"If the Chaos fails to open, this boy will surely die!" Among the four Upper-Rank observers, a withered voice spoke at length.
Ti Zheng and the others exchanged glances, suddenly wondering if they had been overestimating Yang Kai's potential. Advancing to Fifth-Order had proven this dangerous — so what if they simply let him attempt a Seventh-Order advancement instead? Judging by the current situation, if he actually tried to advance to Seventh-Order, there would be absolutely no chance of success.
The leaking aura of Chaos had already become visible to the naked eye, swirling around Yang Kai's body and enveloping him entirely. From a distance, he looked as though he were wrapped inside a great cocoon, his figure completely obscured.
Inside the Chaos Cocoon, Yang Kai's mind was calm and still. He silently felt the aura of Chaos, sensed this primordial scene before Heaven and Earth were born, and his entire being seemed to travel through time and space to that ancient epoch when all was nothing but Chaos.
A crackling sound rang out in the depths of his heart — it was the sound of his Dao Seal gradually shattering. The Dao Seal was the crystallization of a cultivator's lifelong efforts, the most vital thing to any martial artist. For the Dao Seal to break meant the collapse of one's Great Dao, and without a Small World to receive and fuse with it, the consequences would be catastrophic.
And so, before the Dao Seal completely crumbled, the Small World had to take shape.
But for a Small World to take shape, one had to open Heaven and Earth within one's own body — to split apart the Chaos.
This was virtually an unsolvable knot.
At the razor's edge between life and death, Yang Kai seemed entirely oblivious to it all.
His mind drifted involuntarily to that moment when the Great Demon God Mo Sheng had obliterated his body. That battle had been the final war between the Star Boundary and the Demon Realm. The Star Boundary had committed everything it had, with numerous Great Emperors marching forth together to stand against the Great Demon God.
It was in that battle that Yang Kai had perished beneath the terrifying demonic might of the Great Demon God. Without the Ageless Tree, he could never have risen from death.
He could be called a man who had already died once. His understanding of life and death ran deeper than anyone's.
That fleeting experience of the boundary between life and death — an ordinary person could never possess such a thing.
A sliver of sudden enlightenment surged into his mind, and Yang Kai felt the shroud that had long clouded his consciousness abruptly lift.
"All things are born of Chaos and return to Chaos. What is life? What is death? There is no meaning to the distinction at all. To know life and death is to recognize life and death; to not know is to have neither life nor death. What is real? What is illusion? Without boundary, without limit — everything exists between a single thought!"
A low murmur drifted from within the Chaos Cocoon, as though a bolt of insight had shot straight into his mind, slashing through layer upon layer of mist. Dawn broke.
At the same time, the aura of Chaos that had long shrouded Yang Kai's body seemed pressed down by an invisible hand, freezing into eerie stillness.
Three breaths later, a crack split open across the Chaos Cocoon. Almost immediately, the crack spread like a spiderweb across its entire surface.
The aura of primordial creation seeped outward. A brand-new world was taking shape, its own world-force slowly emanating through the fractures.
BOOM...
The void trembled. Heaven and Earth shuddered.
The Chaos Cocoon shattered apart in an instant, revealing Yang Kai once more. His eyes remained shut as he sat cross-legged in the void, but howling winds roared all around him, his robes and black hair whipping fiercely in the gale.
Within his body, his Dao Seal crumbled completely — but the risk of his Great Dao collapsing was gone, because in that very same instant, a Small World had received the shattered Dao and merged with it whole.
Chaos opened. Heaven and Earth were formed!
A phantom projection of a Small World flashed into existence behind Yang Kai and vanished in the blink of an eye — a brand-new world, newly born.
Ti Zheng narrowed his eyes slightly. "He actually succeeded."
He was somewhat puzzled. Yang Kai had clearly been on the verge of being assimilated by Chaos, yet at the very last moment, he had escaped death and achieved the Open Heaven Realm. He truly couldn't fathom what Yang Kai had experienced in that critical instant between life and death.
That sort of thing, he supposed, was something only the person involved could truly know.
In that fleeting instant when the Small World's phantom had appeared, he had strained his vision to its fullest, hoping to get a glimpse of Yang Kai's Small World. Unfortunately, with the Celestial Net Spirit-Locking Formation suppressing everything, even as a Seventh-Order Open Heaven cultivator, he couldn't make it out clearly.
Seeing Yang Kai successfully achieve Open Heaven, Zhu Jiuyin also let out a small sigh of relief. But in the very next instant, her expression froze in surprise, and she frowned, peering forward.
Yang Kai had not moved to stabilize his newly formed Small World. Instead, he turned his palm over, and a round, plump bead suddenly appeared in his hand.
Zhu Jiuyin recognized it at once — it was Yang Kai's Mysterious World Bead. She knew about this object. She had heard that it contained an entire world within it, but because her strength was far too great, she had never gone inside.
Taking out the Mysterious World Bead at a time like this — what was this brat planning?
While she was still wondering, she felt Yang Kai's body pulse with energy. The phantom projection of the Small World that had vanished reappeared behind him once more. Then, with a casual toss, Yang Kai threw the Mysterious World Bead into his own Small World.
Zhu Jiuyin's brow shot up and she cried out in alarm, "Boy, what are you doing?!"