Chapter 434: Discovery
"A hope of reaching the Void-Piercing Realm!" Li Hanqiu, Li Qingshan, Wan Liugui, and the others drew a deep breath. They knew exactly how much weight this gift carried.
"That's the standard of a level 6 world," Wan Liugui couldn't help saying.
A level 6 world. In the starry sky beyond the North Sea Star, a system for ranking worlds circulated, dividing them into nine levels. At the very top stood the legendary Immortal Realm.
Below it came the level 8 worlds, which possessed a Gate of the Immortal Realm; the level 7 worlds, capable of giving birth to Dao Lords; the level 6 worlds, able to sustain the cultivation of the Void-Piercing, Void-Refining, and Void-Shattering cultivators; and the level 5 worlds, the tier the Great Cangwu World had previously belonged to.
As for level 4 worlds, they could sustain Golden Core cultivators at most. Level 3 worlds fell further still, sustaining only Foundation Building cultivators. A level 2 world was only slightly stronger than the original Yaoguang World, and a level 1 world was an ordinary world without any cultivation legacy at all.
A rise from level 5 to level 6 might look like a single step, but for the civilization of that world, it was nothing less than the leap from a stellar-level civilization to a galactic-level one.
"Everyone in the Great Cangwu World, every force in it, will remember your contribution for the rest of their lives, Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang," Wan Liugui said solemnly.
Calling Yaoguang a pioneer of civilization would not have been an overstatement.
"You're welcome. After all, I count as a member of the Great Cangwu World too." Yaoguang said, then continued, "Choose one Void-Piercing battle immortal to stay in Cangwu and oversee the situation here. Also, this trip has already kept me away for more than a year. Cangwu is simply too far from the North Sea for messages to get through, and I have no idea what has happened since I left. To prevent any unforeseen developments arising, I plan to head back to the North Sea Star first."
At that point, he added, "The Cangbei warship will stay in Cangwu. Whenever you feel like leaving, take it back yourselves. With a Dao Artifact warship, plus the many spatial nodes along the route, the journey is smooth enough. The trip back only takes a few months."
Li Hanqiu, Wan Liugui, and the others understood perfectly what a demanding position Yaoguang now occupied. Far too many matters required him to make a decision.
Besides, even though no one around the southern domain had dared to cause trouble during the year he was away, the difference between his presence in the southern domain and his absence from it was the difference between heaven and earth.
So, naturally, no one tried to keep him. Li Hanqiu even stepped forward and said, "Everything here that needed handling has been handled. With Xie Wu's support, the Nine Cauldrons Sect has developed very well over the years, and it's hardly inferior to how it was when we left.
"And half a year ago, the Infinite Star Palace, Immortal Alliance, Thousand-Beast Sect, Dharma Heaven Pavilion, Lunar Sect, Golden Temple, and the other forces have either merged into the Nine Cauldrons Sect or have left for the North Sea Star with Xie Wu. Now that unification is complete, the Nine Cauldrons Sect is more prosperous than it has ever been, and it doesn't need us watching over it. So I'll go with you, Deputy Sect Master..."
"No need." Yaoguang waved a hand. "You know how things are in the southern domain. It isn't lacking one Void-Piercing cultivator. Besides, as you said yourself, the Nine Cauldrons Sect has only just finished unifying the Great Cangwu World. There will be many things to deal with in the meantime. Stay in Cangwu a while longer. Once things are fully on track in a decade or two, it won't be too late to return to the North Sea Star."
"That..." Li Hanqiu hesitated, but after a moment he said, "Then let my master and Li Qingshan stay here. There's plenty to handle at the Southern Capital on the North Sea Star as well, especially with the southern domain waging war against the Yin Lunar Sect. A Void-Piercing cultivator like me may not be able to set foot on that battlefield, but I can still contribute something."
Yaoguang didn't press the matter. "Arrange it as you see fit, then. We depart in three days."
Li Hanqiu nodded. From the way Yaoguang had spent almost the entire year out in the starry sky beyond, he could tell Yaoguang held no deep feelings for Cangwu.
It made sense, though. It hadn't been long between his arrival in Cangwu and his departure. It was too short a time for any real attachment to build.
On top of that, everyone he knew had moved to the North Sea Star with the Nine Cauldrons Sect back then. For him, this trip to the Great Cangwu World truly held little meaning.
"We'll set out together in three days then," Li Hanqiu replied, and started making more arrangements.
As for Yaoguang, he followed the insights he had gained while laying the array down, descended into Cangwu, and headed straight for its depths.
While setting up the Thick Earth Void-Suppressing Array, he had vaguely sensed that the spatial node the Great Cangwu World occupied shouldn't have collapsed the way it did. The collapse of the entire void node seemed to hint at outside interference, not something natural.
At the time, he had been busy completing the array and had let it be. Now, with three days to spare, he used Void Flicker to travel straight to the core deep within the Great Cangwu World.
The pressure and temperature at the core of the Great Cangwu World were both staggering. But to Yaoguang, even the pressure and temperature of a supergiant star weren't worth mentioning, let alone those of a world nurtured in a collapsed spatial node. Soon, he arrived in the world's depths.
"A top-tier stellar core. If someone could carry this off, it would probably sell for well over a hundred thousand Pure Yang Grand Pills." Yaoguang felt the energy saturating everything around him.
But after a moment of careful sensing, an odd look crossed his face.
"It doesn't add up."
This spatial node really did seem to have collapsed naturally, a change caused by shifts in the laws of the universe. It was like a house on a cliff collapsing during an earthquake: a natural phenomenon, not a man-made one.
"Unless someone has mastered the power of earthquakes," Yaoguang said in a low voice.
Or, in this case, the power to shake the universe's laws.
Yaoguang observed for a while, then abruptly activated the Limitless Sword. The power of the Great Dao of void projected onto his body through the Limitless Sword, and at once the movements of the surrounding Great Dao of void appeared clearly before his eyes.
The Great Dao of void inherently carried the capacity to bear all things in the world. By channeling its power through himself and then using that power to probe his surroundings, it was as if he had bound the stretch of void holding the Great Cangwu World into a book he could examine and read at will, all secrets laid bare before his eyes.
Under this peculiar vision, the traces left behind by the void node's collapse were gradually captured by Yaoguang.
"No matter how I look at it, this is a natural phenomenon at the cosmic level. Except... it may not be the kind of natural phenomenon I'm familiar with," Yaoguang said.
Whether it truly matched his conjecture, he would still have to verify.
The three days passed quickly. Besides Li Hanqiu, Tang Fenghua and a dozen or so cultivators planned to return with him as well. Yaoguang said nothing more about it.
The second Dao Artifact warship, prepared well in advance, powered up and slowly rose into the sky as Wan Liugui, Li Qingshan, and the others saw them off.
"We won't head for the North Sea Star just yet." In the control room, Yaoguang spread open a star chart and quickly marked out several coordinates. "Let's take a look at these places first. Go in order of distance, nearest first."
"Yes." Li Hanqiu had no idea what this was about, but he carried out Yaoguang's orders without hesitation.
The warship flew on, and in just four days it arrived smoothly at the region Yaoguang had indicated. Here, too, existed a world much like the Great Cangwu World.
The Great Heavenly River World. It was somewhat smaller in scale than the Great Cangwu World, spanning barely four million kilometers, and, perhaps thanks to better luck, it had never been invaded by fiendish cultivators. The entire world was perfectly calm.
"Wait on the warship. I'm going down for a look." With that, Yaoguang used a single Void Flicker and appeared inside the world.
His mighty psychic thought rapidly fanned out, soon enveloping the entire world.
"An ancient cultivation system..." Yaoguang said to himself. "Three Psyche-Transforming Realm cultivators, several hundred Nascent Souls, tens of thousands of Golden Cores..."
Without disturbing the three Psyche-Transforming Realm cultivators who lorded over this world, he went straight to the depths of its stellar core, searching for traces the same way he had searched for them in Cangwu.
Compared to Cangwu, the traces of the collapse of a spatial node hidden deep within this world were far harder to notice. If Yaoguang hadn't pressed on with the conviction that something here had to be off, he wouldn't have found any useful information.
It took a full half month before Yaoguang finally found signs of this spatial node's destruction. But those signs pointed to a cosmic catastrophe all the same.
Yaoguang pondered for a while, collected his data, and slipped away without alerting a single soul in that world. Even its three Psyche-Transforming Realm venerables never knew that an overlord capable of dominating a galaxy had visited their world.
"On to the next target," Yaoguang instructed once he was back on the warship.
Li Hanqiu took the helm again. This time they flew for six days before arriving at yet another place resembling the Great Cangwu World.
Watching this, Li Hanqiu couldn't help feeling moved. "So the universe holds many worlds like our Great Cangwu World. They're just somewhat smaller in scale, that's all."
Yaoguang didn't reply and went off to search this world for information. That search took another half month. When he returned, they hurried on to the fourth location without pause.
After that came the fifth, the sixth, the eighth, the tenth, the fifteenth...
At first, Yaoguang had seemed to be searching almost at random, but the more he searched, the more he seemed to find. In the end, it cost them three full years. In those three years, using spatial nodes and the Dao Artifact warship's ability to traverse the void, they crossed no less than ten million light-years.
All of this made Li Hanqiu's expression grow heavy as he piloted the warship. After all, Yaoguang had clearly said he wanted to return to the North Sea Star as soon as possible, yet he had allowed himself to be delayed this long on the way. Anyone could tell he had discovered something.
And anything that a figure on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings like Yaoguang treated with such importance...
***
"Shall we head to the twenty-fifth location?" Li Hanqiu asked the moment Yaoguang reappeared on the warship.
"No need," Yaoguang said, quickly opening the star chart.
Then he linked together the twenty-four locations he had visited over the past few years. Remarkably, the twenty-four nodes formed a line.
Yaoguang extended the line along its own pattern. The straight line became an arc, and the arc kept widening until it closed into a circle. A circle of immense scale.
Seeing the scale that circle represented, never mind a Void-Piercing cultivator like Li Hanqiu, but even Yaoguang, who already ranked among the notable figures on the North Sea Star, felt shocked to the point of being left speechless.
"A billion light-years?!" Li Hanqiu glanced at the figure marked on the star chart and couldn't help but ask, "What is this?"
Yaoguang didn't answer. He was silent for a long while, and then his hand moved across the star chart, expanding the circle into a sphere! At last, a super-colossal sphere a billion light-years in diameter appeared before their eyes.
Only then did Yaoguang explain, "A cosmic catastrophe."
But then he shook his head. "Except a cosmic catastrophe alone can't explain it! Rather than a catastrophe..."
He thought of the spatial nodes at every one of those locations, all collapsed as if by common accord.
"I lean more toward the destruction of a civilization, or even... the energy released by the fall of a great being."