"The Power of Heaven? Heaven has power too?" Chen Feng paused, his mind feeling a bit hazy. "What is that?"

"Heaven certainly has power!" The Fist King gazed deeply into the depths of the spatial turbulence and asked, "Then let me ask you, what do you think Heaven is?"

"Heaven should just mean the sky above our heads, something without life. How could it possess power?" Chen Feng felt puzzled by the Fist King's line of questioning.

The Fist King shook his head, and his slow, deep voice resonated through his mental fluctuations: "Heaven has power! Heaven refers to the Will of Heaven, the Heart of Heaven! How could the might of the Heavens lack power? If I explained these things to you directly, you surely wouldn't grasp them. Now, I will explain in a simpler way. Do you know why no one has successfully endured the Thunder Tribulation to become a god for so many years?"

Chen Feng shook his head.

He had actually pondered this question before. Even though the Thunder Tribulation was difficult to pass, countless heroes and talents, like crossing currents of a river, had emerged over the years; someone should have succeeded by now. Yet, based on the rumors, truly no one had successfully passed the tribulation. The only legends spoke of achieving godhood through places like Godhead Mountain or the Profound Heaven Demonic Palace.

Moreover, he hadn't even condensed a godhead himself. If he truly reached the divine level of cultivation, shouldn't he have ascended to the God Realm? Why hadn't there been any sign of it?

All these unresolved issues made him wonder, following the Fist King's question, if there was truly something amiss.

"Actually, the Thunder Tribulation a thousand years ago was much easier to pass than it is now. Among a thousand experts at the peak of the Saint Domain, one or a few lucky ones would usually manage to pass the tribulation and condense a godhead to become a god. Now, even out of ten thousand people, not one might succeed. The primary reason is that the Gods sealed the passage between the God Realm and the Human Realm!"

"Sealed?" Chen Feng grew increasingly confused. "Why would the Gods seal the passage to the God Realm? What exactly happened?"

"These are precisely what I intended to tell you." The Fist King paused and continued, "I am an artificial god, grown in the Human Realm. I have never been to the God Realm, so I don't know the specifics of what occurred back then. However, I know the events that transpired in the Human Realm with absolute clarity. Yet, ten thousand years have already passed in the blink of an eye!"

"What happened ten thousand years ago? Could you elaborate, Lord Fist King?" Chen Feng asked urgently, intensely interested in the God-Slaying War from ten millennia past.

The Fist King nodded and said, "Ten thousand years ago, the God-Slaying War occurred. Chaos reigned over the heavens; the earth shook violently, and gods fell continuously, tumbling from the sky into the spatial turbulence where they were shredded into dust. The weapon you obtained from the Mad Killing Demon God was likely swept into the spatial turbulence around that time before eventually being brought to this world."

That such a divine artifact as the Nether Feather Sword had fallen from the sky was strange enough. If it had drifted in the spatial turbulence for countless years before coincidentally entering that specific space and falling, the explanation was entirely plausible.

"At that time, my power hadn't fully stabilized, so I couldn't participate in the battle. I watched helplessly as Yan Long and the others engaged in combat against various dark gods and undead gods. Godheads were abundant back then; as long as one could survive, godheads were plentiful! But how many could actually survive in those conditions?" The Fist King continued speaking.

"Finally, seeing how dire the situation had become, Yan Long and the others utilized some ancient secret technique, pooling the strength of tens of thousands to seal the passage between the God Realm and the Human Realm. However, the undead gods and dark gods who initiated the conflict were not significantly diminished by this; instead, they grew stronger, clinging like poison to the bone, trailing everyone. Faced with this crisis, the high-tier god of the Law of Time, Dusyart, was forced to burn his soul to tear open the temporal barrier, allowing the Gods to escape through transit. Unfortunately, this temporal traversal was immensely difficult, and they were attacked during the crossing. Thus, where they ended up is still unknown to this day! Perhaps they were completely annihilated in the currents of time!"

The Fist King sighed deeply at this point, a trace of desolation crossing his eyes.

"Gods traversing time?" Hearing this, Chen Feng's heart skipped a beat, and he hastily inquired, "Did you see this, or did you hear about it?"

"I saw it with my own eyes!" the Fist King affirmed. "When the Gods traversed, a massive temporal explosion occurred, and many of the attacking dark gods and undead gods were also annihilated. The Gods who didn't follow in the rear, like Yan Long and Fire Phoenix, engaged in a desperate battle with the remaining people, resulting in mutual destruction. The Gods who narrowly survived are now hiding somewhere, their whereabouts unknown!"

"Are you certain those traversing Gods vanished after the explosion?" Chen Feng's breathing grew shallow.

"Yes," the Fist King glanced at Chen Feng, sensing his expression was somewhat peculiar. "There were over ten thousand of these Gods, the elite among them. But following this disappearance, their whereabouts became unknown, never to be found again. That is why I refer to them as the Lost Gods!"

"The Lost Gods..." Hearing the Fist King say this, Chen Feng gradually became certain. He never imagined it was actually those people.

Back in the Realm of Nature, beneath the Purple Fire Crystal Mother, he had found the Reception Platform, the Gate of Reincarnation, and several statues. A clone of a dark god had once come to demand these items from him, and yes, their designation was precisely the Lost Gods!

If the Fist King was correct, the items he had unwittingly acquired were actually the contingent of Gods who had fled through time during the God-Slaying War!

Just as he was about to relay this to the Fist King, Chen Feng’s heart jolted again, and his brow suddenly furrowed.

Could what the Fist King just described actually be wrong? When he obtained the Lost Gods in the Realm of Nature, he could tell that the arrangements they made were meticulous and orderly, looking as if they had been planned long in advance—not at all like something arising from a temporal explosion. By this logic, the Fist King’s account must be flawed, or perhaps he hadn't seen exactly what happened and misunderstood the situation.

The Realm of Nature, the Lost Gods, the Fist King, Yan Long...

As these elements spun in his mind, a flash of insight struck him, bringing to light a question he had never considered before.

If Yan Long didn't know the location of the Lost Gods, why did his remnant soul, upon burning, unleash the Wushi technique and traverse not to some random place, but specifically to the Realm of Nature? Furthermore, the location where he appeared was less than a hundred miles from where the Lost Gods were interred?

And what about the Soul Imprint and the Yan Long Secret Tome? What did they signify?

Were all these matters also pre-planned?

Furthermore, Jin Xuanhu's cultivation had reached the peak of the Divine level. Apart from the Main Gods and high-tier Law Gods, his cultivation was the highest. How could such a powerful divine expert have been injured by him—a mere Second-Level Dou Zun at the time—allowing him to escape successfully?

Before reaching the divine level, one couldn't truly comprehend the might of a God. Chen Feng’s current cultivation was only around early Divine level, but he felt thousands, even tens of thousands, of times stronger than before. Even Yan Long, burning his remnant soul to aid the Second-Level Dou Zun version of himself, would absolutely not have been able to escape from his current self, let alone successfully traverse space!

One must remember that even unleashing Wushi to traverse space required a certain amount of time. To an ordinary person, this less-than-a-second duration seemed fast, but before a divine-level expert, many things could be accomplished. Yet, Chen Feng had managed to traverse successfully, and nothing happened!

Chen Feng hadn't paid attention to any of this before, but the Fist King's casual mention of the Lost Gods was like a thread pulling these disparate events together, illuminating his mind while simultaneously causing greater confusion, leaving him increasingly bewildered.

Three of the Four Divine Beasts had fallen, and Jin Xuanhu was a traitor who had betrayed Yan Long and the others. Chen Feng had planned to kill him once his cultivation was higher, but now he suddenly felt unsure of what to do!

"It seems I really need to wake up that fellow Yan Long first," Chen Feng thought. Just as he was about to ask for more details about the God-Slaying War, his dispersed spiritual power suddenly sensed a strong fluctuation from the group. Looking up, he saw that they had unknowingly arrived at the edge of a massive void.

This place resembled a gigantic silver sandbox placed in the dark curtain of night (the original text used a character combination that was unclear, so I made a stylistic adjustment!), hanging conspicuously in the spatial turbulence, exceptionally dazzling. Judging by its scale, its diameter spanned several thousand kilometers—an awe-inspiring sight.

The existence of such a stable region within the spatial turbulence was astonishing.

"What is this place?" Everyone looked towards the Fist King, the same question arising simultaneously in their minds.

"This is the Profound Heaven Astral Plate!" The Fist King used a special mental induction method to transmit the information to everyone.

"The Profound Heaven Astral Plate." Chen Feng’s mental fluctuations stirred slightly as he asked doubtfully.

The Fist King’s spiritual sense conveyed: "Yes, it is a relatively stable area within the spatial turbulence, discovered when I was wandering through it back then. It was constructed before the God-Slaying War!"

"Did you bring us here just to look at this thing?" Chen Feng asked.

The Fist King hadn't finished telling him what he needed to say earlier, but since everyone now wanted to know about the Profound Heaven Astral Plate, it was inconvenient to press the matter closely. He could only shift to another topic.

"Of course not. Do you know what lies beneath these silver particles of the Profound Heaven Astral Plate?" the Fist King inquired.

"What place?" Everyone shook their heads.

The Fist King smiled faintly, his emotions conveyed through his spiritual waves becoming slow and grave. In everyone’s minds, they seemed to hear his deep voice: "The Profound Heaven Demonic Palace!"

"What Profound Heaven... Demonic Palace?"

Hearing these four words, everyone doubted their ears; they froze in place. Wasn't the Profound Heaven Demonic Palace the legendary place where godheads existed? How could it be here? What connection did it have with the spatial turbulence?