Inside the cave, stalactites hung from the ceiling while spring water rich with spiritual energy trickled down between them, splashing onto the ground with crisp, tinkling sounds.
The entire cave was wreathed in mist, the spiritual energy so dense it was nearly tangible.
Yang Kai sat cross-legged in the depths of the cave, every pore on his body thrown wide open as he frantically devoured the fog-like spiritual energy, strengthening his power bit by bit at a pace too subtle to perceive.
Before departing for the Star Field, Yang Kai had only just broken through to the Saint Realm.
After wandering through the Star Field for many days, he had never found a place to settle and had no time to cultivate.
Then he'd encountered the people from Purple Star and been captured aboard their warship, leaving even less opportunity to train.
Before he could escape, he'd ended up stranded alongside the Purple Star cultivators on this floating continent, his cultivation sealed for a full two months.
Now that he'd finally regained a sliver of freedom, Yang Kai naturally had to make the most of it.
Only with greater strength did anything become possible—even in the most desperate of circumstances, the thought of giving up had never once crossed his mind.
He had artificially reshaped the cave's terrain to funnel spiritual energy in more rapidly, allowing him to absorb and utilize it to the greatest possible extent.
His cultivation realm advanced, slowly but surely.
When training grew tedious, he would casually refine a few pills to steady his mood, or venture outside for a walk, taking in the continent's beautiful scenery while searching for high-grade herbs among mountain stream crevices and deep within the forests.
Shentu hadn't been wrong—this godforsaken place was extraordinarily rich in resources. Spirit herbs and medicinal plants grew everywhere, each one of considerable age with concentrated medicinal properties.
Any alchemist who set foot here would be driven to ecstasy—so excited they might literally have a heart attack.
The pills Yang Kai refined served as supplements to his cultivation. Each saint pill that entered his stomach pushed his training speed to its absolute limit.
His cultivation at this stage was no longer merely about accumulating raw power.
At this level of strength, advancing to each subsequent stage required simultaneous enhancement of both power and realm.
Power encompassed the physical body and Divine Sense. The realm comprised mental fortitude, comprehension of the Martial Dao and the Heavenly Dao, and numerous other factors—the slightest deficiency in any one area would halt his progress.
But Yang Kai's cultivation proceeded smooth as water, utterly without bottlenecks.
Days passed one by one. In this perfect cultivation environment, Yang Kai grew at a breathtaking pace, and he could already faintly sense the threshold of the second level of the Saint Realm.
He estimated that roughly a year had passed since he and Shentu had parted ways.
For so long, he had encountered no one, spoken to no one. Yet Yang Kai could sense the changes unfolding across the continent.
The warriors of Purple Star and the Sword Alliance seemed to vanish one by one at irregular intervals, their life signatures disappearing from the continent without warning. Yang Kai knew full well what their fates must be.
They had certainly been thrown into that spatial formation by Ancestor Ghost—sent to a place from which there was no return.
In the early days, he had been able to detect scattered warriors moving about nearby through his Divine Sense. But over the past half year, no one came near this area at all.
It was as though the entire continent had been emptied, leaving only him—no one else remained!
On this day, Yang Kai was deep in quiet cultivation when his expression suddenly changed. He opened his eyes and looked off in one direction.
From that direction, a sinister, ghostly aura had erupted outward like a cataclysmic explosion, sweeping across half the continent in an instant. Even from ten thousand li away, Yang Kai couldn't help but tremble, hastily circulating his True Yang Energy to fend off the cold, corrosive influence.
At the same time, Yang Kai keenly noticed that the plants outside his cave were rapidly withering. The earth itself turned deathly still in that moment, as though all life had been drained from it.
Ancestor Ghost's roar suddenly echoed across the heavens: "Why?! Why does it still not succeed?! I've devoted a thousand painstaking years to this research—why can't I leave this cursed place?!"
His voice was utterly hysterical.
In his fury, the winds and clouds across the entire continent shifted and darkened.
Yang Kai immediately realized what had happened. After all this time, Ancestor Ghost had apparently made no progress on the spatial formation. The glimmers of hope he'd shown before had now curdled into despair.
Yang Kai held his breath and remained perfectly still.
"Boy—get over here!" Ancestor Ghost's voice suddenly rang in his ears.
Yang Kai grimaced, knowing that blessings couldn't be forced and curses couldn't be dodged. Reluctantly, he rose to his feet, walked out of the cave, and rode his Star Shuttle toward the mountain peak where Ancestor Ghost resided.
An hour later, he arrived at the mountainside and descended.
His gaze swept across the scene, and Yang Kai let out a heavy sigh. The group of warriors—once nearly a hundred strong—now numbered fewer than ten. The rest had long since vanished without a trace.