"There are no other living beings in this entire Small Stone World aside from the Small Stone Clan. If there's anything connected to this world's unique cultivation environment, it has to be them. The problem is, we've never been able to figure out what exactly the relationship is," Yue He said.
The world force of a Qiankun World was intimately tied to the Heavenly Dao Laws, and it was also deeply connected to the beings that lived within it.
Since the Small Stone World contained only the Small Stone Clan, the uniqueness of this world's world force could not possibly be unrelated to them.
However, to confirm this, some experimentation would be necessary.
With that thought in mind, Yang Kai flickered and appeared directly on that platform, standing before the Stone King.
The patrolling guard squads in the surroundings sensed the anomaly and charged toward him with furious roars. Yang Kai stood perfectly still, his Sixth-Order Open Heaven aura spreading outward as space itself froze solid.
One by one, the Small Stone Clan guards locked in place, utterly immobile.
Yang Kai channeled his power to envelop the Stone King and sent it directly into his Small World, settling it in a remote corner.
Although over ten million people now lived within his Small World—and over the past several decades, many towns and cities had been built—there were still vast stretches of undeveloped land. Finding a place for the Stone King was no problem at all.
The sudden disappearance of their king's aura threw the entire Small Stone Clan into panic. The guards frozen in place by Yang Kai's spell were one matter, but the clan members in other nesting grounds began running around like headless chickens, emitting terrified cries as they searched desperately for the Stone King and found nothing.
Seeing this, Yang Kai simply projected the gateway to his Small World, and in an instant, an oval-shaped portal appeared before him.
The Stone King's aura emanated outward from within.
The countless Small Stone Clan members who had been scattering in every direction suddenly found their bearings, as if given a compass in the wilderness, and rushed toward the portal.
In a flash, the entire nesting ground descended into chaos.
One after another, the Small Stone Clan members poured through the gateway and vanished into Yang Kai's Small World.
Under his attentive gaze, Yang Kai could clearly see that the first wave of clan members who entered gathered around the Stone King, working together in an attempt to carry their king back to the original nest.
However, getting in was easy. Getting out? Without Yang Kai's permission, that was impossible. The portal he had created only allowed entry, not exit.
Yang Kai's reasoning was simple. If Yue He and the others had observed for so many years without being able to determine any connection between the Small Stone Clan and the Small Stone World's world force, then the best approach was to migrate them into his own Small World and study them there. Within his Small World, no subtle change could escape his perception.
More and more Small Stone Clan members surged through the portal. This clan was sizable—roughly three thousand in number. Although the earlier battle had killed or wounded several hundred, it barely made a dent in the overall population.
In less than an hour, every last member of the nesting ground had flooded through the portal, and the entire clan now surrounded the Stone King.
Panic rippled through the group. Having suddenly been thrust into an unfamiliar environment, the Small Stone Clan was visibly struggling to adapt.
Yang Kai observed them carefully but found it difficult to discern anything particularly unusual about them. However, now that the entire clan had been relocated into his Small World, as long as he was patient, he would eventually discover something.
He then sent all of the unhatched stone eggs into his Small World as well, placing them among the clan members, before calling out to Yue He: "Let's head back for now."
The two of them returned to the bamboo house, where Zhou Ya was still waiting.
The next few days passed without incident. Yue He and Zhou Ya each continued their own cultivation—that is not worth elaborating on here.
Yang Kai focused on monitoring the situation of the Small Stone Clan he had migrated into his Small World while simultaneously tracing characters in the air before him with his finger.
The New Great Domain was enormous. Just traveling from the Domain Gate to this Small Stone World with Black River had taken half a month, and this area was still only the outer fringe of the New Great Domain. The interior was far more vast.
This meant that traveling within the New Great Domain would consume a great deal of time.
It was a problem every Great Domain faced. Not everyone was like Yang Kai, versed in the Laws of Space, capable of traversing the void to move swiftly from one place to another.
Across the various Great Domains, the best way for cultivators to travel quickly was to use Qiankun Halls as relay points.
Yang Kai planned to construct several Qiankun Halls throughout the New Great Domain, linking the entire domain together. That way, his people would only need to transfer through the Qiankun Halls and wouldn't have to waste so much time on the road.
In the past, he might not have had a viable solution. But ever since he had been commissioned by the various Cave Heavens and Blessed Lands to repair the Qiankun Halls that had fallen into disrepair over the ages, he had thoroughly mastered the intricacies of the Grand Qiankun Formation.
In truth, the Grand Qiankun Formation was not fundamentally different from a spatial formation—it simply operated over far greater distances. For a Great Domain where distances routinely spanned billions, tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of li, a standard spatial formation couldn't reach. The Grand Qiankun Formation was different: as long as there was no obstruction from Heaven and Earth, even the most distant points could be connected.