While Aldous stood upon his platform, continuing to recount the history of the world of Ibiron before one hundred thousand young men and women, and while the plaza was filled with discussions about that mysterious being who had been known in ancient ages as The Greatest...
A great event was about to take place somewhere else in Ibiron.
An event whose existence none of those present in the plaza knew about.
An event that had remained hidden beneath their feet...
Far beyond the eyes of every living creature.
Deep within the earth.
In a remote place, millions of kilometers beneath the Upper Continent, where, according to what the people of Ibiron knew, the planet's core should have existed...
There was no core.
Instead, there was something else.
A cavern.
A gigantic, spherical cavern with a diameter of one hundred kilometers.
Its walls were shrouded in almost absolute darkness, as though even light itself had been unable to reach that place.
No sun.
No stars.
No source of illumination whatsoever.
Only a profound darkness surrounded everything, a darkness that seemed to have extended into that place for ages whose number no one knew.
The silence there was complete to the point of being frightening.
No sound.
No movement.
Nothing suggested that something existing in that remote place could ever awaken.
And at the center of that spherical cavern...
Floated a colossal sphere of golden energy.
It was immense and awe-inspiring, suspended within the dark void without relying upon anything.
By all logic, a massive sphere of golden energy such as this should have been brilliant enough to illuminate the entire cavern.
But reality was completely different.
The golden sphere was dim.
Frighteningly dim.
It emitted only a faint amount of light, barely enough to reveal its existence amidst the surrounding darkness.
It looked like a sun that had lost most of its radiance.
As though a tremendous flame had once burned within it, only to gradually die out over an unknown number of years, leaving behind nothing but faint remnants struggling silently to survive.
And the sphere remained there...
Slowly rotating upon itself.
One rotation after another.
Year after year.
Age after age.
Without anything changing.
Without emitting the slightest sound.
And without anyone upon the surface of Ibiron knowing that it existed in the first place.
It had been rotating in the depths of the planet for an unknown number of years, surrounded by darkness, still, dim, and gloomy.
As though time itself had come to a halt in that place.
But...
Suddenly.
A change occurred.
At first, the change was extremely subtle.
So subtle that anyone watching the sphere might not have noticed it at the very first moment.
Its rotation began to accelerate.
Slowly...
Then faster...
Then faster.
Until its movement became more apparent than before.
As though something was awakening within it after an unimaginably long period of stillness.
At almost the same moment...
The faint light emanating from it began to intensify.
A weak light at first.
Then brighter.
Then brighter still...
As time passed, the golden sphere gradually began to regain its radiance.
The change was not rapid.
Instead, it occurred little by little, as though the radiance that had faded away in an unknown age was beginning to return to life once more.
Hours passed.
And the darkness surrounding it began to retreat before the rising light.
Until, after several hours...
The sphere no longer looked like a dim mass of energy.
Instead, it had become like a blazing sun suspended in the heart of darkness.
A tremendous golden light erupted from it, illuminating the entire spherical cavern and revealing its dark walls, which had remained hidden for countless years.
Then...
Something else began to happen.
Waves of dense energy began to surge from the surface of the golden sphere.
At first, they were limited waves.
But they quickly grew stronger and faster.
Wave after wave.
Dense and imposing energy surged from the sphere before crashing against the walls of the cavern.
But those solid walls were unable to stop them.
The terrifying waves of energy pierced through the spherical walls as though they were nothing.
They pierced through the earth.
Then continued their ascent.
They were heading toward the surface of Ibiron.
They tore through millions of kilometers of the planet's depths, spreading in every direction, as though flowing through the body of a colossal entity that had remained dormant for an immeasurably long time.
And as they ascended...
They began to nourish every living thing with energy.
The energy spread through the depths of the earth, then continued rising farther and farther.
As though something within the heart of Ibiron had finally begun to awaken.
And amid that rising golden light...
Something happened that made the entire scene even more mysterious.
Two eyes opened.
Two completely golden eyes.
They appeared upon the surface of the golden sphere.
They were not ordinary eyes.
Their light was brighter than the light of the golden sphere itself.
The moment they opened, it seemed as though the surrounding darkness retreated even farther, as though the mere opening of those eyes was enough to alter the very appearance of that remote place.
And after the eyes opened...
A voice emerged.
A very ancient female voice.
So ancient that its tone seemed as though its owner had witnessed countless ages and had known more of time than any ordinary memory could possibly retain.
There was a strange weight within that voice unlike the voices of ordinary beings.
It was not merely a voice emerging from the depths of the earth; rather, it seemed as though behind every word lay an age of time that could not be measured.
And yet, the voice was not loud.
The voice said:
"The time has come... The awakening has begun, my children."
The voice fell silent for a moment.
A brief silence descended upon those unfathomable depths.
Then the voice returned.
But this time, it was stronger.
Deeper.
And it echoed everywhere.
"This time... we cannot allow the past to repeat itself."
As soon as the words ended...
Ibiron began to tremble.
At first, they were merely faint tremors.
Tremors that the world felt for a few moments before their intensity gradually began to increase.
Then they grew stronger.
And with terrifying speed...
They transformed into powerful earthquakes.
The earth trembled.
The mountains trembled.
The deserts trembled.
The vast lands of the Upper Continent were thrown into turmoil.
Within moments, it was no longer an earthquake confined to a single region.
The entire planet had begun to tremble.
Ibiron shook beneath the feet of every living creature.
In the cities, movement came to a halt.
In the wilderness, creatures became restless.
In distant regions, the earth began to crack and shift violently.
No one understood what was happening.
It was far too sudden.
For most living creatures upon the surface of Ibiron, there was no explanation for this sudden change.
Then enormous, dense waves of energy began to pierce through the earth from the depths of the planet.
They emerged from beneath the ground.
They surged through soil and stone.
Then spread throughout Ibiron.
An astonishingly dense energy began to permeate the entire world.
And as it reached the surface, the living creatures felt it.
Many of them stopped moving.
They raised their heads.
And sensed a change they could not explain.
The energy was flowing from beneath them, spreading throughout the world around them in a manner they had never experienced before.
But the powerful earthquakes that continued to strike the planet caused fear to overwhelm everything else.
The living creatures across the Upper Continent began to panic.
In the Great Ocean, the vast waters were violently disturbed.
Enormous waves moved across the surface of the sea.
And the sea creatures that had grown accustomed to stillness felt the disturbance coming from the depths of the world.
Fear began to spread.
For them...
It seemed as though Ibiron itself was collapsing.
As though the world upon which they had lived for so many years had reached its end.
And upon the Upper Continent...
Another change occurred.
As the continent continued to tremble, almost simultaneously, the doors of seclusion that had remained closed for tens of thousands of years began to open.
In different parts of the continent...
And in regions whose very existence ordinary creatures did not even know of...
Powerful auras emerged.
Then figures appeared one after another.
They were the Ascendant Immortals.
Beings who had stood at the peak of the Mortal Stage for tens of thousands of years.
Beings who had spent those long years in seclusion, far from the world, attempting to break through their limits and reach a higher level.
But the earthquake...
And that immense energy that had begun spreading throughout Ibiron...
Forced them to emerge from their seclusion.
Eyes that had remained closed for tens of thousands of years opened.
Then their bodies emerged from their places of seclusion.
In the moments that followed...
Their auras rose into the sky.
Thousands of Ascendant Immortals emerged from different parts of the Upper Continent.
From all races.
They rose into the sky one after another.
Then they hovered above the Upper Continent, watching the world beneath them as it began to tremble.
Some looked toward the earth.
Others looked toward the sky.
Others looked around, attempting to understand the source of this sudden change.
There was no answer.
But they all sensed one thing.
Something was happening to Ibiron.
One of the Ascendant Immortals said in a heavy voice:
"What is happening?"
No one answered immediately.
The earthquake was still shaking the earth beneath them.
Then another said as he looked downward:
"This energy... it is spreading throughout the entire continent."
A third said:
"It is coming from deep beneath the earth."
A brief silence followed.
Then one of them said:
"From deep beneath the earth?"
No one knew what to say after that.
The energy spreading throughout the planet was not something they could ignore.
Its magnitude and density were enough to attract the attention of tens of thousands of powerful cultivators.
But what was happening above the continent was only one part of the change.
In the depths of the Great Ocean...
Something else was awakening.
At the bottom of the ocean, far from its surface, where darkness prevailed and water covered everything...
There were beings of immense antiquity.
Ancient sea beasts.
They had been sleeping for tens of thousands of years.
Massive bodies lay motionless in the depths of the ocean, having not moved throughout all those years.
But when the planet trembled...
Those beasts felt the tremor.
Then they sensed the enormous, dense waves of energy that had begun piercing through the ocean and spreading in every direction.
In an instant...
Those beasts opened their eyes.
They were ancient eyes awakening after a long sleep.
They gazed into the surrounding darkness.
Then their massive bodies slowly rose.
The change in the world had been enough to awaken them from their long slumber.
Those ancient beasts began to move.
And after realizing that the enormous waves of energy were spreading throughout the entire ocean, they began to rise toward its surface.
Meanwhile...
The number of Ascendant Immortals emerging from their seclusion continued to increase.
One...
Then another...
Then another.
And within only a few minutes...
Tens of thousands of powerful cultivators of the Ascendant Immortal Realm emerged from their hiding places.
They rose into the sky.
Some emerged from the depths of the mountains.
Others appeared above distant lands.
While the ancient sea beasts rose from the depths of the ocean.
All of them gazed at the world around them.
All of them felt the earthquake.
All of them felt the energy.
And all of them wanted to know one thing:
What is happening to Ibiron?
None of them knew the answer.
No one knew the source of that enormous energy.
And no one knew why the entire planet was trembling.
But one thing had become clear...
That world which had remained still for countless years...
Had begun to change.
And in a place their eyes could not reach, in the unfathomable depths of Ibiron, the golden sphere continued to rotate.
But it was no longer dim as it had been before.
It had become as radiant as the sun.
And the golden eyes upon its surface remained open.
Deep within that darkness...
The Awakening had begun.