Chapter 721 - Sailing the Void, Preaching in Cloud Capital - Part 1

At the foot of Mount Tai, Li Yuan had only walked a few steps when a strange feeling crept over him. Something wasn’t right.

He glanced at the glowing 2.7mil~41mil beside him. A giant question mark rose in his mind.

Why the hell am I still walking?

A dignified Martial Emperor walking? Riding a horse? Ridiculous.

With a flick of thought, he tapped into his power and gave his own

domain

another look.

What used to span 20 kilometers had now shrunk by thousands of times. His domain, once vast, was now barely the size of a small boat or bamboo raft.

To any sane person, becoming stronger meant your domain should expand, right? Not shrink into a puddle.

But as Li Yuan concentrated, he started to understand.

This shrunken, raft-sized space existed in a completely different environment from the one he knew. His old domain, the one stretching 20 kilometers long, used to float outside the Ancestral Land, like a small bubble clinging to a big one, much like how stars existed in the dark realm.

But this new boat-like domain wasn’t outside the Ancestral Land anymore. It was resting on top of it, in a place utterly vast, without color, without boundaries.

To say it was floating wasn’t quite right either.

It was parked, not

clinging

to the Ancestral Land, but simply...stopped there.

Clinging meant you couldn’t leave.

But stopping? That meant you

could

leave.

Li Yuan’s thoughts flickered. He locked onto a region, the capital city of the Great Tang. He realized that all he had to do was step into this little boat, give it a nudge, and he’d be there.

Not just that, he could see the Underworld beside the Ancestral Land. Once, it had orbited the Ancestral Land like a satellite, but now it was back. It was firmly attached again, giving off a mythic vibe, as if Heaven and Earth had been reconnected.

Yet at this moment, Li Yuan felt that it didn’t even matter whether the Underworld was connected or not.

He could reach it regardless.

All it took was to step into the boat, pick a destination, and go.

The only question was...

what

was this vast, colorless world surrounding it all?

He had never seen anything like it.

Even the starry sky had color—black, at the very least.

But this place? No color, no texture, no orientation.

Li Yuan couldn’t find words a human mind would understand to describe what he was seeing.

It was vast. It was empty. It was...a void.

“This isn’t the starry sky,” he murmured, finally coming to a conclusion.

Just then, a little girl wandered out from the trees beside him, dazed and absent-minded. Her hands clasped behind her back, she walked up and said in a soft, childlike voice, “Voidveil. I call it voidveil.”

Li Yuan turned at the sound. When he saw the girl, a deep sense of reverence welled up in his heart.

It was Master Ah Ting.

What exactly she had once taught him, he could no longer remember. But he was certain it had been something important.

At that moment, when he finally broke through, Li Yuan could sense the strange power radiating from his master. It wasn’t something an ordinary person could perceive. On the surface, she looked weak and childlike, but now, at the peak of second rank, Li Yuan could see it clearly. That frailty was just a projection.

She was his master, after all.

Li Yuan felt a deep sense of awe.

I’ve still got a long way to go

, he thought. After offering her a respectful bow, he asked, “What exactly is the voidveil?”

Ah Ting walked up beside him and answered in her soft, childlike voice, “The world is a boat, and the stars ride within it. The voidveil is a motionless river, and it carries the boat. But if the river wants to move, it needs time.”

In Li Yuan’s mind, a vivid image took shape. The Ancestral Land was floating within the voidveil surrounded by a sea of stars, and his small boat.

“So...I’m outside the world now?” Li Yuan asked, still trying to wrap his head around what he was experiencing.

Ah Ting shook her head. “You were. But not anymore. You’re still tied to this world, deeply... What you have now is a chain of boats.”

Then he understood. In this moment, his little boat was anchored to the great vessel that carried the Ancestral Land itself.

“I’ve transcended this world?” he asked in disbelief.

It felt like a dream, the kind that left his heart pounding in wonder.

In the previous era, the great conflict among the Archon Star and Outerborn hadn’t really been about unifying Yin and Yang. That had just been the method.

Their

true

goal was to escape this world, or at the very least wait until the world healed itself.

In other words, the ultimate aim that had once divided Polaris and the Northern Dipper, what they had fought and bled for, was something he had just...achieved?

He knew he had come far, made huge strides. But this? This felt like he’d suddenly leapt to the very end of the road.

“I really made it out?” Li Yuan turned to look again at the little boat moored in the voidveil.

If he simply drifted far enough...if he sailed out into the emptiness...would he finally be free of all this?

But Ah Ting shook her head. “You can’t leave.”

“Why not?” Li Yuan asked.

She replied, “This world is strange. You’re connected to it somehow... I don’t know how, but it’s like—”

Suddenly, she turned and ran.

Li Yuan dashed after her instinctively.

And then, she vanished.

Startled, he peered into the voidveil and saw, to his surprise, that Ah Ting had a little boat of her own floating within it.

Without hesitation, he followed her in.

In the blink of an eye, both boats stirred the stillness of the voidveil.

Just a moment ago, they had been at the foot of Mount Tai.

Now, in the next instant, they had arrived at the private estate of an aristocrat, thousands of kilometers away.

The courtyard was quiet, just a cat lazing about and a ball of yarn lying nearby.

Ah Ting pounced on the cat, scooped it up, and dangled the yarn in front of its nose. Within moments, the cat and the yarn were hopelessly entangled.

Holding up the mess of fur and thread like a trophy, Ah Ting declared, “It’s like this.”

“You’re the cat. The world is the yarn.”

“At first, you were doing your own thing. The yarn was over there and had nothing to do with you. But now...you’re all tangled up in it.”

Li Yuan stared at the yarn ball, and in that moment, a vivid memory surged up in his mind.

He saw the deep ocean currents, the booming sound of underwater waves. A stunning woman in azure, ethereal and otherworldly, lifted her hand and beckoned him from the depths.

Three radiant beams, each a different color, shot toward him from different directions, merging into his body.

He floated upward through the shimmering waters, mysterious and dreamlike, until he opened his eyes and heard Yan Yu calling him.

"Li Yuan, the millet jar is almost empty."

Now he understood what the

yarn

was. Those three beams of light were the yarn.

Three threads. Three powers. His powers.

And without them, he would never have made it this far.

He closed his eyes and murmured, “I belong to this world.”

Ah Ting blinked at him with wide, dazed eyes. After staring at him for a while, she wagged a finger.

“No, you don’t. You clearly jumped out already. This world

wants

you gone. It can’t wait to get rid of you. But you...you just had to get all tangled up in it again.”

Just then, a little girl’s voice rang out from outside the courtyard.

“Kitty? Kitty? Where are you hiding?”

A girl poked her head in from the entrance. She spotted the cat, now a tangled mess, limbs limp, clearly having lost the will to live. She ran over, gave Ah Ting a glare, and huffed, “Big Sis, you’re bullying the cat again!”

The cat wiggled its chubby body under the warm autumn sun, a well-fed creature if there ever was one.

Only now did the little girl notice the man standing quietly nearby.

He was wearing ragged clothes, hair wild and unkempt, looking more like a beggar than anything else.

Startled, she let out a yelp. “Big Sis, who’s that?”

Ah Ting replied simply, “My disciple.”

The girl burst into giggles.

“I’m hungry,” Ah Ting added.

Still holding the cat, the little girl dashed off, yelling, “Mama! Big Sis is hungry!”

Li Yuan watched the scene in mild disbelief. He never would’ve imagined that someone as powerful as his master would be living in such an ordinary household. Granted, for most people this would count as a pretty well-off home, but it still didn’t feel like the kind of place someone like her

should

be.

He didn’t dwell on it, though. Once the courtyard was empty again, he turned to Ah Ting and asked, “Why does this world want me gone so badly?”

Ah Ting raised her tiny fist and shouted, “Because of the stars!”

Then Ah Ting reached out with her other hand. She curled her pinky and slowly twisted it through the center of her tiny fist, squeezing it out bit by bit like a little sprout poking through soil.

“Starkin,” she said.

Li Yuan nodded thoughtfully. “Starkin are born from the stars. Stars are forged by the Path of Chaos, while starkin are shaped by the Path of Starkin. These are the two highest paths among the Six Paths, beyond the cycle of reincarnation.”

Ah Ting spread her hands wide again, then raised the tiny fist once more and called out, “World.”

This time, she pressed a finger from her other hand into the center of the fist and slowly poked it through.

“Path of the Celestial,” she said. Then she tilted her head and looked at Li Yuan. “Are

you

one?”

Li Yuan replied calmly, “I got where I am through my own hard work, step by step. My sweat has soaked into the soil of this world. Why wouldn’t I be one of its own?”

Ah Ting scampered off again, this time to the little flower garden in the courtyard. She grabbed a watering can and stared at the flowerbed for a while. Then she pressed her hand gently to the soil and said, “World.”

Next, she pointed up at the empty space above the garden. “Path of the Celestial.”

Then she pointed at the flowers. “Fertilizer.”

Finally, she raised the watering can and began to sprinkle water over the flowers, calling out in a sing-song voice, “Grow, little flowers, grow, and then wither quickly, too!”

“...” Li Yuan fell silent.

To anyone else, these were just the playful antics of a little girl.

But to him, there was something sacred and terrifying lurking beneath her gestures.

That single word,

fertilizer

, uttered in such an innocent voice carried the weight of dynasties rising and falling, the cries of countless lives, and the blood of untold heroes.

He stared silently for a while, then asked, “So I was just fertilizer, too?”

Ah Ting set down the watering can and said, “You

were

. But now...you’ve transcended. Sort of. Yet at the same time, you haven’t. You’re still tangled up in this world. It’s weird.”

While the two were talking, a well-dressed woman hurried into the courtyard. The moment her eyes fell on Li Yuan, she paused in surprise. Then something seemed to click. This young man had often visited her eldest daughter when they were younger, and had even called her

Master

.

Ah Ting had always been a bit mysterious. It wasn’t strange that someone might view her as a teacher. And this boy...well, he seemed like a decent person.

Still, propriety was propriety.

She turned her gaze slightly aside and said, “What happened to you? Hold on, I’ll have the servants draw you a hot bath and bring some fresh clothes.”

“Thank you,” Li Yuan replied.