A hundred years, a thousand years…
Lei Hong and the others heard this, their faces tight with worry. If it were only a hundred years, that would be one thing — though the time was not short, it wasn't too long either. But if it were a thousand years or even longer…
By the time Yang Kai and Lan Xun found their way back, the child would probably have produced a whole brood. A lone man and a lone woman together for a thousand years — it wasn't hard to imagine what might happen.
"Step aside, all of you!" Zhan Wuhen swept his hand outward and barked the order.
The many powerhouses of Star God Palace heard this and their spirits surged, knowing the Great Emperor was about to act personally. Without hesitation, they retracted their Emperor Yuan and retreated en masse.
The five-colored radiance atop the Qiankun Tower erupted violently, the entire colossal tower trembling ceaselessly. The surrounding void shattered, as though at any moment the tower would break through space and soar away.
A crimson great banner suddenly materialized, its intent of blood and conquest exploding outward in a thunderous wave that made everyone's hearts clench. The banner was impossibly vast, nearly blotting out the entire sky.
The Iron Blood War Banner!
The Iron Blood Great Emperor's natal treasure — not some ancient relic, nor forged by any artificier, but a manifestation of Zhan Wuhen's lifelong cultivation. To deploy the Iron Blood War Banner meant Zhan Wuhen was going all out, and from this one could gauge just how extraordinary the Qiankun Tower truly was. Even the Great Emperor himself had to exert his full strength to suppress it. Had Zhan Wuhen not come personally today, Lei Hong and the others would never have managed to stabilize the tower — sooner or later, Star God Palace would have lost its guardian treasure for good.
The crimson war banner was incomparably vivid, like a blood-red wall spreading across heaven and earth. Its rolling colors churned as though liquid blood coursed and surged within, producing an indescribable visual shock. The banner descended upon the Qiankun Tower, wrapping around it layer upon layer. In the blink of an eye, it had cocooned the entire tower from top to bottom.
The five-colored radiance vanished without a trace, and the trembling tower quickly steadied itself. The entire world became suffused with that crimson hue, painting every onlooker's face a ruddy glow.
Zhan Wuhen stood with his hands clasped behind his back before the Qiankun Tower, watching in silence, waiting in silence.
Meanwhile, Yang Kai was cursing his luck.
He had been tossed into the Qiankun Tower by Zhan Wuhen and hadn't yet figured out the situation when a hairy, bizarre-looking creature charged straight at him. The aura emanating from this monstrous thing was exceedingly strange — he couldn't see through it at all.
He had intended to test it with a single move to gauge its depth, but the creature simply opened its colossal maw — wider than the sky itself — and before Yang Kai could so much as react, he was swallowed into its belly. The next instant, he found himself in a bizarre world.
Crimson clouds blazed across the sky in gorgeous splendor, the entire firmament appearing as though it were on fire.
Not "appearing" — it truly was burning. Those things in the sky weren't clouds at all, but a great conflagration that consumed the very heavens.
Below, flowing magma surged across the ground, bubbling pockets bursting open and releasing a pungent, acrid stench.
Heat! Heat to the absolute extreme.
This world seemed to retain only one of the Five Elements: fire. Yang Kai could not detect the slightest trace of the other four elements anywhere. He had never encountered such a strange place before. But before he could take a proper look at what sort of world this was, a ferocious silhouette rolled out of the magma.
A dragon's head, an elk's body, an ox's tail, horse hooves, fish scales, twin horns jutting from its crown, its entire form wreathed in flame, treading upon black fire — grotesque in appearance, yet majestic and imposing.
A Qilin! An ancient Sacred Spirit — a Fire Qilin!
Yang Kai's eyes nearly popped from their sockets. The Fire Qilin ranked quite high among the Sacred Spirits. If all Sacred Spirits in existence were divided into three tiers, with dragons and phoenixes at the pinnacle, then the Qilin could absolutely make it into the upper three — roughly on par with the Qiongqi.
Yang Kai knew to some extent how powerful the Qiongqi was; even an ordinary Pseudo-Emperor wouldn't necessarily be its match. So what about this Fire Qilin before him?
The moment the creature appeared, Yang Kai regarded it as a dire threat, mentally connecting to the Mysterious Boundary Bead and preparing at any instant to release his three Guardian Half-Saints.
There was more than one dharma body inside the Mysterious Boundary Bead now. Bei Limo and Yu Rumeng had forced Bai Zhuo and Bo Ya upon him, and he had been carrying them with him ever since.
Three Half-Saints joining forces — no matter how powerful the Fire Qilin was, it probably wouldn't stand a chance.
Before this thought had even fully formed, accompanied by a deep rumbling, one Fire Qilin after another rolled out of the magma below. Each one was ferocious and savage, each one so arrogant and domineering.
In the blink of an eye, hundreds upon thousands of Fire Qilins had appeared on the magma's surface, surrounding Yang Kai so tightly that not even a drop of water could pass through. Pairs of crimson eyes, burning like living flames, fixed upon him.
But Yang Kai's expression turned odd. If there were only a single Fire Qilin here, he could accept that — the Qiankun Tower was endlessly mysterious, with countless small worlds sealed within, so encountering such a bizarre world was not entirely impossible.
But having this many Fire Qilins appear all at once was wrong. No Sacred Spirit possessed such extraordinary reproductive capacity — not the dragon clan, not the phoenix clan, not any Sacred Spirit lineage whatsoever.
There was absolutely no way hundreds or thousands of Fire Qilins existed in the world. The Heavenly Dao takes from the surplus to supplement the deficiency. Sacred Spirits were already so powerful — if their reproductive capacity were equally formidable, what room would there be for any other living beings?
To confirm his theory, Yang Kai raised his hand and slashed a Moon Blade at the nearest Fire Qilin.
The Moon Blade sliced through the air and cleaved through the creature's body. With a shrill, piercing howl, the Fire Qilin was split cleanly in two.
Just as he suspected — not a real Fire Qilin! If it had been a genuine Sacred Spirit Qilin, Yang Kai could never have killed it in a single strike. It was simply that these creatures looked absolutely authentic; even with Yang Kai's keen eye, he had not spotted a single flaw.
Before he could even catch his breath, that single strike seemed to have kicked a hornet's nest. Every surrounding Fire Qilin lunged at him ferociously. In an instant, the world's fire roiled and churned, the magma boiled over, and the burning fire clouds in the sky blazed even brighter.