Stars shone brilliantly across the infinite expanse, eternal and undying — yet they were crumbling one after another, vanishing as if an invisible hand were erasing them from the vast starry sky.
Wu Heng could endure no longer. Through gritted teeth, he snarled, "Yang Kai!"
By now, his confrontation with Yang Kai had tipped completely against him. Not only had he lost vast stretches of starry sky, but five of the Cultivation Stars within the Great Desolation Star Domain had disappeared entirely.
If this silent war continued, he would be ruined beyond recovery. A thick surge of regret welled up in his heart — if only he had pulled back the moment he sensed the birth of the Star Lord in the Heluo Star Domain, perhaps none of this would have happened.
But at the time, he had dismissed Yang Kai as a newly minted Star Domain Master, someone not worth taking seriously. He had even demanded that Yang Kai hand over the Heluo Star Domain. The enmity had been forged, and there was no undoing it.
Regret was useless now.
No matter what, he had to deal with Yang Kai first. Even if it meant suffering even greater losses, he could not tolerate the man running roughshod through his own territory.
With that thought, Wu Heng did not hesitate any further. He split off a portion of his consciousness to probe Yang Kai's position.
In the distant reaches of the starry sky, Wu Heng quickly located Yang Kai's trace. When he saw what was happening over there, his jaw dropped and his expression went blank. "What… is that?"
The sixth Cultivation Star had already lost more than half its mass. And upon the remnants of that shattered star, an enormous black creature shaped like a tadpole drifted back and forth, its massive maw opening and closing as it swallowed the Cultivation Star piece by piece, as though eating a delicious cake.
In the blink of an eye, another huge chunk of the Cultivation Star vanished.
Wu Heng had seen much in his long existence and possessed no shortage of experience, yet he could not identify what this pitch-black monster was. All he knew was that the moment he laid eyes on it, an instinctive sense of dread and wariness crept through him.
Sitting cross-legged atop Gun Gun's back, Yang Kai seemed to sense something. He lifted his gaze toward the starry sky, glanced over, and flashed a broad grin.
The next instant, Wu Heng appeared before him. As the Master of a Star Domain, traversing billions of li in the blink of an eye was no difficult feat.
He raised his great hand, clenched it into a fist, and thundered, "Die!"
The power of this Star Domain was mobilized in an instant, transforming into invisible shackles that squeezed tightly around Gun Gun's massive body. Visible to the naked eye, Gun Gun's round, plump form was being compressed smaller and smaller, its mouth gaping wide, teeth clacking together with a series of sharp cracking sounds as it struggled against the constriction.
Yang Kai felt the pressure crashing down like a mountain. His entire body went stiff, unable to move even a fraction, and he could feel his very bones threatening to snap under Wu Heng's grip.
Being too brazen in someone else's territory was indeed not a wise move. But… for Wu Heng to strike now was probably too late.
If he had acted with such decisiveness at the very beginning, when Gun Gun had not yet grown to its current strength, perhaps there might have been a chance of victory. But now? Do you really think I'm some soft persimmon you can squeeze at will? The corner of Yang Kai's lips curled upward into an inscrutable smile.
Wu Heng's expression shifted abruptly. He could feel that under the relentless gnawing of that pitch-black monster's gaping jaws, the shackles he had imposed upon them were being severed bit by bit.
No — not severed. They were disappearing.
Just like the Cultivation Star being devoured before his very eyes, the Star Domain power he had summoned was being swallowed as well.
With a resonant shudder from the depths of his soul, Gun Gun's compressed body snapped back to its normal form in an instant, and its movements became free once more.
"It can do that?!" Wu Heng stared blankly, momentarily stunned. He had come to deal with Yang Kai with the resolve of a warrior willing to sacrifice his own arm — because every heartbeat he spent here was a heartbeat in which the Heluo Star Domain's devouring went unchecked. The losses from that terrifying rate of consumption were simply unbearable.
He had planned to simply kill Yang Kai outright and then return to his standoff with the Heluo Star Domain. Who could have guessed that this plan would fail to materialize?
That pitch-black spherical creature was far more formidable than he had imagined — it could even devour the very power of a Star Domain.
And in the moment he stood there dazed, Gun Gun suddenly rocketed straight toward him. The creature's seemingly fat, bloated body displayed an unbelievable agility in that instant. By the time Wu Heng snapped back to his senses, a maw bristling with fangs had already appeared right before his eyes.
Crack—
The jaws snapped shut, and a huge chunk of the void vanished with them.
Wu Heng reappeared at a different location, cold sweat beading his forehead. Had he not been the Master of the Star Domain, able to traverse this void freely, that attack would have been the end of him.
Yang Kai stood atop Gun Gun's back, one hand planted firmly on his hip, and burst into hearty laughter. "This is your home — why are you running? Come on, let's fight three hundred rounds and hurt each other, you bastard!"
"Insolent brat, cease your arrogance!" Wu Heng's heart burned with a coiled fury, like a volcano on the verge of eruption, yet he forced himself to steady his mind, refusing to be provoked by Yang Kai's words. But the man was right — this was his territory, his home. Yang Kai was a thief and a robber who had broken in, and now the master of the house had come to deal with him. Not only did the intruder show not a shred of guilt, he was provoking and taunting him. No one could tolerate such a thing.
Wu Heng's gaze hardened. He reached out and clenched his fist in the void, and ten thousand streams of brilliant light converged, condensing in his hand into a long spear.
It was not an Emperor Treasure, but rather the manifestation of the Star Power suffusing this region of the starry sky — one could even call it the World Force of this corner of the cosmos. Of course, it was not the World Force of the entire Great Desolation Star Domain. Though Wu Heng was its Master, commanding the full might of an entire Star Domain was no simple matter. Yang Kai himself would find it equally difficult.
Even so, the power contained within that spear was far from insignificant — it had, at minimum, gathered the strength of the starry sky spanning ten million li. This was something only a Star Domain Master could accomplish with a mere wave of the hand.
The spear manifested. Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked.