Monster Yaoyao was clever. She understood what Meng Chuan meant the moment she heard him.
Chu Feng's painting now placed him at its center, with the Top Hundred Stars arrayed around him like a host of stars surrounding the moon.
Farther out were those abstract circular outlines. Anyone in the know would recognize them as stars; anyone else might mistake them for a child's scribbles.
But whatever else could be said, the composition was set. Chu Feng himself was the center of everything.
Even if the Top Hundred Stars contained Projections of Heaven-Reflecting Ones, they still had to revolve around Chu Feng in the painting. They were merely a backdrop that set him off.
Who was master and who was subordinate was clear at a glance.
That was also why, if Chu Feng's painting were exposed, he would be hunted down. It might even draw Heaven-Reflecting Ones into striking across the void, unleashing forbidden power to kill him.
He had put the Heaven-Reflecting Ones beneath him like mounts. Who could stomach that?
But if Chu Feng painted Meng Chuan into it as well, Chu Feng would remain the center of the starry sky—only now Meng Chuan would stand above it.
His combat power would indeed surge. The painting could sweep aside everything, invincible beneath the stars, with no one able to withstand it.
But Chu Feng would become supreme under heaven while someone still loomed over him above it.
In ways too subtle to perceive, that would have a harmful effect on certain things.
Meng Chuan had no desire to place himself above Chu Feng. He could even shield Chu Feng from any substantive suppression by the Projection.
But if someone forever stood above Chu Feng in the painting that formed his foundation, merely seeing that person there—merely having him