Splitting the Heavens

Chapter 1291: Looking for the Essence Xing World

After Shang Xia returned to Star Beast Nest No.2, he entered seclusion to craft a few more rank six talisman papers. Other than those prepared for the 3 great powers of the Essence Xing World, Shang Xia kept the rest for himself, including 2 Myriad Tinted Cloud Talismans.

After making his preparations, Shang Xia left a second tier True Immortal clone behind before leaving behind several rank six Illusion Talismans. He could pretend to be a high-level True Immortal whenever necessary, and Shang Xia went to give Hai Yuanyuan a heads-up before leaving.

He didn’t plan to follow the members of the 3 great powers when they came to get their talismans. After all, those who came were high-level True Immortals and he could tell they were extremely cautious.

Under such circumstances, Shang Xia wasn’t confident he wouldn’t be discovered by them if he tried. Since there was no way to follow them, he could only search for the Essence Xing World slowly.

Thankfully, a massive Essence World wasn’t going to be difficult to locate. The real challenge was how he was supposed to locate them without alerting any high-level expert. What was more, he had to infiltrate the world under the noses of more than 1 Martial Emptiness Realm expert.

Even though it wasn’t Shang Xia’s first time flying around the chaotic space outside the Essence Xing World, he had only been moving around near the Star Beast Nest. This time, he would have to head out further to look for the massive world...

The calmer space outside wasn’t as dangerous as the chaotic space around the Star Beast Nest, and Shang Xia had the experience of looking for worlds from what he went through in the Spirit Faith World back then. He had been following a heavily injured True Immortal, but it still took him some time.

The Essence World might be larger than the Spirit Faith World from back then, but Shang Xia was still prepared to use a good amount of time flying around aimlessly.

There might be stars flashing in the dark sea of stars, but they wouldn’t be able to be used as a reference most of the time. While flying in the vast space, those specks of lights were too far away to be reliable. There was no concept of height, and they might even forget how long they had been flying. In extreme cases, loneliness might cause them to go mad.

As such, cultivators would only try to venture deep into space after entering the Martial Dipper Realm despite the ability to enter the sea of stars in the Martial Extermination Realm. If they wished to look for foreign worlds or infiltrate them alone... They would usually have to be True Immortals.

After Shang Xia traveled for more than a million miles, he ran into a massive asteroid belt that was like a maze.

Because he hadn’t expected to run into it, he took a few days before he managed to free himself from the flying asteroids despite his cultivation.

When he emerged, he no longer had any idea which direction he had been traveling in.

Helpless, he could only choose a random direction that led him away from the asteroid belt and continue flying aimlessly.

After several more million miles, he couldn’t see the asteroid belt any longer, and there was nothing else he could use as a reference. He was completely lost!

Fortunately... He didn’t need to care about the consumption of his inner qi at the moment, After all, he stored a good amount of world origin in the Crimson Soul Tablet. He also had a shocking number of Essence Crystals he could use to replenish his energy if required.

Flying around a little more, he failed to gain anything.

Shang Xia was no longer able to estimate how far he had traveled and without a proper sense of direction, he was truly floating aimlessly in space.

...

After flying about for some more time, he suddenly discovered specks of light in the endless darkness like fireflies buzzing about.

He thought he was mistaken at first, or it might be light produced by distant stars. However, as he continued to make his way forward, the specks of light started to grow and they soon became the size of candlelight.

Becoming alert again, Shang Xia started to circulate his inner qi, and all the lethargy he felt was swept away.

He increased his speed slightly as the specks of light grew larger and larger. He started to make out their general outline, and he discovered that they were Earth Stars of different sizes.

Shang Xia was no stranger to Earth Stars that might contain sights of life. However, after concealing his tracks and inspecting them, he discovered that only 2 of them had signs of life. 1 of them showed signs of human life, but they were still in their barbaric stages.

Shang Xia was disappointed by his findings, and he didn’t intend to interfere with the development of those worlds.

After inspecting all the Earth Stars, he discovered that there was no sign of a World’s Will being born or any signs of remnant World’s Will after separating from another world. From the saying from the Heavenly Star Palace, those Earth Stars didn’t have the qualifications to form a spirit and develop a will.

That would also mean that if those worlds developed normally, those worlds would be unfit for cultivation and there would be no such thing as cultivation on them.

Strangely enough, Shang Xia discovered a strange metal sphere that was close to 3000 miles in diameter in one of those worlds. It could be considered a rank two spiritual treasure if he truly wished to classify it.

That was also what could be seen on the surface. Shang Xia felt that the deeper he dug, the higher quality it would become.

However, he was in no mood to play with metal balls at that point. He also understood he wouldn’t be able to drag the massive Earth Star away, and he simply left a marking so that he would be able to come back in the future.

The Star those Earth Stars were revolving around was the main focus of his investigation, but Shang Xia didn’t hold high hopes of finding anything.

If the Essence Xing World was somewhere in the surrounding region, there was no way they would miss such a massive system that existed.

“The only question now is if they noticed the system, or if they can’t give half a shit about it...” Shang Xia muttered to himself while shaking his head. He decided to no longer think about it and started to adjust his condition again to continue looking for the Essence Xing World.

Spending close to 20 days of time to restore himself to his peak state and after leaving behind enough marking such that he would be able to use the system as a reference point, he started to head deeper into the void.

Just like that, Shang Xia traveled millions of miles more before he discovered strange traces of construction on some broken continents floating in space.

He was invigorated. He quickly looked at the traces that had been left on them and discovered that the fragments of land he was seeing actually came from the same continent. There was a sentry post on them, and he even discovered traces of a formation surrounding the structures on them. They looked to be the remains of a destroyed harbor.

From how destroyed they were, Shang Xia felt that they had been abandoned for hundreds of years.

Shang Xia refined the Four Seasons Extermination Origin in his Four Constellation Realm and he was rather sensitive to the flow of time. He might not be able to tell the flow of time just from a general observation, but he could tell it had been long.

“Let’s hope I’m going in the right direction!” Shang Xia muttered to himself. Looking through everything to see that there was nothing of value, he adjusted his direction before setting off again.

Another million miles later... Shang Xia actually discovered the ruins of another world!

“Oh? I finally found something of value now. Even though from the looks of it... This looks like an Azure World...”

Before he could enter the ruins, a strange surge of starlight caused him to raise his guard.

In that instant, he even wanted to escape.

Shang Xia was no stranger to the strange power. It was Seventh Order energy, and it had been surrounding the ruins.

It wasn’t pseudo-Seventh Order energy like what the Star Origin Dao Field gathered usually. It felt similar to the powerful attack Zhuo Gudao unleashed after reaching the grand completion stage of the Martial Void Realm with extra help.

The Seventh Order energy seemed to be drifting around the ruins while also being completely infused within.

Other than that... There was nothing else.

Shang Xia’s eyes widened in shock as he realized what happened. The Azure World was destroyed by an existence in the Martial Emptiness Realm!