"I didn't expect to end up here again," Fang Yuan thought to himself as he halted his rapid flight and descended from the sky.
Before his eyes stretched a vast expanse of white.
An endless wasteland of ice and snow.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…
A ceaseless howling of freezing wind assaulted his ears.
Within the savage gale, countless snowflakes—and even tiny hailstones—swirled in from every direction.
The blinding snowstorm greatly restricted Fang Yuan's vision.
And the temperature was brutally low. He had to channel even more Gu Insects to maintain his body temperature and shield himself from the biting wind.
This was still the Northern Plains.
More specifically, the northernmost extremity of the Northern Plains—the Great Northern Ice Plain, known to all.
This place had once been a grassland like any other. But a cataclysmic battle between supremely powerful cultivators had utterly destroyed the natural landscape, reducing it to nothingness.
After the war, the victorious Kuang Man Demon Venerable transformed into the primordial Ice Phoenix, spewing forth the most extreme frozen miasma to freeze the land anew. That was how the terrain came to be as it was today.
It was here that Hei Loulan had once chosen to weather her tribulation and ascend to immortality.
The reason was that the ice plain contained Kuang Man Demon Venerable's true intent in the Strength Path and Transformation Path. Any Strength Path or Transformation Path Gu Master who ascended to immortality here would resonate with those Dao Marks, and Kuang Man Demon Venerable's true meaning would manifest externally through the Earth Tribulation.
If the ascendant could defeat the Earth Tribulation, they would receive a body infusion of that true meaning—essentially a lesson directly from Kuang Man Demon Venerable himself.
Flashes of memory flickered through Fang Yuan's mind.
The scenes were vivid, as if they had happened only yesterday.
But now, everything had changed.
Li Shan Fairy, once the highest-ranked among them, was dead. Hei Loulan and Tai Bai Yun Sheng had likely been turned. Only Fang Yuan remained.
The current situation was vastly different from before.
"A Strength Path or Transformation Path Gu Master only gets one chance to receive Kuang Man Demon Venerable's body infusion—and that's during the tribulation of ascending to immortality. But now, with the Immortal Tribulation Forging Aperture killer move in my hands, perhaps I can replicate that earlier success," Fang Yuan mused silently.
This was something he had never attempted before, so he couldn't be entirely certain.
But after discussing it with the Lang Ya Earth Spirit, it seemed highly probable.
"Hei Loulan possesses the Great Strength True Martial Physique, and yet when she faced her ascension tribulation, the disaster was so devastating that she lost an Immortal Gu and barely made it through. My own Immortal Aperture tribulation will likely be even more terrifying than hers!"
The pressure on Fang Yuan was immense.
If circumstances didn't demand it, he didn't want to undergo his tribulation this soon.
Although a tribulation spawned within the Immortal Aperture at regular intervals, Gu Immortals had many ways to deal with it. The most common method was to employ Time Path techniques to slow the flow of time within the aperture, delaying the tribulation's arrival.
However, doing so would rapidly deplete the aperture's Time Path resources.
The pros and cons were balanced, depending on each Gu Immortal's specific circumstances.
The Lang Ya Blessed Land had once used Time Path techniques to modify the tributary flow of time within the aperture, drastically slowing the passage of time inside.
But this wasn't a technique the Lang Ya Earth Spirit had mastered. Rather, it was something the Chang Mao Ancestor had once arranged, inviting a Time Path powerhouse to lend their aid.
"My Immortal Aperture contains far too many Time Path resources. Every two months in the outside world, I face a new tribulation. Although my cultivation advances rapidly and the aperture regenerates many resources, if I can't hold out and perish during a tribulation, it will all have been for nothing. It seems that after this tribulation, I'll need to seek out Time Path techniques to modify the time flow within my aperture."
These were concerns for later. What mattered now was the tribulation bearing down on him.
"Phew!"
Fang Yuan exhaled a turbid breath, his body shuddering slightly as a mysterious transformation rippled through his Immortal Aperture.
"Immortal Aperture—descend!" Fang Yuan gritted his teeth, his eyes blazing with divine light.
A rumbling roar seemed to echo in his ears, and in the next instant his vision changed completely. He steadied his gaze and realized he was now inside his own Immortal Aperture.
Five Domains, Nine Heavens.
It was vast and utterly barren.
There were no cultivation resources to speak of, since Fang Yuan hadn't yet had the chance to develop it.
Only a host of Gu Insects, of various sizes, were stored within.
At this moment, those Gu Insects hovered around Fang Yuan in great numbers, forming a dark cloud.
Under normal circumstances, the Immortal Aperture would be anchored to the Gu Immortal's physical body. But now, the aperture had descended into the outside world and instead enveloped the Gu Immortal's body within it.
In this state, Fang Yuan's physical body was like the Earth Spirit itself—perfectly at home within the Immortal Aperture, yet unable to leave. Meanwhile, the aperture could constantly communicate with the ambient Heaven and Earth Qi of the outer world, stabilizing itself.
When Gu Immortals faced their tribulations, they would typically descend the Immortal Aperture into the Five Domains.
There was another scenario: if the aperture contained too many resources but too little Heaven and Earth Qi of its own, it had to descend to draw in ambient Qi from the outside world as supplementation.
At the spot where Fang Yuan had been standing, he had vanished entirely. The Immortal Aperture rested on the ice surface, condensed to a single point, anchored in the void—invisible to the naked eye.
The ice wind continued to rage as before.
Nothing seemed to have changed at all, as though Fang Yuan had never been there.
Everything was as it had been.
But in the very next instant, when Fang Yuan deliberately opened the gate of his Immortal Aperture, everything changed.
In an instant, heaven and earth hummed with a deep roar, the glaciers trembled, and boundless Heaven and Earth Qi surged like a storm toward the aperture's gate.
Before long, a torrent of Qi flooded over the area.
The freezing wind and hail were all converted into Heaven and Earth Qi.
The aperture's gate was the passage linking the interior to the exterior. With it thrown open, Fang Yuan's Immortal Aperture began drawing in Heaven and Earth Qi from the outside world in a ceaseless flow.