Five thousand copper coins were no small sum. However, He Lingchuan refused the offer without the slightest hesitation.

The leaf’s veins were clear and elegant, its texture finely defined. It was actually rather beautiful. More importantly, the instant He Lingchuan touched it, something inside his robe began to heat up.

Is the divine bone amulet getting greedy again?

Old Ge said, “I’ll ask around for you once I get back.”

“Thanks.” He Lingchuan tucked the red-gold leaf into his robe. “Didn’t you say earlier that there was one suspected cave abode no one had ever found?”

“Oh, right, that would be this deep pool among the roots.” Old Ge pointed to the dark water beneath the banyan. “Legend says that Immortal Shou’an[1] opened a cave abode here, and the entrance was this very pool. In the end, he passed away within the cave abode, and after that, the place vanished. It never appeared again.”

“Immortal Shou’an?” He Lingchuan found that odd. “Wasn’t Mount Xu originally called Mount Shou’an?”

Just a few days ago at the Dun Garden auction, had not half a broken sword tip fetched an astronomical price precisely because it had once belonged to Perfected Shou’an’s natal magical artifact?

That was the power of fame. Anything even faintly associated with such a person could sell for a fortune.

“Exactly. It was only after Beijia was founded that the mountain’s name was changed.” Old Ge said, “To take ‘Shou’an[2]’ as their name was no small distinction. He was the great figure who cleaved the stone cavern open with a single sword stroke, giving the Dao-Seeking Tree a way to survive.”

He Lingchuan reached out and brushed the pool’s surface. The water was cold and limpid, with a chill that bit into the skin.

“Let me guess, people have jumped in to search for it before.”

“Of course they have. Every year, in fact.” Old Ge grinned. “From what I hear, during the first three hundred years, people were diving in every few days. It was a grand commotion. And they did more than dive, idle meddlers wandered all over Tianji Peak, searching every crack in every stone, studying light, shadow, angles, and every scrap of rumor they could find. Later on, when diving was officially forbidden on Tianji Peak, the numbers dropped straight away.”

If not ten thousand people, then certainly several thousand had gone down searching over the years, and none of those lucky fellows had ever discovered the missing cave abode. He Lingchuan decided he could save himself the trouble.

He guessed Lingxu City had once tacitly allowed people to dive in simply because it hoped to borrow the strength of the masses. Since the masses had searched for three hundred years and still found nothing, that was that, and they simply let it rest.

As the group moved along with the flow of tourists and finally left Tianji Peak behind, the road at once opened up and became much less crowded.

“The next principal peak is Tianxuan.” Old Ge pointed toward the towering summit ahead. “And after that comes Tianshu Peak, where the Heavenly Palace stands, and that’s the final stop on today’s route!”

Everyone became somewhat excited again, except for the fellow who had drawn the ominous red leaf, who had already found an excuse to descend the mountain early.

Tianxuan Peak’s scenery was excellent, but everyone’s thoughts were fixed on Tianshu by now.

The higher the path climbed, the colder the air became. Flowers by the roadside grew fewer and fewer, and frost had begun to gather along the blades of grass.

The wind coming at them gradually sharpened until it felt almost fierce. He Lingchuan found himself unexpectedly reminded of walking on Mount Fengmo.

Tianshu Peak, the highest mountain near Lingxu City.

As he climbed, Jiang Tao puffed white breath into the air as he asked, “When the Heavenly Palace’s envoys go up and down Mount Xu, they don’t have to struggle like this, do they? And what about the Lord Emperor? I hear he goes up often as well.”

“Of course not.” Old Ge bared his teeth in a grin. “They have transport arrays. From the foot of the mountain all the way to the Heavenly Palace, they don’t need to climb at all. And when foreign dignitaries of sufficient stature come, they ascend straight into the clouds the same way.”

At that moment, the clouds happened to part, and the sea of mist rolled back for a time.

He Lingchuan turned his head and caught sight of the floating islands above Lingxu City.

Viewed from this angle, they had an entirely different charm. The highest of the floating islands actually appeared to lie slightly lower than the altitude of the Heavenly Palace itself.

As for the other floating islands, from where He Lingchuan stood now, he could actually look down upon them.

They were true hanging gardens in the sky. They were thick with greenery, complete with hills, waters, pavilions, and towers peeking out from among the foliage.

He Lingchuan raised a hand and held it out against the distance. His palm was enough to blot one of the floating islands from view.

The mirror in his robe asked, “What are you doing?”

“They’re only this big.” He said with some amusement. “Like a whole realm held in the palm.”

Gao Jilin casually asked, “Whose palm?”

He Lingchuan smiled and said nothing.

The heavenly gods’, of course.

Though the cold was biting by now, the number of tourists climbing Tianshu Peak was clearly increasing. Everyone wanted the sensation of looking down on the floating islands.

Usually, after all, it was the floating islands looking down on all living beings.

Tianshu Peak was in fact surrounded by six smaller subsidiary peaks, which were arranged around it like stars encircling the moon.

Almost every one of those peaks bore buildings amid clouds and drifting mist, so that the whole place seemed steeped in immortal ambiance.

Old Ge pointed to them and said, “Those are the residences of the cloud envoys, divine attendants, lamp guardians, and—oh yes—the guards of the Heavenly Palace as well!”

Along the route from Yaoguang Peak to Tianxuan Peak, the guards they had seen had all belonged to Mount Xu itself. None of them had the rank to reside on Tianshu Peak.

At the end of the road, the grand palaces ahead grew ever clearer.

For some reason, the moment He Lingchuan reached this point, his heart began to pound uneasily. It felt as though some ferocious beast sat crouched atop the summit, jaws open, waiting for him to walk into its mouth.

Whether that dangerous instinct came from his sixth sense or from the divine bone amulet, he could not say.

Up there, after all, stood the peak of worldly power.

He drew in a deep breath and strode upward.

The sun was already sinking westward. On the summit, clouds and evening haze had all been turned the color of streaming fire.

Deep within the white clouds, glazed golden tiles flashed in the light, and a vast cluster of imposing palaces stretched out in solemn majesty. From time to time came the slow, resonant tolling of bells, yet when one tried to listen for the source, it could not be found.

The guards of the Heavenly Palace stood watch along the mountain stairs, two every fifty steps, clad in golden armor and gripping staves, their eyes cold and forbidding.

The buildings atop Tianshu Peak all shared the same style: white pillars, golden tiles, walls in moon-white or in white with dark red edging. Against the plain black rock of the mountain around them, they possessed a kind of luxurious beauty so stark it almost shocked the eye.

From the first splendid pavilion onward, the road was paved in blue jade. After another hundred steps, the stone gradually shifted to green jade. Another hundred steps later, it became white jade, continuing so all the way to the main gates of the Heavenly Palace.

This was the legendary Stairway to Heaven.

Countless people knelt there, climbing one step at a time, striking their foreheads to the ground with each ascent, murmuring prayers all the while.

The sincerity that radiated from them came from the depths of their souls, as though no matter in the world could possibly be weightier than this.

And He Lingchuan simply walked past them, light-footed, ascending all the way to the summit.

Before him spread a vast square paved in white jade dusted with gold, large enough to hold at least two thousand people. Carving out such a broad open space atop a mountain was no easy matter. Old Ge explained that this platform had only been built after the reconstruction, specifically to allow the masses to worship in the open air.

Tianshu Peak was now the highest peak of Mount Xu, but in the old days of the Grand Return Sect, the primary summit had been Tianxuan Peak.

“This first great hall is the Hall of Worship!” Old Ge’s spirits rose, and he spoke loudly in full guide mode. “To build it took 720,000 kilograms of gold, 5,400 kilograms of pearls, 1,860 kilograms of agate, and over 12,000 kilograms each of giant clam shell, coral, amber, and more!”

Seen up close, the halls of the Heavenly Palace were entirely unlike the buildings on the ground.

The architecture of the mortal realm prized carved beams and painted rafters, but the Heavenly Palace favored stone columns instead of timber, stone walls instead of wooden ones, with every surface intricately carved and worked. The buildings themselves were broad, square, and heavy in form, with none of the flying eaves and bracketed roofs seen below or on the other peaks.

In every place He Lingchuan had visited before, a hall was a hall, and a tower was a tower. The two were separate structures.

However, the halls of the Heavenly Palace all rose at least three stories high, and atop the centerline of each roof sat a tower—sometimes rounded, sometimes sharply tapering—utterly different in style from the pagodas and towers of the mortal realm.

He Lingchuan entered with the rest of the crowd and was immediately struck by a blaze of golden light so intense that he actually took half a step back.

The inside of the hall was gilded, and not merely gilded, but done in rich pink gold. Columns, beams, walls, statues, tables and chairs, candlesticks... nearly everything in sight, from every corner to every object, gleamed gold, at least everything except the tourists themselves.

Even the kneeling cushions before the offering table were woven with golden thread.

Of course, no visitor could steal anything. The moment one tried, the hall guards would notice and cut off their hand.

The hall was extremely tall, with vaulted ceilings and rounded arches throughout. When He Lingchuan looked up, he saw across the ceiling a painted field of stars. The background of the night sky was formed from a single slab of natural black jade, its color subtly shaded so that it truly resembled the depth of the night heavens. Most remarkable of all, the stone itself was naturally filled with fine bright specks. Once polished, they became the Milky Way.

As for the other shining stars, some were pearls, some crystal, and others rubies and sapphires.

No wonder Old Ge had just said the hall had consumed such absurd quantities of treasure in its construction.

Gold as cheap as dirt, pearls as common as sand, or so the saying went.

He Lingchuan drew in a deep breath. What he smelled here was wealth and power—

Those two things were practically the ultimate dream of all living beings. Here they were laid utterly bare before the eyes. For anyone entering the Heavenly Palace for the first time, the impact was overwhelming from every angle.

He Lingchuan considered himself widely traveled, and he had seen no end of palaces, noble residences, and grand halls. If one decorated with tens of kilograms of gold, that looked petty and mean. If one used hundreds of kilograms, it began to look vulgar and tasteless.

But over a million kilograms?

That became magnificence beyond compare, beholding the kind of grandeur seen nowhere else in the world.

And this was only the Hall of Worship, the place devoted to the worship and veneration of the gods.

The hall was filled with large and small divine images. Some were solemn, some compassionate, some savage, some terrifying. Their idols were not merely gilded on the surface, but carved wholly from rich pink gold.

The designer of this hall had deliberately bound the gods in the mind to wealth and power.

And before every one of those statues, incense smoke curled upward while humans lay prostrate on the floor.

Without exception, the divine images took the form of humans, or half-human, half-monster beings.

The moment Jiang Tao entered the hall, his eyes could no longer keep up. He bitterly regretted not having been born with two extra pairs. Wonder poured out of him without pause. “Inconceivable, truly inconceivable!”

The cost of building this hall defied all imagination.

For their tiny little state, how many years of state revenue would it take to equal the cost of this single hall?

Seeing Jiang Tao’s face, as well as the faces of the other tourists, He Lingchuan knew the hall had already achieved exactly what it was built to achieve.

It was a display of power from another dimension entirely.

Gao Jilin, on the other hand, was curious. “Do the heavenly gods really all look like this?”

Standing inside the Hall of Worship, he did not dare point directly, so he only tilted his head toward a statue on the left.

“For instance, this Miaozhantian, her appearance is completely different from the one I saw in the Jinguang Desert. In that desert, there are also wandering tribes who worship Miaozhantian.”

It was the image of a goddess, her eyes lowered, her expression solemn and divine. In her hand, she held a magical artifact shaped like a balance scale.

Most curious of all, at the top of the balance was set a yellow single eye, its vertical pupil a pale violet[3].

The moment He Lingchuan saw that eye, he felt it was strangely familiar. “And in the Jinguang Desert, what did this goddess look like?”

“She was wearing something else, and she had a different magical artifact too.” Gao Jilin thought for a moment. “I believe she was holding a pipa.”

“Oh!” He Lingchuan remembered all at once. He had seen exactly that sort of eyeball in Panlong City!

1. This should be the same as the True Immortal Shou’an mentioned in Chapter 572, just that the author slightly changed the title. ☜

2. This name is also often translated as the Other Shore, which is actually what I translated it as in Tome of Troubled Times :) It’s just that with it being a name here, I opted for just a transliteration of it. ☜

3. I believe this should be referring to the Dharma Eye mentioned in Chapter 431. ☜