Misery loves comparison — once you realize someone has it worse than you, the sadness fades. Yang Kai's words gave Wu Yi an unexpected sense of superiority.
Compared to this man called Yang Kai's homeland, the Dark Star was practically paradise.
She was deeply impressed that Yang Kai had charged out of the Profound Continent alone and stormed into the Star Domain on his own. Her beautiful eyes brimmed with admiration — she clearly had a soft spot for reckless courage. Given the chance, she'd probably do the same.
Unfortunately, various constraints kept her trapped in this place.
As they talked, the atmosphere grew warm. Wu Yi had never held any hostility toward Yang Kai to begin with, and Yang Kai was a go-with-the-flow sort of person who naturally harbored no schemes against her. It wasn't until Yu Feng came running over to report some matters that Wu Yi finally rose to leave, clearly reluctant to end the conversation.
After she was gone, Yang Kai took out more Holy Crystals, swallowed pills, and circulated his cultivation technique to restore his strength.
Time slipped by. A month later, Yang Kai had recovered to the third level of the Saint Realm, though the Saint Essence within his body hadn't accumulated much — negligible compared to what he'd had before.
He constantly drew energy from the Holy Crystals, replenishing the reserves within his body.
He'd grown accustomed to having inexhaustible power, able to fight without ever fearing exhaustion. This current state left him feeling somewhat uneasy.
The energy from the Holy Crystals was rapidly converted into Yang Kai's formidable capital. Saint Essence surged and flowed through his meridians. His mind was calm as still water, his divine sense threading through the channels as he examined those hundred drops of the purest Demon God Golden Blood.
These hundred drops had been born from the altar combined with the vast Saint Essence his body had contained. Only a hundred drops — they would eventually run out. If he wanted to generate more in the future, what method would he use?
The altar within the Divine Tempering Pool was gone. The complex formation inscribed upon it, Yang Kai hadn't been able to memorize completely. Even if he wanted to replicate it, that seemed nearly impossible.
Just as these thoughts crossed his mind, the golden blood flowing through his body seemed to receive some kind of stimulus and began madly devouring his Saint Essence.
Yang Kai, who had only recently recovered, turned deathly pale in an instant. An overwhelming sense of exhaustion swept over him.
He focused his attention to investigate, and what he found sent a jolt of alarm through him.
More than half of his Saint Essence within his body had vanished. The missing essence had been devoured by the golden blood in a remarkably short time, and within the golden blood that had consumed the Saint Essence, a speck of even purer gold had appeared — a pinpoint of gold no larger than a needle's tip.
That was an unformed drop of pure Demon God Golden Blood!
Yang Kai's expression shifted between shadow and light as he thought for a moment, then connected the dots to a certain possibility. Carefully, he released his suppression, allowing the golden blood to continue devouring his Saint Essence.
The Saint Essence painstakingly cultivated was rapidly depleting, but that pinpoint of golden blood swelled to a slightly larger size.
Just as he'd suspected!
Yang Kai couldn't help but feel a surge of wild joy. The golden blood really could be generated by consuming Saint Essence — this confirmed his earlier theory. His boundless reservoir of Saint Essence had vanished entirely for no other reason than the birth of those hundred drops of golden blood.
From now on, if he wanted to refine more pure golden blood, he simply needed to expend Saint Essence.
The cost, though, was staggering — so steep that Yang Kai felt his heart ache. An entire month of recovery had yielded enough Saint Essence to produce only a single drop of golden blood the size of a grain of rice. That meant he'd need at least three months of cultivation and accumulation to convert all his Saint Essence into one drop of pure golden blood.
Though his heart ached, Yang Kai felt completely at ease.
Saint Essence could be obtained through cultivation, pill consumption, and the use of Holy Crystals. As long as he found the right place and method, acquiring Saint Essence wouldn't be difficult. Demon God Golden Blood, on the other hand, was not something that came easily. The fact that there was now a conversion process between the two was something Yang Kai welcomed. Even if the conversion was one-way and lacked the versatility of Yang Liquid, at least the Demon God Golden Blood would never run out.
He still had a hundred drops of golden blood within his body, and Yang Kai wasn't in a hurry to generate more. Under the circumstances, accumulating Saint Essence was the top priority.
His mood soared, and his cultivation speed seemed to improve dramatically as well. In a single day, Yang Kai consumed ten Holy Crystals, draining every last trace of energy from them.
Wu Yi came again.
Over the past month, whenever she had a spare moment, she'd come running to Yang Kai's place. The news he brought about the outside world had her utterly captivated. She listened with rapt attention to everything, big or small, and the more she heard, the more she longed for the world beyond — as if she wished she could order the warship to change course right then and there and head straight toward that dazzling world.
Seeing her plop herself down in front of him with an air of readiness to listen intently, Yang Kai felt a headache coming on. "Wu Yi," he said helplessly, "I haven't been in the Star Domain for many years. Everything I know, everything I've seen, I've already told you. There's nothing left to hide."
He genuinely couldn't stand it anymore. The depth of one person's curiosity was either her tragedy or his — he honestly couldn't tell.
"Come on, there must be things you haven't told me yet. As long as it's news from the outside, I want to hear everything!" Wu Yi pressed on, staring at Yang Kai with keen enthusiasm. In previous encounters when she'd said this, Yang Kai had racked his brains and dredged up a few trivial incidents to satisfy her curiosity and send her away. Today, he refused to compromise.
This little temptress was an insatiable wolf. If he gave in today, there'd certainly be a next time.
"There's nothing left. Really. I've even told you about flirting with women — what could I possibly not have shared?"