His heart was fraught with unease, but he dared neither object nor press further questions. The torment was considerable.
Zhuge Xingwei hastily replied: "Including the Xuanyi Realm, there are fourteen in total."
Yang Kai nodded. "Find thirteen people. Send them to those thirteen worlds, each carrying one of these. Tell them to wait for my instructions."
As he spoke, he waved his hand and produced thirteen Void Spirit Beads.
His thinking was simple: with the
Letting these Open Heaven Realm cultivators from the Xuanyi Sect carry Void Spirit Beads and go ahead to wait in each of those worlds meant that once he finished his work here, he could teleport to the next location at any moment.
Zhuge Xingwei accepted the Void Spirit Beads, selected thirteen people, gave one bead to each, and sent them on their way.
While Yang Kai worked ceaselessly in the void, the Xuanyi Realm itself was wracked by tremors and quakes. Countless living beings were gripped by terror.
This was, after all, his first attempt to refine an entire world into a World Bead, and the process was still somewhat unfamiliar. Despite his repeated efforts to be as careful as possible, he could not entirely avoid causing some celestial disturbances within the Xuanyi Realm.
In the oceans, tsunamis surged in succession, their waves rising a hundred zhang high. Mountains cracked apart, and entire landmasses shifted.
Fortunately, Yang Kai had maintained sharp focus throughout. The moment he noticed something amiss, he immediately moved to set it right. In this way, he prevented any truly major upheaval within the Xuanyi Realm and avoided causing any deaths among its inhabitants.
Yet fear among the populace was unavoidable.
Gradually, the vast Xuanyi Realm grew increasingly distorted. Zhuge Xingwei and the others stood watching from the sidelines, and it seemed as though the world had slipped into an entirely different plane of spacetime—right before their eyes, yet giving off a profoundly unreal sensation.
In the span of a dozen or so days, Yang Kai reached the critical juncture of the refinement.
At this point, he could faintly sense that he was only a single step away from successfully refining the Xuanyi Realm into a World Bead, which would allow him to accomplish what he had originally envisioned.
But upon reaching this stage, he found himself unable to push further. The entire Xuanyi Realm was generating a force of resistance, actively opposing his refinement.
Yang Kai pondered briefly and gained a vague understanding.
That force of resistance was none other than the Heavenly Dao of this world.
Every world possessed its own Heavenly Dao. The Star Realm had one, and the Xuanyi Realm had one as well. This was the fundamental reason why different worlds had varying levels of martial attainment.
The stronger a world's Heavenly Dao, the higher the corresponding level of martial cultivation it could support.
A thousand years ago, the Star Realm's Heavenly Dao had been exceedingly weak, capable of producing only Great Emperors and not a single Open Heaven Realm cultivator.
But now, nourished by the feedback from the World Tree's sapling, the Star Realm's Heavenly Dao was no longer inferior to any other world in existence.
As for the Xuanyi Realm, it had given rise to the Xuanyi Sect, with two to three hundred Open Heaven Realm cultivators among its ranks. This world's Heavenly Dao could be considered remarkably formidable.
The Heavenly Dao was profound beyond comprehension—nearly a world's self-consciousness, of a sort. Ordinary people could never perceive it. Only those rare, brilliant prodigies could resonate with the Heavenly Dao, earn its recognition, and be honored as Great Emperors.
Now, with Yang Kai seeking to refine the Xuanyi Realm, this world's Heavenly Dao instinctively resisted. After all, Yang Kai was an outsider—why would the Xuanyi Realm acknowledge his refinement?
With Yang Kai's current abilities, he could certainly force the refinement through. But doing so would inevitably damage the world's Heavenly Dao. Yang Kai did not know what consequences that might bring, but the one thing he could be certain of was that it would not bode well for the Xuanyi Realm as a whole.
Perhaps the martial cultivators of this world would find their future practice far more arduous, and the likelihood of powerful experts emerging would diminish.
That ran contrary to his original intent.
Yang Kai furrowed his brow. His divine sense surged outward, projecting toward the Heavenly Dao of this world all the scenes he had witnessed in the
The Heavenly Dao was a world's consciousness, though not a living being. It was an existence of a very particular nature.
He did not know whether this would have any effect, but if he wanted to smoothly refine the Xuanyi Realm, his only option was to make the Heavenly Dao cooperate willingly and cease its resistance.
There was a saying: the will of heaven operates in mysterious ways. He hoped this thread of heavenly will could understand his intentions.
Yang Kai's original aim was to make the Xuanyi Realm's Heavenly Dao recognize what would happen if the Ink Clan took over—that the world would inevitably come to look like those realms in the Ink Battlefield, their cosmic power devoured utterly, reduced to dead worlds.
What he did not expect was that the approach would produce astonishing results.
After those scenes from the Ink Battlefield were transmitted, the resistance of the Xuanyi Realm's Heavenly Dao indeed weakened considerably.
Yang Kai was elated and pressed his advantage, continuing to channel visions of what he had witnessed into the world's Heavenly Dao through his divine sense.
The resistance grew weaker and weaker, until it had nearly vanished entirely.
And just then, a heavy sigh suddenly resounded through Yang Kai's mind, deep and resonant as the toll of a great bell. His consciousness wavered in a daze, and he was struck by a fleeting illusion that he had merged with the Xuanyi Realm, the two becoming one with no boundary between them.
A feeling impossible to comprehend arose within him. In the space of a heartbeat, his consciousness traversed an impossibly vast distance and arrived at an unknown place.
All around was endless darkness. His body was rigid, unable to move. He could not even perceive his own existence.