Most of the people inside the Thousand Mountain Valley lost their will after looking up at the sky.

"Haha, we're dead," someone from a second-rate sect laughed humorlessly as he dropped his sword to the ground before falling down to his knees.

"How... how are we supposed to fight that thing?"

No one answered his question but most people knew in their mind.

'You don't.'

That was the unsaid answer between everyone else.

They didn't really know much about the strength of the gods but somehow, they had a feeling that even gods paled in comparison to that. There was no way gods could stand up to that.

And if even gods couldn't, how could they?

That was why... you don't. You don't fight with that thing.

And that was why they lost their will to fight. They surrendered to their fate, accepting the fact that they would die pretty soon and be crushed by that huge hand.

The leader of the war deities had a tired look on his face as he let out an exhausted sigh.

"I knew that getting the treasure would be hard... but this? It was a mistake coming into this place..." he said, looking as if he had aged for a thousand years in just an instant.

The leader of the supremes who was usually battle-crazed was strangely calm as he looked at the palm.

"So this is how I'm going to die huh? Being crushed like an insignificant ant. How ironic for someone like me to die pathetically like this."

"I thought you would be angrier at this," the Law God Sect's sect master said with the supreme commander silently agreeing with him.

The supreme scoffed at him.

"I would be if there's still something that I can do... but this? How do I go against this thing?"

The Law God Sect's sect master said nothing after that. He could understand where the supreme was coming from. They were so laughably weak and insignificant to that palm that they couldn't even get angry because they were totally outclassed by an incredibly large margin.

"So this is our end, huh?"

At the side, the leader of the Heavenly Machine God race was silent as he analyzed the palm critically.

Warning! Warning! Warning!

Cultivation Realm: Unknown!

Power Level: Unknown!

Species: Unknown!

Advise: Immediate retreat!

Those words were spoken repeatedly by a monotonous voice inside his head while alarm sounds that only he could hear went off.

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The fact that nearly everything in his inspection only told him 'unknown' meant that the being above was something far beyond his capabilities to analyze. That being might be a god or perhaps, even greater than that.

Though his body was made almost entirely of a machine, he suppressed a shiver as he thought of two possibilities of what that being might be: an Ancient God or a Primordial God.

Either one of the two was bad news.

And so, throughout this entire time, he had been trying to make a portal that would take them back to their home but much to his dismay, something was interfering in the space, preventing him from making a portal.

That meant they were pretty much stuck here.

...

"Is this the end?" the Jin Empire's emperor asked as he looked at the incoming palm calmly.

His unit commander, Yu Yinyi was beside him smiling grimly while saying, "This will be our last military campaign. One that we lost."

The emperor smiled at him.

"Technically, we did win. Our goal was just to defeat the immortal after all."

Yu Yinyi snorted.

"We still lost in the end if we're not coming out of this alive."

"You two sure are taking this well," Yun Zhan said while looking at the Yu Yinyi and the emperor.

A while after the Immortal Willow Tree was defeated, they had met up along with the others from the Jin Empire who had, at first, been separated to the other positions. Yun Wei, Yun Cang, and the others were also with them.

The emperor let out a sigh.

"Truthfully, I am a bit terrified. But I must put up a tough front for my people. If they see their emperor being scared, they would also be scared," said the emperor. "And at the very least, I don't want to spend my last moments panicking and being scared."

Yu Yinyi's reasons were also more or less the same as the emperor's. He was a unit commander, after all, the highest military official in the Jin Empire. He was also trying to be brave in front of his soldiers because they would lose morale if he showed them that he was afraid.

Not that it was doing anything though since no matter how calm they were, the rest were terrified as they gawked at the incoming palm.

"Hey look at that!" someone pointed towards the pillar of light.

Those who heard his words looked towards him before turning their gaze towards the direction he was pointing at.

In the pillar of light, they saw a gold-covered wooden chest, slowly rising up to the sky, as if trying to meet the palm that was coming down.

"The treasure..."

"It's going towards that palm!"

The Heavenly Machine Gods' leader narrowed his eyes as he analyzed what he saw.

"Magnetism... that palm is forcibly attracting the Heavenly Grand Treasure towards it," he said.

...

"It's trying to grab the Heavenly Grand Treasure," the woman who was with Yun Ling and Snow Fang said while looking at the treasure.

The boy was about to make a move when suddenly...

The dark world had turned into a bright, golden light!

Gone was the shadow of the palm that covered the whole world in darkness as it was replaced by a bright, golden light. Strangely though, the light wasn't blinding to everyone's eyes.

The boy, who had been living for eons, was taken aback.

The palm had stopped its descent and even the Heavenly Grand Treasure stopped ascending mid-air.

Before everyone could react, an incredibly large rip of space was opened in the sky outside the Thousand Mountain Valley, releasing the same golden light.

From the portal, the huge head of a beast came out before the rest of its body came along.

The head alone was bigger than a few mountains combined and as for the body, it was a lot bigger than the entirety of the Thousand Mountain Valley.

Yun Ling's eyes constricted upon seeing that creature.

"What is that?"

When most of the creature's body was out of the portal, they saw that it resembled a huge turtle.

"A World Turtle..." the boy said in surprise.

"World Turtle?" both Yun Ling and Snow Fang asked, and turned to him.

While the two were confused, the woman looked at the boy in shock, for she had some knowledge about their kind.

The boy nodded at the two before saying, "This one is still a hatchling but a mature World Turtle... it's big enough to carry a planet on its back. It will absorb the toughness of its shell into its skin and carry a whole world on its back. They are usually harmless but when provoked, they can destroy a world on their own. These creatures should've been extinct during the war back then..."

Yun Ling's throat went dry. Such an amazing creature, what was it doing here? Was it attracted by the Heavenly Grand Treasure too?

It was then that he noticed.

"I can see two people on its back," he said after seeing two people standing on top of the World Turtle's shell.

The boy followed Yun Ling's gaze and was incredulous.

"They are... children?"

What were two children doing on top of a World Turtle? And why was the World Turtle allowing those two to ride on its shell without doing anything?