Before he plunged into the gaping maw in the firmament, Jiang Wang vaguely glimpsed a white-haired elder desperately flying towards the mountain peak.

But the thought was fleeting, and the world before him had already transformed.

It was a ruin. A ruin of immense grandeur.

To describe a ruin as “grand” might seem inappropriate, but it was truly the most honest feeling within Jiang Wang’s heart.

Skyscraping pillars lay shattered before him, the luster of glazed tiles completely faded.

Broken walls and crumbling ramparts—everywhere, the fall of splendor was evident.

Even the occasional breeze that drifted through could not stir the heavy silence. The stories of this place were all buried in the dust.

Flight was impossible here. An ancient rule permeated the very history of the place, as if long-gone glory, even in its decay, still clung to its dignity.

Before him lay a broken lamp. Jiang Wang skirted around it and set foot on a paving stone, only a small part of which remained.

*Crack!*

The paving stone easily shattered, scattering like sand.

Jiang Wang quickly shifted his weight, picking his way forward. Some paving stones were intact, while others had long decayed, crumbling to dust with the slightest touch.

Beneath the paving stones was a jade-like foundation, its surface faintly etched with complex, hidden patterns, which deterred Jiang Wang from directly touching it.

“Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace?”

Facing all that lay before him, the first thing Jiang Wang thought of was the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace that Dou Mian had mentioned.

Although what he saw was already a ruin, he could still imagine its past greatness from its broken present… Perhaps only “Immortal Palace” could adequately describe it.

However, if the end of the Cloud Staircase connected to the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace, it was difficult to explain why it had suddenly appeared. Plucking the Supernatural Fruit was clearly not the reason for the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace’s emergence. Otherwise, Dou Mian and the Wandering Old Man wouldn’t have fought to the death at the Guest-Welcoming Pavilion. At the very least, they should have had that so-called “Secret Order for Entry and Exit” to enter the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace, right?

But everything he saw before him, apart from the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace, seemed impossible.

So, what was the reason for its appearance? What conditions had he fulfilled?

He couldn’t figure it out for the moment. Jiang Wang stopped his thoughts and carefully observed as he walked forward.

The place where he stood seemed to be a great hall, collapsed beyond recognition, but he could still vaguely sense its former outline.

The ruin that had impressed Jiang Wang the most so far was the Withered Glory Courtyard, with its eerie atmosphere and lingering, inexplicable terror. But this place before him, in its complete form, must have been far more magnificent than the Withered Glory Courtyard. Walking through it, he only felt a heavy silence.

A silence devoid even of terror.

From the broken walls and crumbling ramparts, there were signs of battle everywhere—sharp fractures, pitted imprints…

But he saw no corpses, no bloodstains. It was as if everything here had been annihilated by time.

Walking through the ruins, Jiang Wang could easily imagine that if this place could be restored, his presence within it would be no more noticeable than that of an ant.

He had been to the Eastern Flower Pavilion and had seen the palace of the Qi Kingdom, a nation renowned throughout the land.

But the scale of the Qi King’s Palace was far inferior to this.

What force could have destroyed such a magnificent palace? What caused the fall of the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace in the past?

“Why can I enter this place, but Ye Qingyu, who has the legacy of Late Cloud Mountain, cannot? What about Dou Mian, who subdued the Spirit Void Hall, and the solitary Wandering Old Man? Can they enter this place?”

Countless questions swirled in Jiang Wang’s mind, but there was no one to ask.

Jiang Yan remained silent for some unknown reason.

He was certain that Jiang Yan might know something, but since Jiang Yan wouldn’t speak, he couldn’t force him.

He could only rely on himself to find the answers.

In many times past, he had walked alone in this manner. He was already very used to it.

He kept his footsteps light, feeling as though the slightest increase in pressure would cause the place to collapse once more.

The ruined Immortal Palace remained tall and imposing, and even walking through it, one could not see the end at a single glance.

Turning past what must have been an archway, before him lay a spirit screen.

A spirit screen that, after countless ages, was still largely intact.

The spirit screen bore magnificent carvings, seemingly depicting a group of graceful fairies dancing. These carvings were also rare in that they were still somewhat clear.

It was as if they were protected by some power, resisting the harm that had annihilated the entire Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace.

But two blood-red characters affixed upon it ruined all the beauty.

These two blood-red characters were written with an unrestrained elegance, surely by a free and unconventional person, but they evoked feelings of ferocity and terror.

A sense of despairing fear emanated from the bloody words.

Those two words were—”Dao Thief.”

Below the blood-red characters were long, trailing bloody handprints. It was as if the person who had written these two blood-red characters had just finished writing them when they were forcibly dragged away by some terrifying existence.

Dao Thief?

Jiang Wang repeatedly savored these two words.

Thief of the Great Dao?

Thief of the Daoist sect?

Was it a person, or a force? A monster? A kind of secret technique?

In this collapsing Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace, the words “Dao Thief” were the only clue he had found so far. But he still couldn’t deduce any answers from it.

He was even completely ignorant about the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace itself. He didn’t even know how he had entered it.

The only thing he knew was that Late Cloud Mountain should have been the location of the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace’s mountain gate, and that the Regal Azure Pavilion of Yun Country, the Azure Cloud Pavilion of Yong Country, the Spirit Void Hall of Cheng Country, and the solitary Wandering Old Man were all connected to Late Cloud Mountain.

Jiang Wang activated a hand seal, and the Imprisoning Chains of the Body emerged from the void, gently touching the two blood-red characters. His intention was to feel the characters through the Imprisoning Chains of the Body and obtain more information. In such a mysterious place, he certainly couldn’t directly touch them with his hand.

However, when the dark black Imprisoning Chains of the Body touched the blood-red characters…

A bizarre thing happened.

The two blood-red characters disappeared stroke by stroke.

And the entire Imprisoning Chains of the Body was erased segment by segment! It was as if the Imprisoning Chains of the Body were just a painted, fake chain, directly erased with a cloth!

Jiang Wang would not forget that at the Guest-Welcoming Pavilion south of Late Cloud Mountain, Zhong Qin had disappeared before their eyes in this way!

Each Imprisoning Chains of the Body had its own limit of length. Jiang Wang had already extended them to the limit, but could only watch helplessly as they grew shorter and shorter.

When the two blood-red characters on the spirit screen completely disappeared, Jiang Wang’s Imprisoning Chains of the Body also disappeared.

The Imprisoning Chains of the Body, which he had worked so hard to increase to two, had disappeared immediately just because he touched the blood-red characters. The loss was not small.

As the words “Dao Thief” disappeared, Jiang Wang vaguely felt that something was lightly tied to his Dao Heart. He couldn’t see it clearly, couldn’t think about it clearly.

At the same time, the spirit screen before him suddenly twisted.

Everything seen and felt was undergoing wondrous changes.

Jiang Wang seemed to have suddenly “jumped” out of the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace, overlooking it from a completely different angle.

It was as if he were in the void of the universe, in an unknown place.

The ruins of the entire Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace were constantly shrinking, while Jiang Wang himself seemed to be constantly expanding.

In that instant, he seemed to sense many scattered points of light in the vast universe…

A realization arose in his heart—

Those were all fragments of the Cloud-Crowned Immortal Palace.