The last trace of power within the ancient battlefield had completely vanished, yet Yang Kai sat dazed on the ground, unable to snap out of his reverie. His mind was flooded with only the final image he had glimpsed — two pairs of eyes.
One golden, one black. The golden pupils radiated an authority that dominated heaven and earth, while the dark eyes held an unfathomable, otherworldly mystery. An ordinary person might have merely marveled at how extraordinary and powerful those eyes appeared, but Yang Kai's soul trembled with shock.
It was because those golden and black eyes felt so achingly familiar.
Were they not the World Annihilation Devil Eye and the Black Pupil Purgatory? Even though he had only caught a fleeting glimpse, Yang Kai was absolutely certain he hadn't mistaken them. Those were his own World Annihilation Devil Eye and Black Pupil Purgatory. Precisely because he possessed them himself, he had recognized the pair of eyes at a single glance — they were simply too familiar.
But... how could those eyes appear on a being suspected to be a Great Demon God?
Ever since he had begun cultivating, those two eyes had granted him countless benefits, pulling him back from the brink of death more times than he could count and turning certain defeat into hard-won victory.
Of the two, the World Annihilation Devil Eye had been obtained on the Tongxuan Continent. And on that very continent, there had once been a Great Demon God — the World Annihilation Devil Eye had been his relic.
However, the Great Demon God of the Tongxuan Continent had not been particularly powerful in terms of cultivation. So even after Yang Kai later learned of the Great Demon God of the Demon Realm while in the Star Boundary, he had never connected the two. The gap between them was simply too vast.
But now it seemed there truly might be a link between them — if the opponent of the Time Emperor really had been a Great Demon God.
Thinking back more carefully, the Great Demon God of the Tongxuan Continent, despite bearing the title of "demon," had spent his life doing deeds that commanded nothing but admiration. That Great Demon God had sacrificed his very own body to deploy a heaven-shaking grand formation across the Tongxuan Continent, concealing the entire landmass within the vast expanse of the starry sky so that this continent — with its comparatively low martial dao level — would not be discovered and invaded by powerful cultivators.
One could even say that the reason the Tongxuan Continent had survived to the present day, never having been enslaved by cultivators of the Star Domain, was entirely due to that one Great Demon God's singular effort.
A figure of such world-spanning magnitude — Yang Kai found it genuinely difficult to associate him with the Great Demon God of the Demon Realm.
As for the Black Pupil Purgatory, Yang Kai had obtained it at the Ancient Demon Seal outside Maple Forest City. In primordial antiquity, a cyclopean demon had rampaged through the world, bringing devastation to all living things. The great powers of that ancient era had joined forces to slay it. Though the demon's physical body was destroyed, its solitary eye remained, and no method whatsoever could destroy it. Even those ancient powers had been powerless against it, and in the end they could only find a way to seal it away.
The seal had been located outside Maple Forest City in the Southern Domain.
Later, when the seal weakened and ancient demonic energy leaked out, Maple Forest City had nearly fallen. Yang Kai, together with six others, had formed the Black Tortoise Seven Slays Formation and ventured outside the city to repair the seal. In the end, through a twist of fate, demonic energy had flooded his body, and he had acquired that single Black Pupil.
Yang Kai still remembered that the incident had caused quite a commotion at the time, drawing the attention of the Star God Palace. Gao Xueting, Xiao Yuyang, and Chen Wenhao had come to investigate, and in his demonized state, Yang Kai had fought all three of them. Back then, he had been merely at the third level of the Dao Source Realm, while Gao Xueting and the other two had all already been at the first level of the Emperor Realm.
Fighting opponents stronger than himself, taking on three at once, and still managing to escape unscathed — that alone spoke to just how formidable the Black Pupil Purgatory was. In the end, if not for the twin silver-and-gold power of the Ancient Tree being used to re-seal it, Yang Kai's consciousness would surely have been obliterated long ago.
The Demon Weapon War Hammer currently used by his Dharma Avatar had been the demonic treasure of that very cyclopean demon.
Whether the Demon Weapon War Hammer or the Black Pupil Purgatory, both had belonged to that cyclopean demon. So how did they connect to the Great Demon God?
That final scene he had witnessed left Yang Kai thoroughly bewildered. But he was absolutely certain he hadn't misidentified the World Annihilation Devil Eye and the Black Pupil Purgatory. He turned the matter over in his mind for a long while but could not discern the underlying logic. In the end, he could only let out a quiet, resigned sigh — affairs from such a distant past, without having lived through them personally, who could say for certain what had truly transpired?
He never did learn the outcome of that battle. The moment that suspected Great Demon God had opened his eyes, the golden and black light had flashed, and every scene had shattered into nothing. Yang Kai had no way of knowing what had ultimately become of those two supreme beings.
At least the entire ancient battlefield's power had now been absorbed by Yang Kai down to the last drop. The trip had not been without reward.
Just then, Yang Kai's eyebrows suddenly lifted, a flash of delight crossing his face.
In his bones, he could feel that the third domain of the Small Mystic World had become complete. In other words, the final remaining continent of the Demon Realm had been devoured by Gun Gun.
The Demon Realm had originally been a single, unified landmass, but the clash between the Time Emperor and that suspected Great Demon God had shattered it into pieces, separated by the void. Over countless ages, the only way to travel between them had been through the realm gates.
In the short term, this had posed no problem, but as time wore on, the realm gates grew unstable, and the connections between the Demon Realm's various continents grew ever weaker. Eventually, many continents had vanished from the Demon Realm's map entirely, slipping into the void.
Yang Kai had broken through the void and tracked down those lost continents, devouring them one by one. If anything, the process could be seen as destruction paving the way for rebirth.
Now that every last continent had been devoured and merged together, the third domain had fully transformed into a second Demon Realm.