On the main peak of Lingxiao Palace—Lingxiao Peak—in a side chamber, bodies lay sprawled across the great bed in every direction. Yang Kai painstakingly extracted his arm from the tangle, threw on a robe, and walked to the window. He pushed it open, and the crisp morning air washed over his face.
It had rained during the night. Lingxiao Peak was wreathed in mist, and the pavilions in the distance drifted in and out of view like half-remembered dreams.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and then a warm, slender body pressed against his back, arms wrapping around his waist. Su Yan's voice came soft and low: "How long will you be in closed-door cultivation this time?"
"Probably not too long. But the day I come out... I'm afraid that will also be the day I have to leave."
Su Yan's body trembled slightly.
"Don't worry. I'll come back." Yang Kai turned around and pulled her into his arms.
"Mm. We'll wait for you." Su Yan nodded.
"I really don't want to go." Yang Kai pressed a kiss to her forehead. In this lifetime he had walked through countless partings and a handful of reunions. He had thought he was finally settled, that there would be no more running from place to place—yet here he was, facing the same situation once again.
But for the sake of the Star Boundary, he had no choice.
After returning to Lingxiao Palace from the Qingyang Divine Palace, Yang Kai had sought out Zhang Ruoxi to ask about the World Tree. She had never heard of it. Though she had inherited many of her ancestors' memories, the inheritance was fragmentary at best—Tianxing himself might have known of the World Tree, but what Zhang Ruoxi had received was incomplete, so she knew nothing of the sort. Still, though she couldn't help directly, she had pointed him in a direction.
In the world beyond this Cosmos, there existed a vast power that controlled a place called the Star Market. There, so long as you had sufficient resources, you could buy anything you wanted. Going to that Star Market, he might be able to find information about the World Tree.
The Star Boundary was battered and broken. Although countless living beings had been transferred from lower-plane Starfields to restore its vitality and nurture spiritual energy, whether the effort would bear fruit was anyone's guess. Even if it did, it would take at least a thousand years—perhaps ten thousand—of patient waiting.
The Giant Spirit God Ah Da lurked outside the Star Boundary, eyeing it like prey, ready to devour it at any moment. Yang Kai could hardly guarantee the creature would remain obedient.
So beyond allowing the Star Boundary to heal on its own, he needed to find a way to restore its vitality as quickly as possible.
The World Tree was the only lead he currently knew of.
Beyond that, he himself yearned to break free from the confines of this Cosmos and see the world outside. A single wounded Great Demon God had nearly destroyed the Star Boundary. If some other powerful figure appeared next time, what would the Star Boundary have to resist it with? Self-strengthening was the only viable path. He could hardly count on the notion that powerful beings would never come to the Star Boundary—that was obviously unrealistic.
Beyond the Cosmos, there existed higher levels of martial cultivation and greater power. Whether by his own desire or by the demands of circumstance, leaving the Star Boundary for a more wondrous world was inevitable.
Once the decision was made, there was no point in hesitation. But before that, there were matters that needed to be dealt with.
The most pressing was entering closed-door cultivation to digest the gains from the final battle. Yang Kai's current realm had already reached the absolute limit of the Emperor Realm. With the Star Boundary—this Cosmos—as his foundation, he could stand as a Great Emperor. Yet, just as the Great Demon God had said, the Great Emperor was not a higher realm. The realm above the Emperor Realm was the Open Heaven Realm.
Breaking free from the confines of the Cosmos, forming a world within one's own body, splitting heaven from earth—this was the Open Heaven Realm.
In the Open Heaven Realm, one could wield power surpassing even that of a Great Emperor, even without the support of a Cosmos. This was power belonging to oneself alone, not a gift bestowed by heaven and earth.
Yang Kai had tasted the sensation of splitting heaven from earth once before, when he had consumed the World Essence Liquid. In that moment, a vague, primordial feeling had stirred within him—the chaos of creation, the birth of heaven and earth.
Such an experience was exceedingly rare. Unless one truly underwent the birth of a world alongside it, there was no way to grasp that feeling.
The world beyond the Cosmos was vast, yes, but the birth of a new world was an exceedingly harsh process. World Essence Liquid only appeared at the very inception of creation; as a world grew, any that had formed would gradually dissipate.
The fact that the Star Boundary's World Essence Liquid had been preserved at all was thanks to the Xuantian Palace, a secret realm that had safeguarded the most primordial fragment of the world. Without that realm, the World Essence Liquid would have ceased to exist long ago.
But for Yang Kai, having experienced the sensation of creation held limited practical value for the time being. Such an experience would only benefit him greatly when he actually attempted his breakthrough to the Open Heaven Realm—and how far that breakthrough lay, he had no way of knowing.
According to Zhang Ruoxi, achieving the Open Heaven Realm required gathering the powers of yin, yang, and the five elements. Every world was derived from these fundamental forces; only by mastering them all could one hope to open heaven and earth within one's own body, breaking free entirely from the Cosmos's shackles.
The process from the limit of the Emperor Realm to the Open Heaven Realm was a long and arduous accumulation of power—no one was exempt. Moreover, the more substantial and solid that accumulation, the more formidable one's strength upon reaching the Open Heaven Realm.