A stubborn refusal to give up lingered in Yang Kai's mind, driving him to study the blue stone day and night, utterly oblivious to everything else.
At first, Zhang Ruoxi, who stayed in the room next door, dropped by every so often to ask when Yang Kai planned to leave Ziyue City. But as time passed and he never appeared, she figured he must be sequestered in secluded cultivation and didn't dare disturb him.
With nothing to do at the inn, she would grow restless and leave to explore the city. Her cultivation at the third level of the Dao Source Realm was nothing to scoff at, and although some warriors in Ziyue City matched her strength, she had no reason to feel intimidated. On one such outing, she stumbled upon something novel. After mustering the courage to give it a try, she was instantly hooked. Every day during Yang Kai's seclusion, she would head to the same spot and linger there for a long while before returning to the inn.
Time flew, and a month passed in the blink of an eye.
At one moment, Yang Kai drew a deep breath, his expression as calm and still as an ancient well, and withdrew his spiritual sense from the stone.
His eyes were threaded through with blood vessels, as though he had exhausted himself completely and pushed his mind to its limits. Yet the look in them blazed like the stars.
After a full month of uninterrupted research, Yang Kai had finally absorbed every last mystery hidden within the stone. He had personally witnessed Li Wuyi's growth through the ages, and the gains were substantial.
In his mastery of the power of space, he had taken a tremendous leap forward.
Only then did he realize that the various spatial techniques he had previously comprehended were far from perfect, leaving ample room for improvement. This filled Yang Kai with delight—room for improvement meant his spatial techniques could grow even more powerful, which was exactly what he needed.
After his promotion to the Emperor Realm, the enemies he would face would only grow stronger. The power of space had always been one of his trump cards, playing a crucial role time and again.
*Crack.*
The blue stone in his hand suddenly shattered, crumbling into fine powder that trickled through his fingers like a stream of sand.
The stone had always been riddled with countless spatial tears and a black hole at its core, and Yang Kai had continuously sent his spiritual sense probing into it throughout his research. That it had held together this long was already the limit.
Fortunately, Yang Kai had already absorbed every last drop of essence Li Wuyi had left within the stone. So even though it had shattered now, there was little to regret.
Suddenly, Yang Kai slapped his forehead and blurted, "Crap."
Only at that moment did he recall that he had been so engrossed in the mysteries of spatial power that he had lost track of time and his original reason for coming here.
After doing a quick mental calculation, Yang Kai realized that his secluded cultivation had lasted a full month without him even noticing.
He immediately released his spiritual sense, intending to call out to Zhang Ruoxi and have her leave Ziyue City with him.
But when he checked the room next door, it was completely empty.
A cup of tea sat on the table, wisps of steam still curling from its surface.
Yang Kai's figure blurred as he tore through the void and appeared directly in the adjacent room. He reached out and tested the temperature of the tea, murmuring to himself, "She couldn't have left more than half a cup of tea ago. Where did that girl wander off to?"
After being cooped up for a month, it was perfectly normal for Zhang Ruoxi to go out and stretch her legs.
Since he had confirmed she was in no danger, Yang Kai wasn't particularly worried.
He extended his spiritual sense, blanketing the entirety of Ziyue City in an instant.
It didn't take long for him to spot Zhang Ruoxi's figure on some elevated platform in the city—and she was moving with impressive agility.
"Hm…" Yang Kai's expression turned peculiar. After a moment's thought, he casually tossed some Source Crystals onto the table as payment for the room, then executed a spatial technique and vanished from the room.
The next instant, his figure materialized beside a fighting stage in Ziyue City known as the Ascending Dragon Platform.
His arrival was seamless and undetected. Aside from a handful of nearby warriors who glanced at him with mild curiosity, no one had noticed a thing.
Even those few warriors simply looked puzzled for a moment before looking away.
The fighting stage was built to be extraordinarily sturdy, with layers of restriction barriers surrounding it, allowing the combatants to unleash their full strength.
Stages like this existed in many cities. Warriors cultivating on the path, seeking to vent their grievances and push their limits, inevitably ran into conflicts.
Out in the wilderness, a dispute would naturally escalate into a fight to the death—victory meant everything, defeat meant nothing. That was simply the way of things.
But in a city, one could not freely take another's life, unless it was the sort of lawless settlement where anything went.
Every city had its own rules. Without rules, there could be no order, and Ziyue City, despite its location on the edge of the wasteland, was no exception. Warriors who clashed within the city walls could sign a life-and-death contract at the fighting stage and settle things for good.
Even without any grudge, one could go to the stage simply to test one's mettle.