Chapter 6660 Aim for the Heaven Rankings?

Long Chen walked out of the palace and quietly wiped the sweat from his brow. It had been a long time since he had felt this tense.

His nervousness hadn’t come from fear of battle, nor from Qu Liushang. What truly unsettled him was the possibility that the entire Starry River Palace was rotten to the core. If that were the case, what future would remain for those disciples from the nine heavens?

If conflict really erupted, Long Chen was confident he could leave the Starry River Palace alive. But what about them?

Here, they received neither respect nor dignity. They weren’t given a fair chance to compete.

In the nine heavens, they had been hunted like prey. Then, they risked their lives to enter the primal chaos world, only to be met with discrimination once again.

Fate was too cruel to them, and Long Chen couldn’t ignore that.

Those fervent gazes had cut too deeply. They were willing to entrust their lives to Long Chen, so he could not abandon them.

This was why Long Chen had caused a ruckus earlier—to draw out the real higher-ups of the Starry River Palace. Only then could he decide what path to take.

If even the higher-ups were corrupt, then the nine star heirs would truly have no road left to walk. Fortunately, Qu Liushang appeared to be a wise man. At the very least, he seemed capable of handling this matter fairly.

Long Chen wasn’t asking for preferential treatment toward the nine star heirs from the nine heavens. He only wanted fairness—a genuine opportunity for those disciples to compete. If true geniuses existed among them, he refused to see them buried.

Only Long Chen truly understood how brutal the lives of these nine star heirs had been.

From their stories, he learned that the moment their astral energy awakened, they were forced to abandon everything—their sects, their families, their parents.

The young maiden, who had grabbed his hand and cried, had awakened her astral energy at the age of four. Days later, killers descended upon her clan and slaughtered everyone.

Her father fought to the death to activate a teleportation talisman that sent her away in a random direction. But before it completed, she saw him die with her own eyes.

Even now, recalling the look in his eyes at the moment of death felt like a blade carving into her heart.

A four-year-old child had lost her family in the blink of an eye and was forced to set out alone while evading the Brahma line’s pursuers. For a normal person, such suffering was beyond imagination.

However, her story was not unique among the disciples from the nine heavens.

They all suffered the same fate.

Compared to them, the disciples of the Starry River Palace lived under the palace’s protection. For Long Chen and the others, they might as well have been princes and princesses.

Since each person had their own fate, it was not right to be jealous of them. But what enraged Long Chen was the way the Starry River Palace’s disciples viewed the nine heavens’ heirs as trash. Worse still, even the higher-ups shared their discriminatory attitude.

If Long Chen allowed them to treat the nine star heirs from the nine heavens like this, who knew how many of them would ultimately die from their abuse?

Long Chen exhaled slowly, his heart finally easing.

Then he froze.

Only now did he realize he was completely lost.

His thoughts had been racing the entire time. He hadn’t noticed how far he had walked. He should have waited outside the palace for Qing Yi to come and get him.

“Ah, well... Since I’m here, I should look around,” Long Chen said.

With his tension easing, Long Chen started to wander, studying the palaces personally constructed by a Heavenly Sovereign.

He soon discovered that every building in the Starry River Palace was engraved with astral runes. Even ordinary bricks bore them.

All these astral runes emitted an ancient and heavy aura. They were likely remnants from the palace’s original construction.

As Long Chen strolled onward, the runes beneath his feet flickered faintly with each step, like ripples spreading across still water.

Gradually, Long Chen’s heart calmed.

When he communed with these runes, he felt peaceful.

Strangely enough, from the moment he had entered the Starry River Palace, he had felt an inexplicable closeness to it.

The astral energy here did not reject him in the slightest. It felt so close to him that he felt like if he wished, he could activate every grand formation in the entire Starry River Palace.

Earlier, in the trial hall, his anger had caused the formation runes to resonate with him instinctively, as though his emotions had infected them.

Now that Long Chen’s anger faded, the surrounding astral runes became peaceful like water. Every step calmed his heart.

Clear streams wound between the palaces, forming a labyrinth. Long Chen wandered for a while before he noticed a small boat drifting on the surface of one such river.

Seeing that there was no one on the boat, Long Chen jumped in.

Only then did he realize that this seemingly modest boat contained an entire world.

From atop the boat, the river stretched endlessly. Both the riverbed and the heavens above were filled with stars, mirroring one another.

For a moment, he couldn’t tell up from down, nor the sky from the earth. The illusory feeling was intoxicating.

“You can’t tell heaven from water as you pass through the starry river of dreams...” Long Chen murmured.

Just as Long Chen was immersed in this feeling, a slightly surprised and irritated voice rang out.

“Hey, why are you on my boat?”

“Your boat?” Long Chen was startled.

There was no one on this boat. How is it your boat?

Just as Long Chen was baffled, a red-robed woman appeared on top of the boat.

She was tall, only slightly shorter than Long Chen. Her robes were embroidered with star diagrams, showing that they were clearly not ordinary.

Her face was pretty. In particular, her eyes shimmered with flowing starlight, as intoxicating as the starry river itself. There was an air of innocent clarity about her.

When she saw Long Chen’s reaction, she asked, “Are you a newcomer from the nine heavens?”

Long Chen nodded.

“You’ve just arrived, and you dared to get into a star boat only a Heaven Ranker can summon? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

“So you called this boat?” asked Long Chen in confusion.

That woman was baffled by Long Chen’s relaxed bearing.

Her gaze slowly roved over him, and her pupils suddenly shrank.

Her reaction surprised Long Chen.

Long Chen had concealed his aura carefully—so well that even the Elders in the trial hall hadn’t sensed anything amiss. Yet, this woman had noticed something.

More than that, the starry sea within Long Chen’s dantian started to churn faster under her gaze.

This woman’s strong!

Long Chen was surprised. He had actually misjudged her because of her frail appearance.

In turn, the woman stared at him in astonishment. She suddenly became excited.

“So you’re an expert! Are you aiming for the Heaven Rankings?”

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