Thanks to the Grand Manager's reminder, Chen Tianfei and the others quickly sharpened their vision and peered toward that great sun. Sure enough, there really was something inside it.
A hazy silhouette, leaping nimbly within the blazing orb as though it were alive, occasionally pausing to tilt its head and preen its feathers. A faint aura of ferocious might radiated outward, yet it sent an indescribable chill of terror through everyone who beheld it.
"It looks like a bird!" Lady Qin's delicate brows knitted together. The great sun's radiance was too blinding—even straining her eyes, she still couldn't make out exactly what the creature was.
"Something's off about it—why does it only have three legs?" Chen Tianfei's face was equally puzzled, but the moment the words left his mouth, his expression changed drastically.
The Grand Manager's grave voice drifted from ahead: "A three-legged strange bird, connected to the sun. Junior, you're quite something—quite something indeed! Each generation truly produces its own talents. Heh heh!"
Lady Qin clapped a hand over her red lips. Bei Yushan stood there stupefied. Even a blockhead like him had already figured out what that bizarre bird was—let alone anyone else.
"The Three-Legged Golden Crow!" the Ouyang brothers cried out in unison.
The fire-attributed power Yang Kai had condensed wasn't true Solar Fire at all—it was Golden Crow True Fire! Recalling the pitch-black flames that had wreathed his body earlier, and now seeing the defining features of his dharma idol, the truth was unmistakable in everyone's minds.
It was Golden Crow True Fire! The realization struck them like a thunderbolt, and every last one of them was shaken.
Chen Tianfei's forehead was drenched in cold sweat, his voice trembling: "Grand Manager—what grade of Golden Crow True Fire is this?"
Earlier, when they had seen Yang Kai condense his dharma idol, everyone had assumed he possessed a seventh-grade fire-attributed power. But now it appeared to be even beyond seventh grade. And if he could condense Golden Crow True Fire, that meant he had encountered a Golden Crow at some point—one of those terrifying beings that stood alongside the True Dragon and the Divine Wind, absolute monsters that only a Superior-rank Open Heaven could hope to withstand. How had this boy survived an encounter with a Golden Crow, let alone obtained its True Fire? What kind of heaven-defying fortune was that?
The Grand Manager replied: "That depends on whether the Golden Crow corpse he encountered was a fully grown adult or an immature juvenile. If the latter, it would be seventh grade. If the former… then it's eighth grade!"
Chen Tianfei's body shuddered. "I heard that when that Sun Star was extinguished recently, there was a dying great Golden Crow inside it, and its corpse was ultimately claimed by the First Outpost's proprietor. Could it be that this boy condensed the True Fire from that very great Golden Crow?"
"Is that information reliable?" The Grand Manager turned his head to look. In recent years, he had been sequestered in secluded cultivation, striving to break through to the sixth-rank Open Heaven, and knew precious little about the outside world.
"Absolutely reliable," Chen Tianfei said gravely.
The Grand Manager nodded slowly. "Golden Crow True Fire is something that appears perhaps once in ten thousand years. This boy is only at the Emperor Venerable realm, so he likely hasn't had much time to condense his fire-attributed power. In that case, his Golden Crow True Fire may well have come from that great Golden Crow."
"Eighth grade!" Chen Tianfei's face had gone deathly pale. He stared blankly and said, "Then what is his connection to the First Outpost's proprietor?"
The intelligence he'd received was that the Golden Crow's corpse had ended up in the hands of the First Outpost's proprietor. At the time, numerous Cave Heavens and Blessed Lands had sent people to seize it. More than one Superior-rank Open Heaven had appeared, and the First Outpost had been torn apart in the struggle. In the end, the First Outpost's proprietor had proven the most capable, making off with the Golden Crow's corpse and escaping unscathed.
If Yang Kai had no connection to that person, how could he have obtained this Golden Crow True Fire?
This was something the Grand Manager found equally puzzling—he'd never heard that the proprietor had any descendants or heirs.
"That seems unlikely!" The Grand Manager shook his head slowly. "Eighth-grade Golden Crow True Fire—no Emperor Venerable could endure it. Even if that person obtained the Golden Crow corpse, when passing it down to a younger disciple, the grade would have to be reduced. Otherwise, it would kill them."
"The Grand Manager speaks reason!" Chen Tianfei nodded vigorously. Even so, the implications were terrifying enough.
But Lady Qin had thought of yet another layer. She murmured, "If he could condense seventh-grade fire power, then doesn't that mean he must possess at least sixth-grade or seventh-grade wood power as well?"
If it were mere ordinary fire-attributed power, that would be one thing. Someone like Meng Hong, who had destroyed his foundation and rebuilt from scratch, could directly condense fifth-grade Solar Fire—so long as his natural aptitude was sufficient and his Dao Seal sturdy, there would be no great issue.
But how terrifying was Golden Crow True Fire? Without a sufficiently powerful restorative and suppressing force, the Dao Seal would be incinerated and shattered in an instant. To compensate for the damage caused by Golden Crow True Fire's scorching, the wood-attributed power used to suppress it would need to be at least sixth grade—most likely seventh grade—otherwise condensation would be impossible.
Seventh-grade wood power. Seventh-grade fire power. Yang Kai's ambitions were now crystal clear: he intended to achieve the grand aspiration of a Superior-rank Open Heaven in one stroke!
"Such lofty ambitions—beyond the reach of us old fogies!" The Grand Manager shook his head slowly, and his ramrod-straight posture seemed to stoop a fraction, as though a wave of dispiritedness had washed over him.
As the group spoke, the nascent great sun behind Yang Kai stabilized completely, radiating blinding light. With the appearance of this sun dharma idol, his figure—previously forced to retreat again and again by the Dou Tian Xing Luo Grand Array—gradually came to a halt.
Ten zhang away, Luo Qingyun stared at him with an expression of shock.
Yang Kai flashed him a grin and formed a series of spirit seals with his fingers. "Today a Golden Crow comes to forge the sun—heaven and earth, I alone reign supreme!"
The Golden Crow's hoarse cry pierced the heavens and earth, resounding through the sky and the ground. Within the great sun it spread its wings, and Yang Kai's figure merged into the blazing orb. His entire being transformed into a miniature sun in an instant, hurtling forward to crash into the colossal sword beam.