With Ling Shuang as a safeguard and Chen Yang's stone-body clone personally entering the Secret Realm, the remnant of the Upper Cultivator's soul had no chance of escaping.
The opening that had let him slip through the encirclement had, of course, been left there deliberately.
The remnant believed he was fleeing by his own will. In truth, every route he could take led to the Elixir Spirit Space where the Five Heroes of Meng River waited.
Blood Sun Venerable God had released divine power into every realm of the Secret Realm not merely to draw the attention of the two fragments of Ascendant Will, but also to prepare for what came next.
Over the past few years, Chen Yang had placed protections upon the seas of consciousness of all four heroes.
That meant whichever of the four the Ascendant Will chose, Chen Yang would ultimately draw it into Star Sea Space.
Chen Yang, Yang Lingshu, Yang Yuanxing, and Yang Yuanwen had discussed and settled every interlocking part of this plan before anyone entered the Pill Origin Ceremony.
They had also prepared four contingency plans in case anything unexpected happened.
All this left Chen Yang with a tinge of wistfulness.
If Yang Lingqing were still here, he could have entrusted it all to her alone. Now it had taken three people and a stone-body clone pooling their ideas to make the plan foolproof.
Yang Yuanxing had already inherited Yang Lingqing's skill at managing the Lineage, so Chen Yang had no need to worry on that front.
But Yang Yuanxing was still young and had seen too few momentous events. Yang Lingqing, by contrast, had governed a border region for years and personally commanded the Northwest Demon-Resistance War, gaining a profound understanding of how the wider tides could shift.
Such understanding could