Vast Blue Ocean!

Inside a lounge at Fortress 13.

Kong Yin and the Niu Brothers stood in the corner, looking toward the other side with complicated expressions.

Kong Yang wore a fawning smile as he nodded and bowed at the light screen.

"Minister Ye, Li Qingshan's fall really cannot be blamed on me. I already did everything I could, but I simply couldn't change his mind."

"I'm not here to listen to nonsense."

Ye Hao lifted his eyelids slightly, his fingers tapping against the tabletop one beat at a time.

"Tell me, why did you apply to enter the rift again?"

"Of course, it was for military merit!"

Kong Yang bowed even lower as he explained,

"Minister Ye, Li Qingshan is one thing, but if Fei Xingye and the other two go in as well, then I'll truly have no hope of 'reaching the summit'..."

"Kong Yang!"

A deep bark cut him off. Ye Hao stared fixedly into the camera, then suddenly began to laugh.

"I admit it. I underestimated you before!"

Though he was smiling, his gaze grew colder by the moment.

"Everyone standing upon the chessboard should know their own place."

"Li Qingshan's fall has buried the Horn Sector's future honor, but the future is still the future."

"But if something happens to you, it will immediately affect the plans we have laid over so many years!"

"I hope you understand clearly exactly what you are doing!"

Kong Yang froze, then slowly straightened his back and nodded solemnly.

"Minister Ye, I understand!"

As soon as the words fell, his fingers moved.

He hung up and blocked him!

Across from him, Kong Yin and the other three were all stunned.

"Alliance Leader..."

"Brother, you..."

Kong Yang drew a deep breath. With a swish, he snapped open his folding fan in his right hand and gently waved it.

"Since we came here to learn how to be human, then stop being dogs."

Billions of light-years away,

Within the dazzling passage, starlight twisted into threads, tangling and winding as it spun like a kaleidoscope.

Boom!

Boom, boom!

A peculiar metallic clang echoed through the passage. The black spacecraft shuddered repeatedly as it continued charging ahead.

The bridge was utterly empty; even the internal passage doors had been omitted.

"Just as expected of Xi Na!"

Feeling the ceaseless tremors beneath his feet and the ship's broadcast system, which still showed no sign of activity, Li Qingshan wore a helpless expression.

"As expected, she removed the alarm system too!"

Under Xi Na's modifications, travel speed was often directly proportional to the speed of disintegration. He had no idea how long this ship could hold together.

Li Qingshan shook his head, suppressing his stray thoughts as he recalled the battle just now.

"Shattering stars, tearing open the Hyperspace Channel, crossing the starry sky with the fleshly body..."

"As expected of the Grand Elder. His strength was far beyond those frail seventh-order aliens, and even surpassed that weakling God Phase from before."

They could both shatter stars, but while he could do it, that weakling God Phase could do the same.

Yet it could never have done so as effortlessly as the Grand Elder, shattering an entire planet with a single strike.

Not to mention its methods of instantly "polluting" an entire planet, or transforming into a "bloody great sun" and irradiating an entire star system.

"Only a seventh-order being like that can truly be called a great power!"

Li Qingshan lightly pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

That was also why he had fled without hesitation before.

He did not fear "pollution," but those terrifying tentacles that could easily shatter stars were not something he could withstand.

At least, that was the case without using his "trump card."

As he pondered, his gaze once more flicked toward the available time section of the panel.

Available time: 48,732,654 years, 319 days

The power of the Dharma Aspect originated from one's own "principles" refining Star Origin Force.

Nearly fifty million years of available time was enough to condense the Dharma Aspect once more after self-destruction.

At the very least, it could be done before the Dharma Aspect had undergone the washing of real-world energy and completed its "materialization."

But self-destruction was not without limits. The Sixth-Order Dharma Aspect was built from his own principles, and there was simply no such thing as being unable to unleash its full power.

Even if he burned away all the power of his Dharma Aspect, Li Qingshan could not be certain it would be enough to kill the Grand Elder and level the entire star system.

More importantly,

Back when he had "established his Dao in ten days," all ten days had been spent nourishing it with Star Origin Force.

A ten-thousandfold torrent of Star Origin Force consumed ten thousand days per second, costing nearly twenty-five million years of available time in total.

This meant that

after self-destruction, he would likewise need ten real-world days to complete the infusion of Star Origin Force and finish his rebirth.

In the starry sky of another domain, even if his true spirit remained undying, without a physical body and strength to protect himself, he would be no different from a lamb awaiting the slaughter.

What was more, there was the Blood Rot Clan's council of elders and the War Fortress!

With all those uncertainties added together,

a trump card could only remain a "trump card." It could not be used unless he had been driven into a corner.

"But isn't this too much of a coincidence?"

To prevent the Grand Elder from catching up, the military had to recalculate the coordinates of every rift, each one at least several hundred light-years apart.

Yet this time, they had run into it head-on.

Li Qingshan's brows furrowed slightly as he carefully recalled the scene he had witnessed just after stepping through the rift.

A shattered continent, drifting ashes, alien corpses...

Clearly, none of that could have been the Grand Elder's handiwork.

"So it really was only a coincidence? The Grand Elder wasn't specifically lying in wait for me?"

"But only Dean Ye and the other two fallen prodigies remain. How did they cross a distance of several thousand light-years..."

One question had been answered, but even more questions sprang up in succession.

Li Qingshan shook his head. Simply deciding not to think any further, he looked toward the empty bridge and spoke.

"Xi Na One, display the star map for me."

The ship's name was Xi Na One.

Very soon, a projected light screen appeared in the center of the bridge.

The display was pitch-black, with only several dozen tiny, scattered points of light.

In the starry sky of another domain, the military naturally had no corresponding star map. These points of light were all planets where he had once "descended" during the past dozen or so days.

At this moment, they were like torches in a dark forest, guiding the way ahead.

The Grand Elder was pursuing him from behind, while there was nothing but darkness ahead.

Logically speaking, the right choice should have been to fly toward those points of light and see whether the military might be of one mind with him and open a rift to receive him.

However, considering the Grand Elder's terrifying strength, whether those planets still even existed was a question in itself.

What was more...

Li Qingshan shifted his gaze away from the points of light and swept it across the entire black star map.

At the same time, the illusory panel appeared before him.

Function: Martial Dao Space Lv4 (73,549,826/100,000,000)

As the two overlapped, the corners of Li Qingshan's mouth rose unconsciously.

When Martial Dao Space had been level 3, the limit of starlight infusion had been one thousandfold.

Now that it was level 4, it had become ten thousandfold.

It was easy to foresee that

if the space leveled up again, not only would the flow of time become 1 to 100,000, the starlight infusion speed would surely rise to one hundred thousandfold as well!

In other words, the ten days of resurrection time he originally needed after self-destruction would be shortened to one day!

By then, whether he chose to enter seclusion and cultivate, wait until he returned to complete "materialization," or directly use his "trump card," none of it would be a problem!

Li Qingshan's gaze traveled across the dark star map, and light gradually rose in his eyes.

"What dark forest? This is clearly a vast blue ocean!"

At this moment, the tiny green dot representing the spacecraft was carving a trail through the darkness.

Around that trail, dim starlight points occasionally appeared.

Li Qingshan casually pointed at one of them and spoke evenly.

"Xi Na One, descend!"