Chapter 590 - Revisiting - Part 1

KLANG!

The wolf-drawn carriage soared into the air, slammed back down, and jolted violently. Its wheels bounced once, then spun faster, kicking up a cloud of dust across the hard-packed soil of the wasteland. Without slowing, it barreled forward.

Over a month had passed since that day when they’d pushed deep into the Outer Region.

But ever since Li Yuan gave the word to head back, even the direwolves pulling the carriage had perked up, dashing homeward with wild, unrestrained energy.

And as for gains? Not much, at least not in the material sense.

The outer rim of the foreign realm was vast, nearly boundless. And even just skimming its edge meant running into flame gods or ghosts at every turn. Yet, after all that, they’d only managed to find a single secret art stele.

Li Yuan had asked Ying Zhuoyao about this. She’d replied that when the Northern Dipper brought her here in the past, she was still too weak to see much, just a hazy glimpse of the stele’s existence. That was the only reason she’d mentioned it this time.

Still, the trip hadn’t been fruitless. Li Yuan had gained something, just not something he could carry.

He had pieced together a good deal of fragmented knowledge.

First and foremost, the balance of Yin and Yang at the edge of the Outer Region was practically nonexistent.

If you compared it to oxygen, then Central Plain’s atmosphere was breathable. But this place was like stepping into a vacuum, a space between planets. It made you feel as if the ground was falling away beneath your feet, as though you were about to drift into the stars.

Li Yuan tested his Immortal Form. Then he tested the ghost lotus throne.

His Immortal Form still worked, growing to about a hundred feet tall. However, the ghost lotus throne failed again and again, and when it finally did appear, it was a pathetic miniature version, vanishing in a blink.

The reason his Immortal Form worked was simple. Li Yuan himself was flame incarnate.

However, he couldn’t generate Yin energy on his own. That made conjuring the ghost lotus throne a herculean task. And even when he managed it, the result was frail and fleeting.

This was the reality at the edge of the Outer Region.

And it gave Li Yuan a glimpse into the future of the Central Plains.

No...the future might be even worse.

The Northern Dipper had been plotting to unite all the ghost domains, combining them into the singular Underworld. But the Human Emperor had cut that plan short, severing the link between the mortal world and Underworld with a single sword stroke.

From that moment on, the mortal world was cut off from Yin energy. And without Yin, Yang would eventually disappear too.

Without the balance of Yin and Yang, there could be no spiritual energy. And without that, what kind of world would remain? A barren one, perhaps. One ruled by the Archon Star, Outerborn, and the strange powers that flowed through these lands.

Li Yuan’s expression darkened. He understood now that no matter how you dressed it up, this new world would be a downgrade from the old one.

The world was decaying. The end was coming. And humanity seemed destined to backslide, regressing from an era of civilization into something less.

What puzzled him, though, was this. If Yin and Yang were so scarce here in the Outer Region, how could flame gods and ghosts still roam free, wielding immense power?

At first, he thought maybe they’d just absorbed all the ambient energy, leaving none for him. But that didn’t add up.

It seemed as though these creatures had their own way of storing Yin and Yang, independent from the natural flow of the world.

But what was that method?

That question lingered, even as he turned his eyes toward another mystery. Somewhere on the fringe of this realm, he’d studied a rift in the fabric of space...

That void looked like islands floating in the dark, some massive, some barely more than specks.

But Li Yuan knew all too well that if he got too close to that darkness, his body would be torn apart on the spot. It wasn’t an attack, not in the usual sense. It was spatial disintegration, his body would enter a zone where space itself no longer existed, and naturally, he’d cease to exist along with it.

Imagine a stick figure drawn on a sheet of paper. No matter how powerful that little figure appears, if you tore the page in half, the drawing would be split too.

So the only rule here was simple, and that was not to get pulled in.

According to the little crow, the shattered void that had once appeared in the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain was quite different from this one. That void hadn’t been littered with so many fragmented chunks of broken space.

The suction force, however, was just as deadly in both places. As long as you didn’t get dragged inside, you’d be fine.

That said, anyone below the third rank wouldn’t even last a breath. That kind of suction would rip them apart before they could scream. Fortunately, that particular shattered void had already vanished, leaving behind just the ancient hall, standing calmly and quietly on solid ground.

And just now, a second ancient hall had also finished materializing.

Perhaps as one final flare before the flame went out, a third ancient hall was beginning to emerge from another corner of space.

But the Immortal Domain had no capacity to deal with all of them. At the moment, they were throwing everything they had into breaking through the first hall.

As for why the void in the Outer Region was full of these deadly space shards while the Eastern Sea’s was not, Li Yuan wanted to believe there was a deeper reason, something beyond random chance. But for now, no answer revealed itself.

In the meantime, he’d also dug up some intriguing information about the Starkin from Han Feng, Meng Xingxian, and even indirectly through Sheng’er.

Back in the early days of the Xia Dynasty, Starkin were still revered as deities, honored with sacrifices at grand altars. People offered their lives to win favor from these celestial beings.

Because the Starkin hadn’t yet gone into hiding back then, plenty of texts and obscure records survived, tucked away over the centuries.

Starkin were born as divine beings, primordial entities nurtured by chaos itself, long before the heavens and earth took form.

During the height of the Xia Dynasty, it was said that there were four stars in the heavens, the Southern Dipper, Northern Dipper, Polaris, and the Valley Obscura.

One of them was the Archon Star, holding dominion over the Ancestral Lands. The other three were Outerborn, scattered across distant reaches.

But by the end of the Xia Dynasty, only two remained known to the world.

Those two were the Northern Dipper and Polaris.

Some claimed the Southern Dipper and Valley Obscura had fallen into slumber.

Others said that the shrinking of Heaven and Earth had erased them entirely.

But among those who’d entered the Deathless Tomb, almost none believed that narrative. No one truly thought the Southern Dipper and Valley Obscura had simply vanished because the world got smaller. After all, starkin were terrifying entities, If you couldn’t fight them, you could at least avoid them. They wouldn’t just disappear.

Only a handful believed those stars had fallen into deep sleep.

Most felt something had happened near the end of the Xia Dynasty, something colossal and beyond their understanding. Whatever it was, it made the Southern Dipper and Valley Obscura vanish. And not long after that, the Northern Dipper itself went dormant...and the Dragon Vein of Great Zhou rose in its place.

Back in the days of the Xia Dynasty, Starkin weren’t hiding underground or lurking in the shadows. They reigned openly, gloriously, as the true Archon Star. They blazed in the center of the sky, casting radiant light across the world.

But toward the end of the Xia Dynasty, the stars that once hung in the night sky began to vanish.

Later generations simply accepted that with the emergence of the Great Zhou’s Dragon Vein, Polaris had taken up the mantle of Archon Star by default.

But what if...the Archon Star had already disappeared long before that? What if the Northern Dipper and Polaris had merely devoured the Southern Dipper and Valley Obscura in order to hang on, to survive, barely?

And what if the Northern Dipper, having once been the Archon Star of the Xia Dynasty, had directly resisted the force that destroyed the Age of the Ancient Gods? Was that why it had become so weak?

In a time defined by who was weaker than whom, it made sense that the wounded Northern Dipper would be overtaken by the frail yet relatively less damaged Polaris.

Li Yuan fell silent, pondering all this. As the carriage rumbled homeward, he passed the time studying the secret art stele they had recovered.

It took him several days to make sense of the faint, cryptic script etched into the stone.

The secret art described was called the Life Star Art.

But the requirements to perform it were brutally strict. One had to be a peak third rank Heaven, Earth, and Human Soul cultivator. On top of that, they needed to have fused a Sun Fragment and a Moon Fragment into themselves.

The Sun Fragment represented Yang; the Moon Fragment, Yin.

If all that was achieved, the user could ignite their own Life Star in the night sky.

And the benefits of lighting a Life Star? They were nothing short of astounding.

First, as long as your Life Star still shone in the sky, even if you suffered total death, you could reincarnate somewhere beneath its light.

Second, so long as your Life Star was overhead, no matter what lifetime you were in, if you stood beneath its radiance, you could reclaim all your former strength and memories.

Of course, the downside was just as clear-cut.

To light your Life Star, you had to burn away every last drop of your current lifespan.

When Li Yuan read that part, he couldn't help but be tempted.

Igniting the Life Star meant giving himself extra lives, multiple chances. It was worth considering.

He wasn’t qualified yet, though, so for now he committed the details to memory, carefully turning them over in his mind.

𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Even though the knowledge would vanish from his thoughts the moment he looked away, the moment he gazed at the stele again, everything would return clear as ever.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

By now, the wolf-drawn carriage had left the Outer Region behind.

The howling snow returned, falling in thick sheets. The wheels rolled once more over frozen earth.

Wind and snow, road and journey, onward they went.

Then Li Yuan suddenly asked, “Is there any chance the secret art stele could be fake?”

Han Feng and Meng Xingxian both shook their heads.

No one knew where the steles came from, but forging one would be ridiculous. These stones recorded rare, high rank secret arts, who’d waste time creating a fake one for a prank?

Besides, most of the known cultivation techniques for cultivating the Heaven, Earth, and Human Souls to third rank came from these very steles.

What was carved into them was the most absolute, most reliable form of power this world had to offer. Otherwise, they wouldn't be inscribed in the celestial script known as

Heaven Glyphs

.

Li Yuan turned to Ying Zhuoyao and asked, “According to your master...the Southern Dipper isn’t dead, is that right?”

By now, Ying Zhuoyao was certain. This senior before her was

not

the Southern Dipper. So she wasn’t startled. She paused, hesitated, then quickly corrected herself. “It’s not my master...it was the Northern Dipper. My real master is you.”

Li Yuan smiled. “It’s fine.”

Only then did she continue, “The Northern Dipper merely told me...that you might be the Southern Dipper. And he allowed me to tell you that.”

Li Yuan narrowed his eyes slightly, but said nothing more.

Humans lie. As for gods, why would they be any different?

The real question was

why?

What benefit did Northern Dipper get by claiming he was the Southern Dipper? What would he gain from pushing that story?

This game of theirs, it felt like it was nearing the end.

Li Yuan hadn’t been involved in the early stages. But now, at the tail end, he had exchanged more than a few moves from across the board with those unfathomable beings.

And now, one by one, the players themselves were stepping onto the field.

But what if those

players

...were actually pieces on an even bigger board?

They thought they were acting of their own will, stepping forward with intention. But what if they were just being plucked up by some higher existence, pinched between two fingers and moved somewhere else, like pawns?

Li Yuan glanced at the Life Star Art, so perfectly suited for him, and felt a heavy weight settle in his chest.

But then, he chuckled to himself.

He didn’t believe it. Not really. No one could be

that

powerful, to predict the end of the world itself, to calculate every twist of fate, to plan this far ahead with such precision.

If someone really

was

that ridiculously capable, why bother playing games to manipulate someone like him, a mere foot soldier?

If such an entity had called out to him, wouldn’t he have just gone? Who would dare refuse a being like that?

Someone able to predict everything, plan everything, what was the point of resisting them? It would be like shouting into a storm and hoping the wind listens.

So no. Definitely not. There was

no

bigger chessboard.

Li Yuan shook his head and chased away the wild thoughts.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

One year later.

The wolf-drawn carriage returned to the Western Extremes. But it didn’t linger, it turned east and kept moving.

Sunlight now reached nearly halfway across the Cloudpeak Province. Towns that had been frozen for over 30 years were finally thawed. But even so, they remained empty, no one had come back to live in them.

Sword Mountain Pass still blocked the way beyond the borders.

The people of the Central Plans would never forget the horror of the Nine Flames Tribe invasion.

If the Human Emperor hadn’t risen out of nowhere, the Nine Flames Tribe would have devoured all of the Central Plains.

So now, sealing off the Nine Flames Tribe, preventing their population from growing, had become an unspoken rule among all the power-holders of the Central Plains. This was also one of the reasons Meng Xingxian and Han Feng had fallen into complete despair.

The wolf carriage sailed easily over Sword Mountain Pass.

To Li Yuan, the number of soldiers guarding it didn’t matter in the slightest.

In this mortal realm, he was now unbeatable. If he truly wanted to, tearing down a fortified pass like this was no harder than a grown man knocking over a child’s toy castle.

“Are we heading to the Eastern Sea next?” Meng Xingxian asked.

She and Han Feng had been waiting a long time.

“First we’ll go to Central Capital, then to Moonriver Beach. It’s early autumn now. The flying ship won’t arrive until year’s end. This route won’t be out of the way,” Li Yuan replied.

He wanted to visit Zhen’er. And more than that, he intended to quietly take care of a few potential threats around her.

She was his daughter, after all.

He hadn’t been a part of her life, true, but that didn’t change the fact that he was her father.

“Then we’ll do as you say, Young Master,” Meng Xingxian replied with a nod.

The wolf carriage streaked across the Central Plains. Midway through the journey, two crows descended from the sky and landed atop the carriage.

Both were transformations of the Tree’ers. With second stage Heaven Souls, they were considered formidable fighters even in the Eastern Sea. Their arrival was no accident. They were here to cover for Meng Xingxian, Han Feng, and Ying Zhuoyao, all of whom were more suited to deception and sorcery than direct combat.

Now with the two Tree’ers as the sharp edge of the blade, and the three mysterious women as the hidden dagger, the team would be a fearsome force, even if Li Yuan wasn’t around.