Dawn City, on the outskirts, in Mu's small cottage.
When the heavens and earth began rejecting Yang Kai and his majestic will condensed into a tide of destruction, Mu vaguely sensed it and lifted her head to glance in the direction of the Ink Abyss.
Had he succeeded?
It was faster than she had expected. It seemed that hundreds of thousands of years of waiting had not been in vain — this junior might well accomplish what she had failed to do all those years ago.
Little Eleven was sprawled across her legs, fast asleep. Yet ever since a moment ago, he had been trembling ceaselessly as though caught in a nightmare, his expression shifting wildly — sometimes murderous fury flickered across his features, other times boundless resentment. His small body was already drenched in sweat.
A crack of thunder rang out.
Little Eleven jolted awake. He raised his head and stared blankly at Mu, his lips quivering before he burst into tears.
"Did you have a bad dream?" Mu asked gently.
Little Eleven nodded repeatedly. "I dreamed that Sixth Sister didn't want me anymore — that she was getting further and further away!"
Mu smiled. "It was only a dream."
Little Eleven sniffled and flopped back down, wrapping his arms tightly around Mu's leg. "Sixth Sister, you can't abandon me. If you don't want me, Little Eleven won't have any family left."
Mu gently patted his back. "Don't worry. Sixth Sister would never abandon you. I'll stay with you always. Maybe one day when you've grown up, you'll grow tired of me and run off on your own."
"I won't!" Little Eleven scrunched up his nose, then paused, sensing something was off. "Sixth Sister, I think I'm sick. I don't feel very well."
"Just get some sleep and you'll be fine."
"Mm!" Little Eleven agreed, shifted into a more comfortable position, and soon drifted back to sleep.
……
His figure tore through the void, and Yang Kai could clearly feel a guiding force pointing him toward a particular direction. This force was not the rejection of the Original World — it was something else entirely, a power belonging to the River of Time and Space.
Understanding dawned on him. This was a mechanism Mu had left behind all those years ago.
He had refined the Xuangpin Gate within the Original World and sealed away that sliver of Ink's origin power. Now it was time to travel to another world.
A trace of urgency stirred within him. Though Mu's River of Time and Space was extraordinarily powerful — the worlds it enveloped experienced a different flow of time from the outside — the longer he lingered here, the greater the upheaval would become beyond.
He had to move quickly.
Concentrating his mind, Yang Kai soon glimpsed within his sea of consciousness a tightly shut gate — the very Xuangpin Gate he had refined deep within the Ink Abyss.
He had not expected that once refined, it would be drawn into his sea of consciousness. Then again, upon reflection, the Xuangpin Gate was a supreme treasure born alongside heaven and earth itself. Being housed within his sea of consciousness was hardly surprising.
He could hardly be expected to lug a massive gate around everywhere he went. What sort of image would that project?
His sea of consciousness already contained the Sacred Spirit Lotus. Now, with the Xuangpin Gate suddenly appearing as well, the sight was more than a little strange.
On the Seven-Colored Island, Fang Tianci and Lei Ying exchanged bewildered glances, both at a loss.
The reason was simple. The moment the Xuangpin Gate had materialized within his sea of consciousness, Yan Peng had been hit by some tremendous shock. His entire being was swallowed by a cold, sinister aura, and he descended into madness.
That bizarre gate seemed capable of dredging up every last shadow buried in a person's heart.
Yan Peng had been a member of the Ink Cult to begin with — not a virtuous man by any stretch. He had committed countless evils throughout his life, and the darkness within him was hardly in short supply.
His physical body had been slain by Yang Kai, and his soul was confined within the sea of consciousness. He had cooperated willingly enough and provided a great deal of useful intelligence. Yang Kai had not planned to exterminate him completely — letting him remain in the sea of consciousness posed no real problem.
But once the gate had stirred the darkness in his heart, he lost all reason.
With no other choice, Fang Tianci and Lei Ying had been forced to strike him down, scattering his soul into oblivion.
This left both of them somewhat heartbroken. They had finally gained a neighbor to chat with and stave off the boredom, and he had barely lasted…
It was a frustrating turn of events.
Now, Fang Tianci and Lei Ying sat quietly on the Seven-Colored Island, doing their best not to look at the Xuangpin Gate. Even they, after catching a single glimpse of that mystical gate, found unwanted memories welling up within them.
At that very moment, Yang Kai had already departed from the Original World. He turned to look back, but no trace of the Original World remained in his vision. All he could see was a grain-of-sand-like speck drifting along the currents at the bottom of a great river.
This brought to mind what he had once witnessed deep within the Endless River, inside the Heaven and Earth Furnace.
At the bottom of the Endless River, there had been grains of sand much like these. But they were no ordinary grains of sand — each one was an entire Heaven and Earth. It was only when they were ejected from the Furnace that they revealed their true forms.
A single grain of sand contains an entire world. Such was the wondrous manifestation of chaos giving rise to the myriad Dao.
The guiding force grew more distinct. Yang Kai followed it along the bottom of the River of Time and Space, and before long, he caught sight of another grain of sand.
This was the second world he needed to enter. Without hesitation, Yang Kai adjusted his course and plunged straight into it.