Chapter 2237: ETERNAL

When Kou Chongxue’s sword light sliced through the barrier that had severed the flow of the essence of the stars from the Dipper Star Formation, the transformation in Shang Xia’s dantian finally faced no further obstruction.

The radiance that had already emerged from the vortex in his dantian suddenly expanded, and the vortex itself began to condense entirely into a single point. In the next instant, the golden radiance drew inward, compressing and swirling tightly around that point until it completely solidified.

At last, a perfectly round, gleaming golden pill, radiant and pure, appeared and floated at the very center of Shang Xia’s dantian.

The Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill had formed!

In that instant, Shang Xia understood. He had forged the key to the Eight Trigram Realm, and the gate to it stood fully open before him.

But it was not over yet. The moment the golden pill took shape in his dantian, its power began to spread through his body.

Though he had long suspected that the refining of the Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill would mark the true beginning of his ascension, it was only after seeing it for himself that he confirmed it completely. The moment the pill was formed, he had already stepped into the Eight Trigram Realm.

The golden pill still hovered in the center of his dantian, but it took the place of his Big Dipper Star Origin, and the misty aura it released carried the power of eternity.

Only then did Shang Xia realize that with the formation of the Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill, it became the source of his eternity energy.

The energy spilling out from it spread through his body, infusing every part of him with its power.

At the same time, he became aware that once his entire being was completely fused with the power of eternity, he might truly attain immortality and indestructibility in the purest sense.

Yet even when the fusion was complete, the metamorphosis did not stop.

The surrounding void continued to surge with sentient origin qi, flowing ceaselessly into his dantian. Much of it was not drawn by Shang Xia himself. It was entering of its own accord, as though impatiently awaiting his next transformation.

Naturally, this change kept his attention fixed within. Soon, he noticed that as the origin qi fused into the golden pill, delicate and mysterious cloud-like patterns began to surface on its once flawless golden shell.

As those intricate lines took form, Shang Xia gradually discovered that he had established a new kind of link, not only with the surrounding space but with the Ninefold Star Field.

When he tried to delve deeper into the connection, he found that he could, through the golden pill in his dantian, create a link to eight distinct Star Regions at the other parts of the Ninefold Star Field.

Those eight regions corresponded precisely to the eight directions where the foreign Star Fields merged into the Chaotic Sea of Stars.

Of course, the Heaven Observation Star Region, which had become the center of the Grand Star Field was already deeply connected to him long before the birth of the Grand Star Field.

As for why the connections existed... Perhaps it was because during his preparation for his advancement, Shang Xia had gathered origin qi from each of the different Star Field. Or perhaps it was because he had repeatedly opened void channels to accelerate their fusion, or it might even be because after the fusion, he had again channeled the refined origin qi through the void to hasten the transformation, thus completing the transformation of origin qi within the Ninefold Star Field.

...

But as Shang Xia attempted to communicate with the vast Grand Star Field, or more precisely, as the newly born Ninefold Star Field poured its chaotic and boundless stream of information back into his mind through their link, it was like a flood crashing into his consciousness.

Had he not already entered the Eight Trigram Realm, his soul, now transformed by the Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill, might not have been able to withstand the onslaught of such overwhelming and intricate information.

After a long process of digestion, he finally began to sift through the torrent of information, extracting fragments of meaning and uncovering truths buried deep in the world’s foundation, secrets that resolved doubts he had carried for years.

The most critical revelation among those secrets concerned the upper limit of martial cultivation that the new Grand Star Field could sustain.

Because the Ninefold Star Field was born from the fusion of nine different Star Fields, even after opening the path to the Eighth Order, it could support only nine experts of that level in total.

In that instant, Shang Xia understood why so many powerful beings had rushed to begin their breakthroughs at the exact moment the Grand Star Field was formed.

𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Especially the Star River Stowaways, those ancient wanderers adrift between Star Fields, who had desperately hastened the fusion process. It was all to secure one of the limited slots available for ascension to the Martial Eternity Realm.

As for how they had known the secret even before the ascension, Shang Xia realized now that he had suspected it all along. Others could easily have reached the same conclusion.

After all, the Star River had flowed through countless ages and countless Star Fields. Those who survived its timeless current, evading the erosion of eternity, might well have gleaned such truths from other Grand Star Fields, and spread them quietly through the cosmos.

Yet even that revelation was not the most shocking.

What truly made Shang Xia’s heart tremble was another truth. He learned that with the birth of the Ninefold Star Field, the origin within it was strong enough to support a single being’s breakthrough to the Ninth Order!

When he learned about it, Shang Xia froze completely. For a moment, even his soul started to waver.

Fortunately, the Eight Trigram Immortal Golden Pill had formed, preventing any mishap from happening. As the transformation spread through his body, it became irreversible. When the mysterious cloud patterns surfaced on the surface of the golden pill, connecting him directly to the origin of the Grand Star Field, it confirmed that he had stabilized his new cultivation realm.

No matter what happened next, his cultivation base would no longer falter.

When he turned his thoughts back to the revelation, he finally understood why the Star Origin Lord had gone to such lengths to obstruct him.

The Ninefold Star Field could support nine beings at the Eighth Order, but the Star Origin Lord had shown no such madness toward any of his other rivals.

The reason was clear. Everything lay in the single opportunity to breakthrough to the Ninth Order.

And the privilege, by all signs, would most likely favor the lineage of the Chaotic Sea of Stars, especially the experts of the Heaven Observation Star Region who now stood at the center of the new Grand Star Field.