Half a month later, at the outskirts of the Flowing Flame Sandlands, a warship over a hundred feet long hovered silently in midair. Inside the warship, Chang Qi, Hao An, Wu Yi, and Qian Yue, among others, were waiting anxiously.
Ever since the anomaly at the Emperor's Domain that day, Yang Kai and Yang Yan had left the warship and vanished without a trace, never returning to this point.
No one knew where they had gone. The warship, painstakingly forged, had managed to reach the Flowing Flame Sandlands without incident, but Chang Qi and the others did not dare venture deep into it. They could only anchor the warship outside and wait.
Fortunately, thanks to the battle half a month ago, Dragon Hole Mountain's reputation had spread far and wide. Even though a warship hovering in such a conspicuous spot naturally drew attention, no one foolish enough to come looking for trouble actually showed up.
Being pointed at and whispered about was inevitable. After the first fire zone of the Flowing Flame Sandlands had mysteriously disappeared, it had attracted a great number of cultivators coming to investigate. The Flowing Flame Sandlands was far from desolate now — if anything, it was rather bustling.
With such a warship suddenly appearing here, it naturally attracted notice.
Chang Qi and the others had been waiting for three days now with no sign of Yang Kai or Yang Yan. Just as they were wondering what to do, the bucktoothed martial artist Ge Qi suddenly raised an eyebrow, a look of delight crossing his face. "The Grand Ancestor has returned — still over three thousand li away!"
"Oh?" Wu Yi's spirits soared. Without a moment's hesitation, she said happily, "If Senior Ye has returned, then Yang Kai and Sister Yang Yan must have come back as well."
Saying that, she immediately ordered the disciples under her command to open the warship's hatch and stand at attention.
Sure enough, moments later, a streak of light shot toward them from the horizon. In the blink of an eye, it arrived before the warship. As the radiance faded, a remarkably small warship was revealed, shaped something like a shark cutting through the sea — unmistakably the Flying Shark Battle Shuttle that Yang Yan had forged.
The three of them, Yang Kai among them, leaped out from inside, and Yang Yan casually flung a strand of sacred yuan to recall the shuttle.
Hovering in midair, Yang Kai extended his divine sense and couldn't help but furrow his brow.
He sensed that a considerable number of martial artists were lingering near the Flowing Flame Sandlands. The moment he and the others appeared, all of them turned to stare in this direction with undisguised curiosity, whispering among themselves.
Standing in place and pondering for a moment, Yang Kai suddenly circulated his sacred yuan and called out in a clear, resonant voice: "From this day forward, the Flowing Flame Sandlands within a radius of one hundred thousand li falls under the jurisdiction of Dragon Hole Mountain. All of you are advised to leave at once. Any who approach will be considered as provoking Dragon Hole Mountain — bear the consequences yourselves!"
The moment those words left his lips, uproar erupted among the crowd.
Dragon Hole Mountain had indeed made a name for itself in the battle half a month ago, dealing severe blows to many first-tier sects. But these were, after all, rumors — hearsay that no one had yet come forward to confirm. For Yang Kai to now declare such a thing was tantamount to kicking a hornet's nest.
It was no mystery why they objected. After the first fire zone of the Flowing Flame Sandlands had inexplicably vanished, the second zone — the region of heavenly treasures — had been exposed. The martial artists who had come here hadn't found many treasures, true enough, but they occasionally stumbled upon rare minerals.
There were even rumors that within what had once been the second zone's territory, there lay a rich vein of sacred crystal ore, its reserves practically inexhaustible — enough to multiply the strength of a first-tier sect several times over.
Sacred crystal ore was a scarce commodity on the Dark Star. Though the major powers each controlled their own mines, none had many, and mining efficiency was poor.
Most of the martial artists who had come here were doing so in the hopes of finding that sacred crystal vein. For Yang Kai to declare them all expelled with a single sentence — how could they possibly accept that?
In an instant, the crowd surged with outrage. Clamoring and shouting filled the air from every direction. The law could not punish the masses, and besides, the Flowing Flame Sandlands had always been one of the Dark Star's three great forbidden zones — open to all. By what right did Yang Kai make such a demand?
Listening to the clamor and shouting from every direction, Yang Kai's expression remained indifferent, unmoved. He intended to make the ruins of the Grand Mystery Sect within the Flowing Flame Sandlands his foothold going forward, and naturally he could not allow unrelated people to linger nearby.
"Silence!" Yang Kai had not spoken, but the woman surnamed Ye suddenly let out a sharp cry. With her pinnacle cultivation at the Return to Void Stage Three, combined with her bizarre soul-secrecy art, the shout was not loud — yet it left every person making noise feeling dizzy and disoriented, their faces draining of color with fright.
The scene fell silent immediately.
Her beautiful eyes sweeping over the crowd, the woman surnamed Ye spoke in a cold tone: "I am giving you one day. If I still see any of you here after that, don't blame me for being impolite."
Her words fell, and a powerful wave of dominance surged outward in all directions. The world seemed to freeze in that instant. Every martial artist enveloped by that invisible force discovered, to their horror, that they could not move their bodies, could not speak, and could not even circulate their own sacred yuan.
Under this power, each of them felt as insignificant as an ant.
A fully matured dominance — how could these rabble possibly withstand it? Even fellow pinnacles at the Return to Void Stage Three, if caught within the woman surnamed Ye's dominance, would feel as though they had sunk into a quagmire, their limbs bound and useless, let alone these people.
"Return to Void Stage Three!" Someone with discerning eyes instantly recognized the terrifying level of the woman's cultivation and cried out in horror.
Strength commands respect — an immutable truth since the dawn of ages. The woman surnamed Ye had merely shown a sliver of her edge, yet it was enough to make every shouter and clamorer fall obediently silent. After she withdrew her dominance, a great many martial artists immediately summoned their star shutters in a cold sweat and fled outward at top speed.