Not only were they watching with great relish, they were shouting themselves hoarse.
Thirty zhang behind that middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator and the dozen or so Dao Source Realm cultivators, several young men held up a massive banner. Its blood-red fabric rippled in the wind, and emblazoned upon it were the characters "Kaishan," written in ink as black as night. Whoever had penned them clearly possessed genuine skill—the brushstrokes were sharp as silver hooks and iron strokes, soaring and sweeping with extraordinary momentum. The red and black together only added to the ferocious look.
At that moment, as their elders launched their attacks, the young men holding the banner cried out in unison: "Grand Ancestor Kaishan, whose divine arts are boundless!"
Several hundred people behind them joined in the chant, their voices perfectly synchronized, their expressions fervent, as though they intended to tear the sky apart with their shouting.
The Emperor Realm cultivator unleashed several more sword strikes, and the banner holders bellowed once more: "Lingxiao demons, bow your heads and accept death!"
The sword light grew ever brighter, the sword momentum ever more devastating. Layer upon layer of blade radiance swirled into a vortex, almost completely obscuring the Emperor Realm cultivator's figure. His Emperor Yuan surged outward in full force, whipping up a maelstrom of energy.
The banner holders seized the moment to roar: "Subduing demons and banishing evil—Kaishan leads the way!"
The devastating sword light suddenly condensed into a single point, the Emperor Realm cultivator's aura on full display. The middle-aged man's expression turned solemn. He leveled his long sword at the grand formation and muttered under his breath: "Go!"
A beam of sword light blasted into the formation, and then… vanished without a trace.
The chanting erupted once more behind him: "Kaishan, Kaishan, third in the Star Boundary!" At least they had some self-awareness—they hadn't shouted that they were first or second.
Several dozen zhang away, inside the formation, Yang Kai stood watching the spectacle ahead with a peculiar expression.
What a mess. There was no other way to describe the scene before him. He turned to look at Hua Qingsi. "Have these been the kind of people causing trouble over the past few years?"
The Grand Manager coughed lightly. "Mostly, yes. Though there have been a few with a modicum of real ability."
Though Hua Qingsi herself was only at the first layer of the Emperor Realm, she hailed from the Star God Palace—the orthodox lineage of the Southern Domain. The training she had received was simply incomparable to these so-called "rising stars."
Beneath the great energy tide of the Star Boundary, while many Emperor Realm cultivators had emerged, their quality was wildly uneven. Those who came here to stir up trouble and use Lingxiao Palace as a stepping stone mostly lacked any real skill, which naturally meant they didn't impress her in the slightest.
"You've been far too indulgent toward them," Yang Kai said with a faint, cold laugh. Though he said so, he knew it wasn't that Lingxiao Palace was being lenient by choice. It was simply that the palace had been in an awkward position these past few years. The Great Emperors had ordered the sect sealed, and with Yang Kai absent, no one dared casually activate the sect-protecting formation. Besides, they had to consider Yang Kai's reputation, so they could only let these people carry on with their farce.
Outside the formation, the middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator was in high spirits. He had bitterly cultivated for many years, yet his progress had stalled at the peak of the third layer of the Dao Source Realm with no hope of breakthrough. Watching his lifespan dwindle, he had long resigned himself to wasting away without ever glimpsing the mysteries of the Emperor Realm. In his despair, he had cast off all restraint and lived without regard for consequences. Who could have imagined that after the war between the two realms erupted, the Star Boundary would experience an entirely new phenomenon? Whether this great world had sensed some crisis and its laws of heaven and earth had moved to mend and save themselves, a great energy tide had been born, making cultivation far easier for countless warriors than before.
One day, while the middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator had been lingering among a field of flowers, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck his mind. He entered a deep trance on the spot.
When he awoke, he had inexplicably broken through to the Emperor Realm.
Ecstasy. Disbelief. Overwhelming joy!
Such incredible fortune had actually fallen upon him. The middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator could hardly believe it. A single advancement meant an entirely new lease on life. He settled his mind, found a secluded location, and entered closed-door cultivation for three years to consolidate his newfound realm.
The day he emerged, he founded a sect bearing his own name: the Kaishan Sect!
But the war between the two realms was raging at that very moment. All four domains of the Star Boundary had received the mobilization orders of the Great Emperors. Countless warriors stepped onto the spatial formations nearest to them and rushed toward the Western Domain battlefield with burning hearts, locked in a life-and-death struggle against the Demon race.
For the Star Boundary, this was a good thing. But for the middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator, it was a catastrophe.
There was no other way to put it—having founded a sect, he naturally needed to open his doors wide and recruit disciples in great numbers. Under normal circumstances, when an Emperor Realm cultivator established a sect, even at only the first layer, aspiring disciples would flock like fish crossing a river at high tide, more than enough to fill a modest sect.
But now, virtually every warrior with any real cultivation had gone to the Western Domain. He couldn't recruit anyone. The only ones he could get were washed-up, second-rate characters.
The middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator was truly vexed. Deeply, genuinely vexed.
He even made a special trip to consult an old friend of his. That friend was in a similar situation—someone who had languished at the peak of the third layer of the Dao Source Realm for years with no hope of advancement, only recently breaking through to the Emperor Realm. But that friend had established a sect and effortlessly recruited several thousand disciples, ascending to a position of power and enjoying boundless comfort.
The pretty female disciples under that friend's command were simply dazzling, enough to make one's heart race.
After a lengthy exchange of advice, he learned that his old friend had once led people to Lingxiao Palace to "vanquish demons and defend the righteous path." Although Lingxiao Palace's sect-protecting formation had proven formidable and the friend hadn't managed to do anything to them, once word spread, the gates of his sect had been trampled flat by streams of people coming to learn the martial arts.
The old friend had pointed him toward the bright path, but the middle-aged Emperor Realm cultivator couldn't help feeling torn between hope and worry.