Lord of the Rending Stars

"Buzz!"

The entire super vortex shuddered violently, unleashing its terrifying power, which it had not been able to fully unleash during the battle against the Ancient Ice Demon.

Endless deep blue light burst forth from the depths of the vortex, instantly enveloping an area of ​​millions of kilometers. The ultimate form of the Frost Whale's innate secret technique, "Frost Pool Prison," was unleashed. The Sky Prison King's teleportation was interrupted, and his figure was forced to appear thousands of kilometers away from the Eternal Ice Heart, his movements suddenly slowing down.

"Let's do it!"

The powerful roar of the Frost Whale sounded like a battle horn. The massive trunk of the Time Thorn King shone brightly, and thousands of crystalline branches flowing with the power of time ignored spatial distance, instantly spreading and coiling towards the Blood Howl King and the Gold Devouring Beast. Each branch carried the effect of accelerating or slowing down time, making it strange and difficult to defend against. It was an enhanced version of the one that had previously trapped the Ancient Ice Demon.

The Blood Howl King roared, its blood-red claw marks transforming into a raging river of blood as it frantically clawed at the entangled branches of time. Wherever it passed, the branches snapped, but time reversed at the broken points, causing them to quickly recover, making it extremely difficult to deal with.

The Gold-Eating Beast roared, attempting to devour the energy on the branches, but the power of time was extremely mysterious, making the devouring process exceptionally difficult, and it was instead bound by more and more branches.

Qingyang then blurred into nine illusory figures, their forms blurring between reality and illusion. They instantly swept past the side of the Kongyu King, who was slowed down by the Cold Pool Prison. Their target was not the Kongyu King himself, but the seemingly empty area behind him.

The Heavenly Flame Blade, carrying a sharp blade intent that could tear through space and time, slashed down without any fancy moves!

"Swoosh!" A huge black rift was neatly sliced ​​open in space, and a silver-white figure was forced out of its concealed state in a sorry state. It was the spatial clone that the Sky Prison King had quietly created to prepare to ambush the main body of the Frost Whale! This clone also had the strength of the limit of the King-Sealing Realm, but under Qingyang's blade, one-tenth of its divine body was instantly destroyed!

King Kongyu was both shocked and furious. He had not expected Qingyang's mastery of spacetime to be so high that he could see through his secret technique to conceal his clone.

"Very well! Your human race has actually colluded with the Cold Whale and the Ancestral God Cult!"

Qingyang remained silent, but the blade flashed again. Nine phantoms simultaneously unleashed different sword techniques—slashing, thrusting, sealing, and shaking—perfectly demonstrating the unpredictable changes of the laws of spacetime, tightly entangled with the Sky Prison King. He didn't seek to kill the Sky Prison King in a short time; he only needed to keep him occupied, creating opportunities for the Cold Whale and the Time Thorn King.

Seeing that the time was ripe, the Frost Whale let out a soul-piercing whale song. At the center of the super vortex beneath it, its enormous body suddenly rose a bit. A giant fin, engraved with countless complex law runes, broke through the vortex and, carrying a terrifying power capable of crushing stars, slammed towards the Blood Howl King and the Gold Devouring Beast, who were bound by the Time Thorn King's branches.

This attack was far more powerful than the previous tail strike that attacked the Ancient Ice Demon! Sensing the deadly danger, the Blood Howl King roared and burned part of his immortal divine body. His blood-red claws instantly grew larger and transformed into a blood moon that tore through the domain, barely managing to break free of the Time Branches' restraints and narrowly avoiding the direct strike of the giant fins.

But the Gold-Eating Beast wasn't so lucky. It was naturally adept at devouring matter and energy, and its resistance to the constraints of this spacetime was relatively weak, so it was struck squarely by the giant fin.

With a deafening roar, the hundreds-of-meters-long body of the Gold-Eating Beast was sent flying, its aura weakened to the extreme, clearly indicating that it was seriously injured.

"Frost Whale, Ancestral God Cult, and Human Race's King of Rift, you just wait."

The King of the Void Prison, his eyes bloodshot with rage, knew the situation was hopeless. He suddenly unleashed his divine power, a burst of silver-white light flashing as he withstood Qingyang's blade. At the cost of a small portion of his divine body being annihilated, he forcibly broke free from the shackles of the Frozen Pool Prison. He pushed the laws of space to their limit, grabbing the heavily injured Gold-Eating Beast and the Blood Howling King, whose aura was unstable, and transformed into a streak of silver light. In an instant, he broke through the blockade and rapidly fled towards the top of the Ice Abyss.

The Void King's clone blocked Qingyang and the others' path, choosing to self-destruct. Fortunately, Qingyang was prepared, and after retreating tens of thousands of kilometers, he withstood the aftershocks of the explosion thanks to his top-tier treasure armor.

After the explosion, Qingyang sheathed his sword and stood up, looking at Hanjing and Shijiwang. Shijiwang's tree trunk was slightly dimmed, clearly indicating that the self-destruction of Kongyuwang's clone had taken a toll on it, while Hanjing, with its thick hide, was unaffected.

The Frost Whale's icy blue eyes held a hint of relief, but even more so, a burning intensity, as it gazed at the slowly rotating Eternal Ice Heart at the center of the vortex.

"Thank you both."

The voice of the Frost Whale echoed, this time tinged with obvious emotion. It opened its massive jaws, and a deep blue stream of light, imbued with the profound laws of lightning, flew towards Qingyang. It was a gigantic egg, five thousand meters in diameter, resembling a blue diamond.

Qingyang reached out and took it, feeling a cool sensation in his soul. The Time Shadow Beast within his World Ring emitted an intense longing. Qingyang calmly stored it in his World Ring and nodded slightly to the Frost Whale. At the same time, another, slightly smaller sliver of ice marrow flew towards the Time Thorn King as an extra reward. The Time Thorn King's branch took it and merged into its trunk.

"Frost Whale, wait a moment," Qingyang quickly called out to Frost Whale. Frost Whale paused, looked back at Qingyang, and a hint of wariness flashed in its eyes. King Time Thorn also temporarily stopped its movement of merging with the ripples of time.

"Cold Whale, may I speak with you in private?"

A condensed, deep blue beam of light shot from the forehead of the Frost Whale toward a rock wall covered by layers of ice at the edge of the vortex.

"Human King of the Beacon, follow me."

The rock wall crumbled, revealing a giant cavity hastily created by the Frost Whale. In the center of the cavity, Qingyang took out the giant egg he had just obtained. The eggshell was devoid of any life, cold and lifeless, like a stubborn rock floating in space.

However, upon closer inspection, one could detect a lingering aura of the vast Law of Lightning deep within the eggshell. Qingyang's pupils constricted slightly; the essence of the Law of Lightning contained within this giant egg had even caused a slight tremor in the Time Shadow Beast's true form within his world ring. This was indeed, as the Cold Whale had said, no ordinary object!

Before Qingyang could even ask what the egg was, the voice of the Frost Whale echoed in his mind, carrying a rare and complex emotion. In that distant voice, there was even a trace of guilt and melancholy that was almost impossible to find in such an ancient and special life form.

"This thing is called the egg of the 'Soaring Kunpeng', or rather, it is the remains of the bird that died before it could be born."

"A soaring Kunpeng?"

Qingyang was puzzled. He had read extensively in human classics and knew about many special life forms in the universe, but he had never heard of it before.

"Of course you don't know," the Cold Whale said slowly, as if tracing back to the distant past, "because it was never truly born in the universe. It and I were originally two special life embryos born and nurtured together in a 'Chaotic Thunder Pool' at the core and edge of this Cold Mountain Secret Realm."

"I belong to 'Yin,' born under the laws of water and space. It belongs to 'Yang,' conceived under the laws of thunder and time. According to the fundamental operation of the universe, we should have been born at the same time, one as a Peng, soaring through space and time, wielding thunder; the other as a whale, patrolling the icy abyss, ruling the extreme cold. The two are born together, and their potential is immeasurable, especially the 'Soaring Kunpeng,' whose life gene level is already half a level higher than mine, the 'Imperial Whale of the Cold Abyss.'"

Qingyang listened quietly to this cosmic secret. The existence of special life forms is rare enough, but such a peculiar yin-yang twin was unheard of.

"However..." The Frost Whale's voice deepened, "Countless ages ago, the core of the secret realm shattered for unknown reasons, affecting the entire gestation ground. The 'Yin Eye,' where I resided, absorbed too much ice source power, maturing prematurely. At that time, my consciousness had just awakened in a daze, driven by instinct and a yearning for 'birth'..."

"At the moment I hatched, I unconsciously absorbed most of the life essence from the 'Yin-Yang Chaos Eye'."

"Those essences were originally shared by both of us, the foundation that supported us in completing our final gestation. My premature birth and excessive absorption directly led to the exhaustion of the 'Soaring Kunpeng' embryo's essence. Before its consciousness had truly awakened and its life form had stabilized, it perished completely in that accident, leaving behind only this dead egg that had lost all life force, with only a hard shell and a trace of the law of thunder remaining inside."

The temporarily opened space was silent, except for the echoing sound of a cold whale, carrying the weight of endless years.