Chapter 2144: Swayed

The Star Origin Lord’s Fate Star had been exposed.

From the very start, their battle had been one full of schemes and plots.

When the Star Origin Lord first passed the method of crafting the Starlight Curtain to Shang Xia, the contest between them had already been laid bare.

To refine the Star Devouring Silk into Starlight Yarn, Shang Xia needed to draw the essence of the stars in the Dipper Star Formation for an extended period. That necessity inevitably presented the Stargazers of the Six Essence Heavenly Field with a chance to pinpoint the location of his Fate Star.

By the same logic, even if Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation were exposed, no one other than the Star Origin Lord himself had the strength to truly threaten him.

Yet, if the Star Origin Lord wished to act immediately, and neither his true body nor his avatars could arrive in time. His only option was to strike across the void.

To wield such immense power from afar, the Star Origin Lord would naturally need to channel it through his own Fate Star. That, in turn, increased the risk of exposing its location.

This was likely the only chance the Stargazers of the Essence Luxuriant Heavenly Field would ever have to discover the position of the Star Origin Lord’s Fate Star. And events did seem to unfold just as they had foreseen.

𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

By using the exposure of the Dipper Star Formation and enduring the Star Origin Lord’s assault as bait, Shang Xia had enabled Yuan Qiuyuan and the other Stargazers to pinpoint an approximate location of the Star Origin Lord’s Fate Star in the vast void.

Though doubt still lingered in Shang Xia’s heart, his arrow was already nocked, there was no turning back.

Shrouding the region of void in darkness with Dipper Annihilation, Shang Xia pinpointed a single unique star. He didn’t hesitate to unleash his martial intent.

But in the very next moment, that peculiar star, the supposed Star Origin Lord’s Fate Star, shattered under Shang Xia’s divine strike. It dissolved into wisps of unfamiliar origin qi drifting across the void.

Shang Xia recognized it instantly. It was the origin qi of the Illusory Sea of Stars.

Although he had expected the possibility, disappointment still welled up within him. Worse, this maneuver had cost them the fragile advantage they had just managed to seize against the Star Origin Lord.

The only silver lining was the confirmation that even for the masters of the Illusory Sea of Stars, creating, or rather, simulating a false Fate Star was no easy feat. It required an enormous expenditure of origin qi.

Shang Xia’s Crimson Soul Tablet had already absorbed a considerable amount of that same energy, yet he did not mind gathering more.

However, he had little time to do so. The moment he destroyed the wrong star, the Star Origin Lord struck again, targeting the region of space where the Dipper Star Formation resided.

This time, the Star Origin Lord did not use his massive stellar hand. Instead, he summoned the brilliance of countless surrounding stars, weaving their light into a vast barrier meant to seal off the void around the Dipper Star Formation, severing Shang Xia’s connection to them entirely.

Having expended tremendous inner qi in his failed strike, Shang Xia was momentarily unable to react. He could only watch as an invisible screen spread across the heavens, cutting him off from the flow of essence from the Dipper Star Formation.

But then, the Star Origin Lord miscalculated.

According to both his judgment and the records of the Heaven Observation Sect, the moment a cultivator’s connection to their Fate Star was severed, their strength should weaken by at least 30 percent, and that weakness would deepen with time until they were completely powerless.

Confident in that outcome, the Star Origin Lord turned his focus toward destroying the Dipper Star Formation, intending to turn Shang Xia’s temporary loss permanent.

Instead, what awaited him was an ambush. It was a combined assault of Shang Xia and the Dipper Star Formation.

What baffled the Star Origin Lord even more was that Shang Xia showed no sign of weakening. On the contrary, due to the Star Origin Lord’s current positioning, the power erupting from the Dipper Star Formation rivaled Shang Xia’s own.

How is this even possible?!

As the last Star Origin Lord of the Heaven Observation Sect, and the ultimate inheritor of its martial lineage, he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. For a fleeting instant, he wondered if Shang Xia had, in his own way, surpassed the legacy of the Heaven Observation Sect entirely and forged a new path of martial evolution that transcended his own.

The thought vanished as quickly as it came, but Shang Xia’s onslaught did not slow in the slightest.

The newly erected barrier shattered under the combined might of Shang Xia’s Falling Dipper and the radiant explosion in the distance.

In that instant, the tide turned. The hunter had become the hunted. It was time to carry out the Tongyou Institution special, beating their opponents when they were down.

Though the Star Origin Lord had fooled Shang Xia once by using the Illusory Sea of Stars’ technique to fabricate a false Fate Star, forcing him to miss and concealing his true weakness, his power still ultimately originated from the Six Essence Heavenly Field.

If Shang Xia could not find his Fate Star, then he would simply destroy the Heavenly Field

.

After executing Falling Dipper and shattering the barrier the Star Origin Lord created, the energy that remained merged with the Dipper Star Formation. Following the trail of the Star Origin Lord’s energy, it pierced the void, appearing the next instant right outside the Six Essence Heavenly Field!

The turbulent void currents surrounding the Heavenly Field were torn apart. Since the day the Star Origin Lord had established the Six Essence Heavenly FIeld, not a single person had ever breached his territory... Until now!

For the first time, through sheer power alone, Shang Xia forced a path into the Six Essence Heavenly Field.

Since it tore through too many layers of protection, the remnant energy was easily dispersed by the Star Origin Lord. However, the meaning of the strike far outweighed its destructive might.

For centuries, though the Star Origin Lord’s schemes beyond his Heavenly Field went both ways. He succeeded at some, and he failed at times. However, there was one thing that remained constant. He stood at the very apex of strength in the Heaven Observation Star Region. The Six Essence Heavenly Field itself had become a forbidden zone none dared to mess with.

Before Shang Xia, no one had ever succeeded in striking within its borders.

Even Shang Xia, in all his past clashes with the Star Origin Lord, including several that took place near the very edge of the Heavenly Field, had never managed to truly threaten it.

Those encounters had only reinforced, again and again, the image of the Star Origin Lord as invincible within the minds of all the other Sages of the Heaven Observation Star Region.

But this time, though that image was not shattered, it had, undeniably, begun to crack.