Chapter 2140: This Is Your Chance

In truth, Shang Xia’s plan to refine the Star Devouring Silk with the essence of his Dipper Star Formation and transform it into Starlight Yarn was originally meant to be a long and meticulous process.

However, he clearly did not wish to waste too much time on the matter. Thus, he had gathered the full strength of the Stargazing Hall, even temporarily opening a secret realm within the void and risking exposure of his Fate Stars, all for the sake of greatly shortening the process.

In fact, Shang Xia was fully aware that this was probably the Star Origin Lord’s open scheme. The Star Origin Lord must have calculated that Shang Xia would never be willing to spend years slowly channeling the essence of his Fate Star to temper the silk. That was precisely why the Star Origin Lord had so readily imparted to him the secret art for crafting the Starlight Curtain.

If that was the case, then so be it, Shang Xia would meet him head-on once more!

His greatest source of confidence lay in the fact that he simply did not care if his so-called Fate Stars were exposed. Ironically, everyone else still believed that it was his greatest vulnerability.

And among them, no one was more fixated on this than the Star Origin Lord himself. He had already pinpointed the approximate region of the void where Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation resided, and had even guessed that Shang Xia had more than one Fate Star!

Although Shang Xia’s urging made Yuan Qiuyuan feel uneasy, the latter still chose to follow through.

As Yuan Qiuyuan aligned the sky above the observatory with the void where Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation was located, Shang Xia’s heart stirred. The stars in his dantian that were part of his Big Dipper Star Origin began to resonate across the vast void with those distant stars.

In the next instant, within the star-filled firmament above the observatory, several exceptionally bright stars emerged, forming a distinct ladle shape across the heavens.

Only a few Stargazers whose mastery of the art had reached the fifth rank faintly perceived that, around those seven blazing stars, there were also two or three dimmer stars. Hidden within them was a faint and mysterious connection to the seven main ones.

Moreover, that was because Shang Xia was deliberately revealing them. Without his cooperation, even with the keen sight of Yuan Qiuyuan, Yan Ming, Xin Lu, Zhang Yusheng, and the others, it would have been nearly impossible to detect those two or three hidden stars.

Among the Stargazers on the observatory whose attainments exceeded the fifth rank, aside from the two from the Heavenly Star Palace, the members of Tongyou Institution knew that Shang Xia referred to his Fate Stars as the Dipper Star Formation. They also knew that he possessed more than one. However... None of them imagined there were so many of them!

Even Yuan Qiuyuan and Xin Lu, who had personally assisted Shang Xia in selecting his Fate Stars and had accompanied him deep into the void to observe them, found that the present arrangement of the stars had changed drastically from what they had once seen.

Moreover, now that Shang Xia displayed the Dipper Star Formation in their entirety, the mysteries and profundities they revealed were far beyond what the former had shown. Even when the astrologers pushed their perception to the limit, they still found the grand star formation before them unfathomable.

“This is... This is an opportunity to glimpse at the seventh rank of stargazing! I wonder if I can grasp it...” Yuan Qiuyuan thought, though without much confidence.

Yan Ming gazed upward at the formation shining among the countless stars. She could sense boundless profundity within reach, yet no matter how she tried to touch it, she remained a hair’s breadth away.

Yan Ming had long known that her talent in stargazing was limited, at least compared to Yuan Qiuyuan or Xin Lu.

Her earlier progress had come mostly because the Tongyou Institution, lacking Stargazers, had poured all its resources into cultivating her.

Now that the institution’s training system for Stargazers had matured and a proper hierarchy had formed, she had gradually shifted her focus back to martial cultivation. In recent years, she had even surpassed the threshold and become a high-level True Immortal, catching up with, and even exceeding, Yuan Qiuyuan when it came to combat strength.

Xin Lu, on the other hand, was the opposite. Her potential in stargazing was second only to Yuan Qiuyuan’s, yet her aptitude in martial cultivation was mediocre. Though she had managed to reach the peak of the Martial Dipper Realm with the institution’s generous support, she had long been stuck there, unable to take the final step into the Martial Void Realm.

By then, her stagnant cultivation realm had actually become an obstacle hindering her progress in stargazing.

But as Shang Xia revealed the mystery of his Dipper Star Formation before them, Xin Lu suddenly sensed that she might have found a path to transcend the shackles of the Martial Dipper Realm and elevate her mastery of the arts of stargazing to the next level.

Compared to the three core Grand Stargazers of the Tongyou Institution’s Stargazing Hall, the one who benefited the most this time was perhaps the rising star, Zhang Yusheng.

This rank five Grand Stargazer of the Stargazing Hall had previously seized a breakthrough opportunity through Shang Xia’s guidance. Hence, among everyone present, he was likely the most familiar with the aura of Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation, perhaps even more so than Yuan Qiuyuan and the others.

As soon as Shang Xia fully revealed them, Zhang Yusheng knew that he had likely grasped the chance to advance to a rank six Grand Stargazer!

𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Of course, even for the two rank five Grand Stargazers from the Heavenly Star Palace, it was a rare and precious opportunity.

However, since they had been unfamiliar with Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation from the start, their harvest naturally could not compare to that of those from the Tongyou Institution.

Yet beyond all the Stargazers within the temporarily separated pocket of space, there was still one person who stared at the vast, descending starry canopy above the Star Observatory with near-obsessive fascination.

“The Dipper Star Formation? How could someone with no real knowledge of the dao of formation be so certain that his Fate Stars can form a natural array? And that it might even be the key to breaking through my bottleneck as a rank seven Formation Grandmaster?!”

Although Chu Jia’s heart was filled with doubt, the moment she witnessed Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation manifest amidst the heavens, she found herself utterly captivated. All earlier skepticism was forgotten.

“Perhaps... it really is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.”

By this time, Shang Xia’s so-called Fate Stars had been displayed through the Star Observatory for quite some time.

With the combined assistance of the gathered Stargazers, the essence drawn from the stars in the Dipper Star Formation began to cascade down in torrents, forcing out and displacing the starlight that had once filled the space.

Yet the displaced, non-dipper essence was beneficial to the Stargazers and those of lower rank, who quickly gathered it through the Star Observatory’s mechanisms for their own use.

As more and more of the pure essence accumulated and thickened within the space, Shang Xia finally took out the bolt of Star Devouring Silk that was 9.9 feet long and 3.3 feet wide, and flung it high into the air above the observatory.