"Of course." Yang Kai nodded. Though given his current relationship with Li Jiao there was really no need for thanks, Xia Ningshang had asked, so naturally he had to agree.
"Ten years!" Xia Ningshang spoke up suddenly.
"What?"
Xia Ningshang smiled faintly. "Within ten years, the Tongxuan Continent can recover."
The devastation wrought by the Great Desolation Star Domain's invasion had taken the martial artists of that domain only a few years to inflict, but even with Yang Kai spending a vast fortune of Source Crystals and deploying a colossal grand formation to aid the recovery, it would still take ten years to fully heal.
Destruction was always the easier part.
"You're satisfied with that?" Yang Kai asked, grinning at her.
Xia Ningshang blinked. "What else would you want?"
Yang Kai said, "The Tongxuan Continent isn't like other star fields. Its inherent grade is lower, so simply recovering to its original state isn't enough. And ten years… that's still rather long."
Xue Yue's eyes darted cleverly. "Does Husband have a way to make the continent even better?"
"Where there's a will, there's a way," Yang Kai laughed. He did have some plans in mind, but he wasn't sure whether they would succeed, so he didn't dare make any promises in front of them. If he talked big and failed to deliver, how embarrassing that would be.
But Xue Yue seemed to see right through him, pouting. "If you can actually improve the Tongxuan Continent, then I'll…"
"Then what?" Yang Kai fixed her with a burning gaze.
Xue Yue's cheeks flushed slightly, but she straightened her chest defiantly. "I'll let you do whatever you want."
Yang Kai's eyes lit up. "I want to share one big blanket with all of you!"
"Pah!" Xue Yue spat at him.
Yang Kai flashed over and settled between her and Xia Ningshang, one arm around each, wearing a shameless grin. "If you want the horse to run, you've got to feed it grass! One big blanket, let's do one big blanket!"
"Rogue!" Xue Yue shot him a sharp glare, her ten thousand graces nearly snatching Yang Kai's soul away. She lowered her head and said shyly, "You have to convince Ningshang first."
The eldest junior sister's face flushed crimson as blood. "How did we even end up talking about this?"
Yang Kai said with a straight face, "The union of yin and yang is the great Dao of heaven and earth. Hmm, it's settled then."
"Who agreed to that with you?" Xia Ningshang panicked. That sort of thing was simply unthinkable.
But Yang Kai leaned down and pecked her crimson lips — a brief, light touch — and she froze as if struck by lightning, rooted to the spot.
She had never been this intimate with Yang Kai in front of anyone else before.
Xue Yue watched with an amused smile, only to be caught off guard when Yang Kai suddenly sealed her lips with his.
The same — a momentary touch, nothing more. It wasn't that Yang Kai wasn't tempted, but he still remembered Xue Yue's words: he wouldn't get his hands on her until Xia Ningshang was fully restored. He could have pressed the matter now and gotten what he wanted, but how could that compare to the anticipation of one big blanket?
Hmph, hmph. Two naive women — did they really think they were the only ones? When the time came, Shan Qingluo and Su Yan wouldn't be getting away either.
Amid his booming laughter, Yang Kai launched himself into the air and was gone.
Xue Yue touched her lips and stamped her foot. "Stinking man!"
Amid the spiritual rain, Yang Kai stood with one hand on his hip, gesturing grandly, his voice ringing with passion. "Everyone, the Great Desolation Star Domain invaded over a decade ago, slaughtering our martial artists, seizing our women and our wealth, leaving billions of lives homeless and devastation in its wake. Now, the time has come for us to strike back!"
The downpour was deafening, yet it could not drown out Yang Kai's voice — it reached every ear with perfect clarity.
"I ask you all to march with me! An eye for an eye, blood for blood!" Yang Kai raised his hand, pointing toward the starry sky.
"BLOOD FOR BLOOD!"
The roar shook the heavens. Years of accumulated fury had not dissipated with the purification of the Tongxuan Continent — rather, their will to fight burned fiercer than ever.
…
In the Endless Star Field, upon a dead star, Yang Kai sat at the summit of a desolate mountain, one cheek propped in his hand, eyes closed in contemplation.
His divine sense churned within his sea of consciousness, weaving through the endless star chart that floated above it.
The star chart was one of the entire Hengluo Star Field — something he had inadvertently obtained when he first entered the star fields years ago. At the time, he hadn't thought much of it, treating it merely as a navigation tool. With its aid, he had never once gotten lost in the star field.
Even then he had noticed that this star chart was different from those drawn by ordinary star cartographers. It seemed to be constantly shifting, corresponding to every corner of the entire star field. But because the chart was so vast and the star field so immense, these changes were imperceptible without careful observation.
Only later did he learn that the star chart he had stumbled upon was in fact the Star Field Origin of the entire Hengluo Star Field.
It was precisely by using this star chart that he had been able to sense a faint, threadlike connection to the Hengluo Star Field from within the Ancestral Domain, allowing him to return here.
Wu Kuang had once told him that every time he visited a star field, he would seek out its origin and refine it, thereby becoming the sovereign of that star field — no longer subject to the rejection of heaven and earth's laws.
A Star Field Origin could manifest in countless forms, possessing no fixed shape. Compared to the planetary origin of a single Cultivation Star, a Star Field Origin was practically a legend — something one might encounter but never seek.
That Yang Kai had obtained one could only be described as an extraordinary stroke of fortune.
The trouble was that he had never been able to wield its true power, because he had never refined it.
Only by successfully refining this Star Field Origin could he truly become the sovereign of the Hengluo Star Field. And when that day came, he would not even need to act personally — a single thought would be enough to annihilate every martial artist of the Great Desolation Star Domain.