While Yang Kai and Qing Luo were locked in their furious battle against the powerhouses of the Heng Luo Commerce Hall, scenes of bloodshed and slaughter were unfolding one after another across the Imperial Garden.
Even Return Void Third Stage cultivators could not guarantee their own safety.
Everyone knew the Imperial Garden was riddled with danger, yet the myriad opportunities hidden within kept them lingering. The number of martial artists who had entered the interior was vast. These cultivators came from different cultivation stars and different factions, and when they encountered one another, most would engage in fierce combat. The encounters usually ended with one side achieving total victory, and the losers had only death to look forward to.
In one area engulfed by raging flames, fire roiled on all sides, its searing heat so intense that even a Return Void Third Stage cultivator could not easily withstand it. This inferno was not real — it was the wondrous work of an illusion formation.
Yet those trapped within experienced it as entirely genuine, as though they were standing in the midst of a blazing fire. Right now, three Return Void Realm cultivators sat cross-legged inside this illusion, jointly channeling their Holy Energy to form a protective barrier against the encroaching flames, desperately holding on.
They had been sustaining themselves here for four or five days, yet they still could not break through the miraculous illusion formation to escape. Spirit Stones and medicinal pills had been consumed in great quantities, their own Holy Energy expenditure far outpacing recovery, while the surrounding flames crept toward them like venomous serpents. As time wore on, their situation grew ever more dire.
Finally, one of the three ran his Holy Energy completely dry. The protective glow of his barrier flickered several times before bursting like a soap bubble.
His face drained of color. The other two cried out in alarm, desperately pouring their remaining strength into patching the breach, but it was all in vain. The three of them working together had barely been able to cling to survival in this place. Now that one of them had been emptied of power, the flames encircling them surged in like a tidal wave and swallowed them whole.
Screams rose and were quickly stilled. When the fire finally receded, all that remained were three skeletal corpses — no obvious wounds, yet utterly devoid of life. Such was the sinister nature of illusion formations.
Elsewhere, in a place resembling the labyrinth Yang Kai had previously traversed, a group of cultivators from the same sect huddled together in a tight formation, fighting back to back.
Their enemies were not living creatures. They were the ancient puppets unique to the Imperial Garden, each radiating an energy fluctuation that reached the Return Void Realm — some even at the Third Stage.
Though the puppets possessed little intelligence and fought in crude, brute-force fashion, their sheer numbers were staggering.
Truth be told, this sect's group was not small — five cultivators in total, and their strength was respectable. But in terrain as maze-like as this, surrounded on all sides by countless puppets closing in from every direction, they found no path upward to heaven and no passage downward into earth.
The battle raged for a full half day. The ground was littered with puppet parts and fragments from the ones they had destroyed, yet blood had also stained the earth crimson.
One by one, the cultivators faltered and were struck down by the puppets. After half a day, the once clamorous labyrinth fell silent. The entire group from this nameless sect had been annihilated. Once the puppets sensed no living presence remaining, the battered and scarred constructs quietly vanished — as though they had never existed at all.
The cultivators who perished at the hands of the Imperial Garden's restriction formations and puppets were numerous.
But those killed by infighting and ambushes numbered even more.
Often, the appearance of a single treasure was enough to trigger a storm of bloodshed. Inside the Imperial Garden, there were no rules and no code of honor. The only thing that spoke was power. Whoever was strongest could endure. Brutal, savage battles were erupting practically every hour of every day.
If some supremely powerful cultivator had been able to soar above the Imperial Garden and look down, they would have discovered that it was in fact an enormous octagonal palace. The buildings clustered within were arranged according to some mysterious and profound pattern, as though they contained some wondrous law.
At this moment, inside a palace situated at the very center of the Imperial Garden, two women stood in silence. One wore a black robe, giving her an air of mystery and the uncanny. The other was graceful in figure and dignified in bearing, her entire body radiating the overwhelming aura of a peak Return Void Third Stage powerhouse. Yet this formidable cultivator stood a full thirty zhang behind the woman in black, her expression one of utmost reverence as she gazed at the other's back.
Yang Yan and Ye Xiyun!
No one knew when exactly the two had arrived at this palace, nor what they intended to do here. Judging by their immaculate clothing and calm expressions, they had apparently encountered no danger at all on their way — not even a single fight. The Imperial Garden seemed to offer no resistance to them, allowing them to reach this place with ease.
The palace was vast beyond measure, spanning a full ten thousand zhang across.
Yet inside it stood only a single object: a white jade crystal coffin of modest size. Despite having no power sustaining it, the coffin floated in midair — utterly bizarre.
Yang Yan stood before the white jade crystal coffin now, gazing silently at what lay within, her expression complex.
Inside the coffin reclined a figure. By the shape of the body, it was clearly a woman. And the face was identical to Yang Yan's own. If Yang Kai had been present, he would have instantly recognized the being within the crystal coffin.
The Starry Sky Emperor!
A being of immense power who had unified the entire Star Field tens of thousands of years ago. Her legends were still familiar to all, and the Star Emperor Token she had forged was still coveted by every major power. Any faction that obtained one would treat it as a supreme treasure of their sect, rarely daring to use it, and only deploying it when teetering on the brink of annihilation — to unleash the divine ability the Grand Emperor had sealed within.
Her status was supreme. Her power could overshadow the heavens. She had stood at the absolute pinnacle of the entire Star Field!
Yet no one knew that the illustrious Starry Sky Emperor was a woman. Perhaps her gender had long since been forgotten in the river of history, or perhaps no one had ever seen her true face. But her name would echo through the ages for eternity.