Of course, if one wished to avoid causing too much damage to a Star Domain, it was unwise to display too much power. Only someone like Wu Kuang, whose very purpose was to devour, would act with such reckless abandon.
Outside the bamboo house, Liu Yan sat on the Star Shuttle, cupping her delicate cheeks in both hands as she waited. The reflection of the solitary peak was captured in her clear eyes with perfect clarity.
"Did the Master really pick you up?" He Yunxiang reached out and patted her on the head. A little girl this exquisitely crafted could always win one's affection, and her silky-smooth hair was the kind you could play with day and night without ever growing tired of it.
"Mm." In a sense, "picked up" wasn't wrong. If she hadn't met Yang Kai, she would still have been nothing more than a tool spirit trapped inside an Artifact Refining Furnace. Now she had a body of her own and had even received the Phoenix True Fire inheritance — an opportunity of extraordinary magnitude.
"Who is the Master meeting inside?"
Liu Yan shook her head. She didn't know who that person was either, but she could tell that they were powerful — powerful enough that she and Yang Kai together might not necessarily win. She suddenly looked up at He Yunxiang. "Do you want to become the Master's woman?"
"What?" He Yunxiang flushed red. Was this the sort of thing a child should be asking? She crouched down, speaking earnestly. "Who's been teaching you these things?"
Liu Yan said, "Then I'm afraid you don't have much of a chance. My mistress already has several." She turned her head and gazed off into the distance.
Yang Kai pushed the door open and stepped out. He stood there stroking his chin in thought for quite some time before his figure flickered and he landed on the Star Shuttle.
"Master, shall we continue?" He Yunxiang asked.
"Let's go first." Yang Kai waved his hand dismissively and sat cross-legged on the Star Shuttle. Seeing Liu Yan gazing up at him expectantly, he helplessly pulled her into his arms.
Only then did Liu Yan break into a smile and sit obediently.
The Star Shuttle turned into a streak of light and quickly vanished.
A voice drifted from inside the bamboo house.
"I have been brilliant my whole life, yet I never imagined that in the end I would have to mingle with the likes of you."
"Hmph. Those who accomplish great deeds do not concern themselves with trifles. When that day arrives, you will know your choice was not wrong."
"Let us hope so."
Calm settled once more, but the bamboo house was already empty inside.
...
"This way!" A day later, Yang Kai suddenly opened his eyes and pointed in a certain direction, a faint trace of excitement in his gaze.
Somewhere in the depths of his consciousness, he had grasped a wisp of a trace — faint and elusive, like a thread that could snap at any moment, or a lantern swaying in a gale, transmitting a negligible glimmer of light.
Yet it was precisely this gossamer-thin, almost imperceptible connection that allowed him to fix his direction — the direction back to his homeland!
The Star Map in his spiritual sea was indeed a Star Origin, no mistake about it. One day was nowhere near enough time to refine it, but Yang Kai had made numerous attempts to communicate with it, and at last, some reward had come.
As long as he followed this sense of connection, he would surely find the way home — just as a kite may soar high in the sky, but the string remains in the hand of the one who set it free.
One face after another flickered ceaselessly through his mind. Su Yan, Xia Ningshang, Shan Qingluo, Xue Yue… even the faces of so many others whose names he had almost forgotten — all of them now crowded to the forefront, as though desperate to say something to him.
A rush of complicated emotion surged through his heart, like a current of warmth rolling across his chest, threading through and through.
Liu Yan seemed to sense it. She lay against his chest, placing her small hand over his heart, feeling the fierce pounding within.
The sense transmitted by the Star Map was still faint, intermittent. Yang Kai kept calling out directions, and He Yunxiang drove the Star Shuttle onward.
One month later, above a vast wilderness.
A dazzling, multicolored Star Passage exit hung in the sky some ten-odd zhang above the ground. Several thatched huts dotted the nearby area, and within them, warriors sat in meditation, engaged in Cultivation — clearly Disciples stationed here by various Sects, waiting for someone to emerge from the exit so they could recruit them.
In the Ancestral Domain, virtually every Star Passage entrance presented this same spectacle. The Sects of the Ancestral Domain seemed to hold warriors from lower Star Domains in particularly high regard, and especially those who had originally come from the lower realms themselves — many volunteered for this very task. That way, if they encountered a warrior from the same Star Domain, they would hold an enormous advantage in recruitment.
However, not all Star Passage entrances were equally bustling. Some thronged with visitors, while others saw barely a soul. The main factor behind this disparity was the number of Star Domains connected to a given passage. Some entrances linked to a dozen or more Star Domains, while others connected to only a handful, resulting in very different numbers of emerging warriors and, consequently, very different levels of attention.
The Star Passage exit before them clearly belonged to the latter category — it likely connected to only a handful of Star Domains at most. And the warriors stationed here were uniformly Void King Realm cultivators, without a single Dao Source Realm among them, evidence that this place was not held in particularly high regard.
But in Yang Kai's eyes, this Star Passage exit was the most beautiful thing in all the world.
He quieted his mind and communed with the Star Map once more, and found that the faint connection was indeed pointing, from somewhere deep within, toward the entrance.
This is the one!
That the Ancestral Domain had a Star Passage linked to the Hengluo Star Domain filled Yang Kai with delight. After all, when he had left all those years ago, he had never heard of anything called the Ancestral Domain. The entire Hengluo Star Domain had held not a single rumor about it.