Discussing past mistakes at this point was meaningless. Yang Kai had long since advanced to Open Heaven, forced to break through to the Fifth Grade at that. Though he had consumed a mid-grade World Fruit and possessed hope of reaching the Eighth Grade at his limit, the Ninth Grade would forever remain beyond his reach.
Unless he could find an Open Heaven Pill born within the Primordial Furnace — a treasure that generated itself from heaven and earth.
Yet the Primordial Furnace drifted without a trace, and no one knew when it would appear. Even if it did, there was no guarantee the Open Heaven Pill within would have anything to do with Yang Kai.
Across the various Blessed Realms, those who had reached Eighth Grade Open Heaven and spent their entire lives unable to advance a single step were hardly uncommon. Every one of them was far more desperate for that heaven-and-earth-born Open Heaven Pill than Yang Kai.
As they were speaking, a soul-shaking wave of energy suddenly rippled out from the distant depths of the void.
Mi Jinglun and Ouyang Lie exchanged a glance, both flickering to the deck in an instant and gazing toward the source of the disturbance.
Yang Kai also stood on the deck, watching. Though the wave was unmistakably perceptible, its origin was clearly impossibly far away.
"The Ancestor has engaged the King Lord," Ouyang Lie said gravely.
Mi Jinglun nodded slightly.
Such a violent fluctuation could not possibly be produced by a clash between Eighth Grade Open Heaven cultivators and Domain Lords. Across this entire war theater, only a battle between an Ancestor and a King Lord could generate upheaval of this magnitude.
This was the first time the Yinyang Pass Ancestor had clashed with the Ink Clan King Lord of this war theater. Who would prevail was impossible to judge.
However, judging from the intelligence already received, the Yinyang Pass Ancestor would certainly not come out at a disadvantage — because in terms of years of cultivation alone, the Ink Clan King Lord fell short of the Ancestor.
The current Ink Clan King Lord had only ascended to the position thirty thousand years ago. As for the other Ink Clan King Lord who had lived far longer, he had perished alongside the Dayan Ancestor thirty thousand years ago in a mutually destructive battle.
The clash between supreme powers of both races was devastating. Two figures tangled ceaselessly through the vast void, and even the aftershocks alone shattered one dead Qiankun world after another, sending billions of miles of space into violent upheaval and chaos.
Yet at this very moment, the Ink Clan King Lord was suffering in silence.
Upon learning that the human armies had actually launched an invasion into Ink Clan territory, this King Lord had rushed away from Dayan Pass in a frenzy, searching for the human forces all along the way, and had finally managed to intercept the human Ancestor halfway there.
As long as he pinned down the human Ancestor, his Royal City would remain safe.
But before he could even settle his nerves, the events that followed left him completely off balance.
In his original thinking, this was his first encounter with a human Ancestor, and both sides should primarily be testing each other's limits. After all, they were each their race's ultimate fighting force, and neither would lightly risk their own life.
A few rounds of probing to gauge the other's capabilities, then a gradual reckoning later — that was the prudent course.
That was what he had assumed, and he believed the human Ancestor thought the same.
But the human Ancestor had no such intentions whatsoever.
This human Ancestor, though a woman, acted with sheer ferocity. The moment they engaged, she adopted a posture as though she intended to drag him down to mutual destruction — her divine abilities were savage, her secret arts merciless. The Ink Clan King Lord was struck dumb from the very first exchange!
Truth be told, although this Ink Clan King Lord had ascended to his position a full thirty thousand years ago, the number of times he had actually fought a human Ancestor could be counted on one hand.
There had been exactly one time.
That was the battle after his ascension, when he and the previous King Lord had joined forces to slay the Dayan Ancestor.
Since then, Dayan Pass had fallen under Ink Clan control, and no further battles had erupted on this front. The Ink Clan King Lord had never again faced a human Ancestor in combat.
For thirty thousand years, he had simply guarded his own war theater, occasionally dispatching Domain Lords under his command to reinforce the Fengyun Pass and Qingxu Pass fronts, but never once leaving this theater himself.
As such, his experience fighting human Ancestors was woefully inadequate.
On top of that, the human Ancestor fought with such crazed abandon that the moment they clashed, the Ink Clan King Lord had been thrust onto the back foot — beaten down and pressed hard by his opponent.
This situation surprised even the human Ancestor herself, if only slightly.
But she quickly grasped the reason. This Ink Clan King Lord simply lacked combat experience!
What a delightful surprise.
Back when she had been stationed at Yinyang Pass, she had fought the Ink Clan King Lord of the Yinyang theater in minor clashes every hundred years and major battles every thousand. Every secret art, every fighting style, every personality trait between them was no longer any mystery.
There was a saying that the one who understands you best is not your friend, but your enemy.
At Yinyang Pass, the moment the Ancestor made a move, the Ink Clan King Lord there instantly knew what she was after and could formulate a counter-strategy in a heartbeat. That was why, after countless years of entanglement, neither had been able to overcome the other.
But here things were different. She possessed rich experience fighting King Lords, and though her opponent had changed, experience was experience. This Ink Clan King Lord had no such capability. The battle from thirty thousand years ago had likely long faded from memory, and three millennia of peace had robbed him of his fighting spirit. Engaging a Ninth Grade powerhouse so abruptly inevitably came with all manner of discomfort.
The human Ancestor's thinking was straightforward. Since she had brought Yang Kai along, there was no need for any restraint. She would simply fight as hard as she could and trade grave injuries with the Ink Clan King Lord again and again.
Getting hurt was no fear of hers — she could draw upon Yang Kai's Small World to recover from her wounds at remarkable speed. The Ink Clan King Lord could use his Ink Nest to heal as well, but his recovery rate would surely not match hers.
Every time they healed, she would seize a slight advantage. One or two instances might not show any visible result, but accumulate enough of them, and the Ink Clan King Lord would certainly be unable to endure.