Liu Yan had followed him for many years. All that time, they had watched each other's backs, and Liu Yan had helped Yang Kai on countless occasions. If Liu Yan were to perish here because of this bizarre stone, Yang Kai simply could not accept it.
If that truly happened, he would dig up Ye Chong's corpse, grind his bones to dust and scatter his ashes, to ease the hatred in his heart.
But thinking it over carefully, he figured it was unlikely. Ye Chong needed something from him and would never set up a bizarre stone to sabotage him here.
Still… when he had spoken of opportunities within this cave, why had he kept staring at Liu Yan?
Yang Kai's thoughts were a tangled mess. Just then, a wisp of an achingly familiar aura drifted out from within the bizarre stone.
Upon sensing that trace of aura, Yang Kai's expression lit up and he called out urgently: "Liu Yan!"
That aura was unmistakably Liu Yan's—extremely faint, but Liu Yan's all the same. Had Yang Kai not spent all these years at Liu Yan's side, growing intimately familiar with that presence, he would never have noticed.
Since the aura lingered, it meant Liu Yan had not perished—only sealed away inside the bizarre stone. Realizing this, Yang Kai did not dare attack the stone rashly, fearing he might harm Liu Yan.
Yet to his calls, Liu Yan gave no response at all. Moreover, as far as Yang Kai could sense, the thread of aura Liu Yan was releasing remained perfectly stable—faint to the extreme, but showing no signs of injury.
It was almost as though Liu Yan had fallen into a deep slumber.
What was going on? Yang Kai could not make sense of it no matter how he turned it over in his mind.
He cautiously extended his divine sense once more, but the result was the same as before. The moment his divine sense touched the interior of the bizarre stone, it was severed as if bitten off by an invisible maw—his probe failed entirely, and a dull ache throbbed through his sea of consciousness.
He had no idea what this bizarre stone was, but the fact that it could devour divine sense spoke to its extraordinary quality.
Thread after thread of crimson so faint it was almost invisible bled outward from the stone's interior, seeping to its surface. Yang Kai's eyes brightened—he knew that crimson aura all too well. It was unmistakably the impossibly complex flame power that Liu Yan possessed, a fusion of all manner of rare fires blended together flawlessly. No one else in the world besides Liu Yan wielded such a thing.
Could Liu Yan be trying to break the seal from the inside?
At that thought, the tension in Yang Kai's chest eased considerably. He forced himself to calm down and observe carefully, trying to figure out what he could do to help Liu Yan.
Once the crimson hue had spread to the surface, the bizarre stone let out a deep hum—and then it erupted with tremendous suction. It devoured the surrounding spiritual energy of heaven and earth with reckless abandon.
In an instant, a howling gale tore through the cave, whistling and wailing. The rich spiritual energy of this secret realm poured into the bizarre stone in torrents, only to vanish without a trace, like a stone dropped into the sea.
Yet as the spiritual energy disappeared, the crimson glow on the stone's surface blazed ever brighter, and Liu Yan's aura grew clearer by the moment.
It wanted energy? Yang Kai's heart stirred. Without a moment's hesitation, he waved his hand. Tens of millions of Source Crystals cascaded around the bizarre stone in a single sweep—so many that they nearly filled the entire cave. Every one of them was mid-grade or high-grade; there was not a single low-grade Source Crystal among them, for they had all been stripped from that Source Crystal vein.
Yang Kai threw a punch, shattering every last crystal to powder. The spiritual energy released from the pulverized Source Crystals formed a luminous sea that enveloped the stone.
Visible to the naked eye, the bizarre stone continued to absorb the surrounding energy without pause, as if it could never be sated.
…
At the same time Liu Yan was in peril, outside the Thousand Leaf Sect, the atmosphere was one of terror. Every bird's call sent tremors through the ranks, and every rustling leaf seemed to harbor an enemy.
Over a thousand warriors had arrived before the Thousand Leaf Sect's mountain-protecting grand formation, their hostile gazes fixed upon the sect.
These thousand fighters belonged to different factions, yet they all appeared to take orders from a blue-haired middle-aged man. His cultivation technique was unknown, but his long hair was the color of deep water, falling untamed over his broad shoulders. His frame was commanding, and his expression carried a natural authority that brooked no defiance.
He sat atop an open-top palanquin carried by sixteen bearers—a lavish conveyance that radiated a considerable spiritual energy fluctuation, clearly no ordinary artifact. And at this moment, the blue-haired man was leisurely sipping tea, as relaxed as if he were on a countryside excursion.
Crowded around him were a number of powerful figures.
Among them was none other than Luo Jin, the City Lord of Tianhe City, whom Yang Kai had once thoroughly beaten. Yet in the span of a short time—no one knew what miraculous pills or medicines he had taken—all of his injuries had vanished completely. Not a single mark remained from the beating Yang Kai had dealt him; he looked radiant, his complexion ruddy with vigor.
The two elders who had previously served as protectors of the young palace master of Tianzhao Palace, Qiu Yu, also stood nearby with their heads bowed, their posture toward the blue-haired man one of the utmost respect.
There was yet another figure who drew attention—a man whose cultivation was no inferior to anyone present. He was broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, with a ruggedly coarse appearance. The aura radiating from his entire body was savage and violent, and he looked to be somewhere in his forties or fifties.