After asking the question, Huang Xiong felt he had been a bit abrupt and quickly added, "If it's inconvenient to speak of, just pretend I never asked, Junior Martial Nephew."
Some matters touched upon a cultivator's personal secrets, and prying too eagerly was improper.
Yang Kai shook his head. "There's nothing inconvenient about it. That I was able to advance to the Eighth-Order so quickly is indeed thanks to certain fortuitous encounters." He paused, then asked, "May I ask, Garrison Commander Huang, how many years has it been since the battle outside the Initial Heaven Grand Restriction?"
Huang Xiong looked at him curiously. Though he couldn't fathom why Yang Kai would ask such a question, he answered nonetheless, "Five hundred and twelve years have passed."
"Five hundred and twelve years…" Yang Kai's brow lifted slightly. The figure differed somewhat from his own estimate, but not by much.
Inside the Great Sea Heavenly Image, the hardest thing to account for had been the four thousand years he spent within the Rivers of Time, because the time dilation ratio between each individual river and the outside world seemed to differ.
But the rest of his time he could calculate clearly.
Searching for the Rivers of Time to cultivate in had consumed over a hundred years, and escaping from the Great Sea Heavenly Image afterward had taken close to two hundred years.
By that reckoning, the time he had spent cultivating within the Rivers of Time was roughly two hundred years as well.
Two hundred years, yet four thousand years of cultivation—the average time dilation ratio was twenty-fold, somewhat higher than he had guessed.
Steadying his mind, Yang Kai performed a series of pill-collection seals, gathering the batch of Spirit Pills before him and handing them to Huang Xiong. This time Huang Xiong took one pill first, swallowed it, then passed the rest on to the soldiers behind him.
With a complicated expression, Yang Kai said, "Five hundred and twelve years have passed outside, but you must not know, Garrison Commander, that I have been cultivating somewhere for over four thousand years."
Huang Xiong's face went blank with shock. "Four thousand years? How—" Then something suddenly came to mind, and he exclaimed in astonishment, "The Rivers of Time?"
He had clearly heard of the Rivers of Time as well. If there was any place in the world that could give Yang Kai such an extraordinary experience, it could only be the Rivers of Time.
Rumor had it that the flow of time within the Rivers of Time was different from the outside world—one might spend ten or a hundred years cultivating inside, while only a single year passed outside.
Many cultivators of the Open Heaven Realm had heard such rumors, yet not a single one had actually laid eyes on the Rivers of Time.
If that was the case, then Yang Kai's rapid advance to the Eighth-Order was no longer so strange.
Yang Kai's natural aptitude was already excellent. Four thousand years of cultivation was more than enough to push his strength to yet another level.
Yang Kai nodded. "It was indeed the Rivers of Time. After the battle outside the Initial Heaven Grand Restriction, a Goat-Headed Royal Lord of the Ink Clan set his sights on me. Every Old Ancestor and Eighth-Order Garrison Commander already had their own opponents, so I had no choice but to flee. My original plan was to pass through the Ancient Battlefield and make for No-Return Pass, where I could leverage the combined strength of the Dragon and Phoenix Clans to deal with that Royal Lord. But man proposes, Heaven disposes—inside that Ancient Battlefield, I lost my way…"
Even with Huang Xiong's Eighth-Order cultivation and his typically composed temperament, hearing Yang Kai say he had lost his way was enough to make him want to laugh.
At the Seventh-Order or Eighth-Order level, with a Cosmos Map in hand, one could traverse the vast void without ever losing one's bearings under normal circumstances.
But the void surrounding the Ink Battlefield held too many mysteries and unknowns—it could not be judged by common logic.
Especially since Yang Kai had been fleeing for his life with a powerful enemy in pursuit. It was only natural that he would panic and lose his way.
Yang Kai went on to describe the Mist Phenomenon, recounting his repeated narrow escapes from that Goat-Headed Royal Lord, and finally the manifold wonders within the Great Sea Heavenly Image.
Huang Xiong listened with gleaming eyes, his spirits soaring.
Yang Kai had been able to recognize the Great Sea Heavenly Image for the treasure it was—Huang Xiong could not.
The myriad Daos concealed within the undercurrents of that Great Sea Heavenly Image could save a cultivator countless years of bitter cultivation. And that was before even mentioning something like the Rivers of Time—an express shortcut on the path of Open Heaven Realm cultivation that wasn't quite a shortcut.
"Where is that Great Sea Heavenly Image? Can you still find it?" Huang Xiong asked.
Yang Kai nodded. "I left marks along the way here, and I set a Cosmos Formation around the outer perimeter of the Great Sea Heavenly Image. It can be found."
Huang Xiong's spirits surged. "Excellent! A treasure like that will surely serve our Human Race in the future!"
But his excitement quickly gave way to a somber expression. Under the current circumstances, there was no way to return to the Great Sea Heavenly Image. The Human Race was in a rather dire situation.
Having answered Huang Xiong's questions, Yang Kai posed his own. "What was the final outcome of the battle outside the Initial Heaven Grand Restriction? How did Azure Void Pass come to be breached at this location?"
He had been chased out of the battlefield by the Goat-Headed Royal Lord shortly after the fighting began and knew nothing of what had transpired afterward.
Huang Xiong heaved a heavy sigh. "That battle… the Human Race lost!"
Yang Kai's heart sank.
He had already suspected as much—if the Human Race had won, Azure Void Pass would not be in its current state.
"The Ink Colossus?" Yang Kai asked in a deep voice.
On the battlefield outside the Initial Heaven Grand Restriction, if there was one variable, it could only be the Ink Colossus. In the early stages of the battle, that ancient being called Ink had been striving to maintain balance on the battlefield, so the number of Royal Lords who had emerged from within the Grand Restriction was not particularly large, remaining roughly equal to the Human Race's Old Ancestors.