, he rose and began to wander about the hall. However, he failed to discover anything. In the end, he arrived back at the statue, where he found a jade seal.

The jade seal gave off a simple glow, and felt extremely heavy when Zhou Yuan picked it up. On the seal were two words, Saint Genesis.

“Could this be the peak master seal of Saint Genesis Peak?” Zhou Yuan pondered to himself. It was because this seal had been missing from Saint Genesis Peak that they had been unable to produce a peak master for so many years.

Though the peak master seal was important, Zhou Yuan did not have much interest in it, and soon put it back down.

He searched and searched, but failed to find any trace of the second Saint Rune.

This caused Zhou Yuan to grow rather anxious. Everything he had done so far was for the sake of the second Saint Rune, but now that he was here, it was nowhere to be found.

“Patriarch, you can’t have tricked me, right?”

Soon after, he sat down on the mat in front of the jade statue with a miserable face as he stared at it.

Man and statue stared at each other.

For an instant, Zhou Yuan seemed to see the jade statue’s pupils flicker for a moment.

Zhou Yuan was a little taken aback. Soon after, a certain notion struck him. He steadied his breathing as the Decoder Saint Rune slowly began rotating in the depths of his pupils with a shout in his heart.

“Decoder Saint Rune!”

The Saint Rune spun as changes began to occur to the jade statue. It gradually turned transparent as Zhou Yuan slowly inspected it. In the end, his eyes paused on the statue’s outstretched hand.

A mysterious ancient glowing rune could be seen deep within the jade, silently sitting there as it gave off a boundless aura.

Zhou Yuan’s heart began to beat like a drum the moment he saw it, as an excited look flooded his face.

The second Saint Rune was here after all!