Chapter 2235: Sever!

Shang Xia had no idea what was happening outside. Immersed in his breakthrough, he focused on the changes happening in his dantian.

As the Big Dipper Star Origin began fusing with the various treasures and essences to refine the Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill, a faint strand of Eternity Spirit emerged. At that very moment, Shang Xia sensed that his advancement had finally entered the proper course.

As long as the inflow of origin qi remained steady and uninterrupted, and he suffered no disturbance from the outside world, the transformation would continue naturally until a true Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill condensed within his dantian.

Yet the process was destined to take a long time, and from what he could tell, there existed no shortcut.

It was precisely because he understood it that, at the very start of his breakthrough, Shang Xia had sent out a transmission, hoping that his External Avatar and the Giant Ape Emperor could arrive in time to stand guard for him.

Afterward, his entire consciousness was devoted to nurturing the rank eight advancement medicine within his dantian, leaving no attention for anything else.

He had no sense of how much time had passed. Even his soul had gradually sunk into quiet dormancy, aligning itself with the steady growth of the Eternity Spirit forming within his dantian.

Then, at a certain moment, though the inflow of external origin qi remained stable, the growth rate of the Eternity Spirit forming within his dantian suddenly accelerated for no reason.

The abrupt change woke Shang Xia.

Though not yet fully awake from his meditative trance, he could faintly perceive that the origin energy flowing into his body from outside seemed imbued with consciousness. From the instant it entered him, it refined itself, moving smoothly through his meridians before finally converging into the vortex within his dantian.

What amazed him further was that the influx of energy shared a faint but distinct resonance with his Big Dipper Star Origin. Though the similarity was minimal, it made the refining process effortless and almost natural.

Throughout the process, the foreign energy coursed through his body as if guided by instinct, merging into his dantian with the precision of a returning swallow to its nest. It was so eager, in fact, that he could almost feel its impatience to merge with him.

Then, with a flash of insight, Shang Xia suddenly understood the cause of the strange change.

The energy was probably part of the essence he had once channeled in the various Star Regions by connecting them to the various Star Fields. Every time the process was disrupted back then, the energy would disperse into the surroundings and the rest of the Star Field. Now, it was back, drawn to him once more as he started his ascension to the Eight Trigram Realm.

That would mean that the origin qi in the Ninefold Star Field had fully completed its transformation and its origin qi was flowing freely.

Back then, when Shang Xia used the Crimson Soul Tablet to filter and channel the origin qi of the various Star Fields, a trace of his inner qi had mingled in. But compared to the massive volume he sent out, that trace had been insignificant, barely a drop in the ocean.

After the complete transformation, the amount of origin qi returning to him was thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of times greater than before.

That single stream of inner qi he had infused long ago had become the seed and catalyst for the Ninefold Star Field’s grand transformation, and now, with the cycle completed, the returning energy served as the Grand Star Field’s tribute and nourishment to him.

For Shang Xia, who had once guided the Essence Luxuriant World’s evolution from its early days as the Azure Origin World into a full-fledged Heavenly Field, this kind of phenomenon was not unfamiliar.

Thus, where he had previously seen no means of accelerating the growth of the Eternity Spirit within his dantian, he suddenly found himself with one.

His advancement toward the Eight Trigram Realm, which had once seemed a long, gradual climb, showed clear signs of speeding up.

But just as this realization dawned, he received a subtle feeling of the outside world.

It was not that his divine soul had been disturbed. Such interference would have disrupted his breakthrough and doomed it to failure. Instead, the feeling was carried by the sentient origin qi of the Grand Star Field itself.

Through some mysterious means, it conveyed the situation outside. It allowed him to feel that his surrounding void was under attack.

Shang Xia immediately understood, someone was trying to sabotage his advancement. Yet for the time being, they had been held back and could not affect him.

Even so, the feedback from the origin qi could not deliver exact details. Only when it accumulated to great density could its latent consciousness share scattered fragments of awareness with Shang Xia’s divine soul.

That alone meant the threat was close... It was dangerously close.

Turning his focus back to his dantian, he saw that his Eternity Spirit was filling the vortex, but the true Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill still had not taken shape.

He couldn’t tell how long it would take either.

Would his enemies truly allow him enough time?

Shang Xia knew perfectly well that with all the contingencies he had activated, the enemy shouldn’t have been able to get so close.

If even the origin qi around him had been disturbed, it could only mean that they had failed to neutralize all external threats. The true danger was already at his doorstep.

At that instant, a premonition struck him. He abruptly lifted his gaze toward the void above.

More precisely, his sight seemed to pierce the barrier of space itself, reaching toward the Dipper Star Formation in the Star River.

He could not truly see that far, but through his connection with it, he sensed that something, or someone, was tampering with it.

"The art of stargazing..."

It was the Star Origin Lord, or perhaps the methods left behind by the ancient Heaven Observation Sect!

𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Though Shang Xia’s Dipper Star Formation lay hidden deep within the Star River’s dense cluster of stars, he knew the Star Origin Lord and his followers could never pinpoint it precisely.

But they didn’t need to.

They only had to approximate their location in the Star River and sever his connection to the essence flowing from them.