"Why is there a stretch of barren desert here?"
Half an hour later, Yang Xue gazed at the peculiar landscape before her in a daze. In the midst of this vast, boundless void, the sudden appearance of a desert that seemed to encompass an endless expanse was truly astonishing.
After a thorough investigation by the two of them, they quickly discovered that this desert was not a true desert. Although it appeared no different from reality, this enormous wasteland was composed entirely of a peculiar kind of shattered Dao Marks.
Looking out across the landscape, yellow sand filled the sky and roaring winds howled through the desert, churning up pillars of sand that stretched from earth to heaven—a spectacular sight!
Anyone who laid eyes on this place would sense the anomaly and the danger it harbored.
And yet, the closer they drew, the stronger the resonance from the two marks on the back of Yang Xiao's hand became. He knew the source of the signal was not far off.
"Could Big Brother be in there?" Yang Xue's delicate brows furrowed slightly.
Yang Xiao said, "No matter what, we'll know once we take a look!"
Yang Xue nodded. She lightly tossed an object from her slender hand, and it spun in the air before expanding into a palace the size of an ordinary house. The plaque above the entrance bore the words "Sui Yue"—this was the Sui Yue Divine Palace, inherited all those years ago from the Sui Yue Great Emperor of the Star Boundary.
Over the past several millennia, with the growth of their cultivation and their deepening comprehension of the Dao of Time, their attainment along this path had long since surpassed that of the Sui Yue Great Emperor.
However, the Sui Yue Great Emperor was still nominally their master, and their mastery of the Dao of Time could be traced back to this emperor whose name had shaken all ages. The Sui Yue Divine Palace, as the legacy of that emperor, was something Yang Xue had never been willing to part with.
Over the years, the two of them had exchanged their accumulated merits for countless precious materials and had enlisted the help of a master artificer from the Shen Ding Tian lineage to continuously refine and enhance the palace's power.
The Sui Yue Divine Palace of today was no longer the Sui Yue Divine Palace of old. Though its outward appearance had not changed much, in terms of sheer power it was no less formidable than Chen Xi's Dawn Warship of years past!
During their campaigns across countless great domain battlefields over the years, Yang Xiao's squad had relied on the Sui Yue Divine Palace to contend and maneuver against powerful Mo Clan experts.
This mobile palace Artifact had accompanied the two of them throughout their growth, bearing witness to their rise. Countless times they had depended on it to escape with their lives—its significance had long since transcended that of a mere Artifact.
Summoning the Sui Yue Divine Palace, the two of them entered together. Yang Xue raised her slender hand, and an Artifact shaped like an hourglass appeared in her palm—the Endless Hourglass, another Artifact inherited from the Sui Yue Great Emperor.
Within that hourglass, ten thousand and eight grains of Sui Yue Divine Sand were sealed away. As the divine sand flowed, the invisible Dao of Time enveloped the entire Sui Yue Divine Palace, causing the palace to seem as though it had merged into an invisible river of time, rendering its movements utterly mysterious and unpredictable.
They drifted slowly toward the depths of the desert, maintaining vigilance the entire way.
After several days, the Sui Yue Divine Palace came to a sudden halt. Standing at the palace entrance, Yang Xiao activated his Sun-Moon Mark and silently sensed his surroundings. He lifted his gaze toward a colossal sand mountain in the distance. "It's in there!"
In this endless desert, a sand mountain rising several hundred zhang high had materialized—no matter how one looked at it, something was deeply abnormal.
By this point, both of them understood that what had triggered the Sun-Moon Mark's resonance was not Yang Kai, because if Yang Kai were here, he would have sensed their arrival long ago and would not have remained hidden without revealing himself.
"Let me try!" Yang Xiao said softly, raising his hand.
The Dao of Time radiating from the Endless Hourglass in Yang Xue's hand grew ever denser, and her focus sharpened to its utmost limit.
The void trembled. As draconic force surged forth, a ribbon-like beam of brilliant light struck the sand mountain.
A violent shockwave radiated outward from the sand mountain in all directions, sweeping up an enormous cloud of sand. And under the force of that strike, the sand mountain—originally devoid of any sign of life—seemed to come alive. Billions upon billions of grains of sand flowed and rolled, coalescing into an entity hundreds of zhang tall with no fixed form.
What was this?
Both Yang Xiao and Yang Xue were stunned.
But moments later, Yang Xue's beautiful eyes lit up as she pointed at a certain spot within the sand mountain. "An Open Heaven Pill!"
Amid the cascading sand, a shimmering haze of rosy light flickered past. Though it lasted only an instant, Yang Xue had caught the outline of a spiritual pill, along with the wondrous Dao aura emanating from within it.
The bottleneck that had kept her pinned at the peak of the Eighth Rank trembled ever so slightly!
Yang Xiao had witnessed it too and couldn't help but burst into hearty laughter. "Little Auntie, we've struck it rich!"
Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that so soon after entering the Qiankun Furnace, they would find an Open Heaven Pill! As a pure-blooded member of the Dragon Clan, he had no use for such a thing—all he needed was to continuously refine the power of his Dragon lineage, and he would have a chance to ascend to the body of a Holy Dragon. Of course, that was no easy feat; in all the years the Dragon Clan had existed, only a handful of Holy Dragons had ever been born.
But Yang Xue needed it.