Yang Kai remained kneeling, head bowed.
Ming Yue sighed. "It was my own choice — it has nothing to do with you. Iron Blood, Phantom Soul, and the others would have done the same in my place. You were dragged into it, if anything. To be precise, I should be the one thanking you — for not letting me die at the hands of the Demon Race."
The logic was sound enough, and Yang Kai understood it, but personally striking down a Great Emperor still weighed heavily on his conscience.
"I have you to thank once again, it seems," Ming Yue said with a faint smile. "Xun'er really did go through with it after all, and you really did come to save her."
Only then did Yang Kai raise his head, staring at him in surprise. "You anticipated this from the start, Lord?"
Ming Yue chuckled softly. "Xun'er is my child — do you think I wouldn't know what she's like? Refining the Cosmos Tower isn't wrong, but she doesn't meet the requirements. Entering this place was always going to end this way."
Precisely because he had foreseen it, he had attached a wisp of his remnant soul to Yang Kai. He believed that if Yang Kai managed to leave the Demon Realm safely, he would surely come to the Star God Palace. He believed that if Lan Xun found herself in danger, Yang Kai would surely rush to her aid…
Of course, had Yang Kai perished in the Demon Realm, none of it would have mattered.
"This place is…"
"The core of the Cosmos Tower," Ming Yue replied in an unhurried tone. "Since you've made it here, you must have some understanding of the situation inside. Within the Cosmos Tower, many of the small worlds and secret realms have already developed sentience and taken form. When I was still alive, the sealing restrictions kept everything stable. Once I fell, the restrictions naturally weakened. The five tiers of the tower merged into one, and chaos began to stir. Without outside interference, it wouldn't have mattered much — but Xun'er barged in intending to refine the Cosmos Tower, and how could those sentient worlds and realms be willing to accept that? Naturally, they resisted. But with my restrictions still in place, they couldn't actually harm Xun'er — they could only force her into a deep slumber. Once a thousand or ten thousand years pass and the restrictions I planted have eroded away, those sentient beings will break free of the Cosmos Tower's bonds entirely."
Yang Kai didn't fully grasp the explanation, but he understood the general thrust of it. He couldn't help asking, "Then what must I do to save Junior Sister Lan? And to preserve the Cosmos Tower?"
Ming Yue turned the question back on him. "Do you know how many small worlds or secret realms the Cosmos Tower contains?"
Yang Kai naturally did not — only that there were many. The sea of flowers before him alone was staggeringly vast. Ming Yue hadn't expected an answer anyway, and supplied one in his next breath: "Ten thousand. A full ten thousand."
Yang Kai drew in a sharp breath. Even though he had already held the Flower World's Leaf Cosmos in high regard, he had never imagined the number reached ten thousand.
Ming Yue continued, "The Cosmos Tower is an ancient extraordinary treasure. Although I refined it, I never managed to fully comprehend all its mysteries — I don't know how it can contain so many small worlds and secret realms within it. But if it does, then there must be a reason. The problem is that among those ten thousand, one is now missing, leaving only nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Nine may be the supreme number, but being short of one means it is not whole. And where it is not whole, there is a flaw. The current situation arose largely because of that."
Yang Kai asked in bewilderment, "How could one go missing?"
Ming Yue only smiled without answering, gazing at him quietly.
Yang Kai felt his face flush with embarrassment. "The Thousand Illusion Dream Realm?"
It suddenly dawned on him — back when he had entered the Cosmos Tower to train, he had taken Butterfly out of it and relocated her to Lingxiao Palace, where she had become the Thousand Illusion Dream Realm.
The missing one was none other than Butterfly, whom he himself had spirited away…
Looking back now, Butterfly was also a secret realm that had developed sentience and taken form, yet he had removed her from the Cosmos Tower — and in doing so, broken the perfect count of ten thousand, leaving it one short…
It was his own fault! Yang Kai was so mortified he wished the ground would swallow him whole. When he had first spirited Butterfly away, he had thought he'd pulled it off without anyone noticing, and had even congratulated himself for quite some time. But now it was clear the Great Emperor had known all along and had simply couldn't be bothered to hold it against him.
Thinking back, when he had departed from the Star God Palace back then, the Great Emperor had indeed appeared specifically to see him off. Ming Yue must have known even then.
Ming Yue smiled. "The fact that you were able to take a secret realm out of the Cosmos Tower was your own fortune — it has nothing to do with anyone else, and nothing to do with this matter."
That was a comforting platitude, and Yang Kai saw right through it. He immediately said with a grave expression, "I'll return to Lingxiao Palace at once and bring the Thousand Illusion Dream Realm back to restore the perfect number!"
Ming Yue shook his head. "You won't be able to leave. The power I have remaining is only enough to open the Cosmos Tower once more — either that, or to restore the tower's wholeness. After I send you out, you'll never be able to get back in."
Yang Kai was alarmed. "Then what am I supposed to do?"
If he couldn't go out to retrieve the Thousand Illusion Dream Realm, he couldn't restore the Cosmos Tower's wholeness, which meant he couldn't resolve Lan Xun's crisis. But if he went out, he wouldn't be able to return — it was a perfect dead end.
Ming Yue smiled. "This one, you'll have to handle yourself."
"Myself?" Yang Kai was skeptical.
"Since you are well-versed in the power of space, is there truly no way for you to create something on your own — to forge your own cosmos?"
At those words, Yang Kai's eyes lit up. He pressed eagerly, "You mean for me to create a small world or secret realm of my own?"