Chapter 1409: Life Seed

It is quite simple: their goal is to destroy the Great World and Yingzhou Continent, the very template that once gave birth to them.

In this way, the Great World, controlled by the Star Empress's will, would become the sole entity in the endless planes, a mirror dimension.

Undoubtedly, this ambition to directly plunder the legacy of civilization through despicable means is extremely dangerous.

As the current supreme leader among the human powerhouses on Yingzhou Continent, and one of the strongest guardians of its civilization, Xu Yang must shoulder this responsibility.

Xu Yang was also keenly aware that, among the hundreds of thousands of human powerhouses in his cultivation team, only he possessed the strength to directly confront the Star Empress.

Currently, it was the Star Empress's optimal time for seclusion, and a rare opportunity for Xu Yang to act.

If they delayed further and that woman truly damaged the Seed of Life, it would be a shared catastrophe for all humanity in Yingzhou Continent and even the Great World system.

That was an essence of power capable of generating infinite vitality, and Xu Yang had no intention of claiming it for himself. But he absolutely could not allow this immensely precious Seed of Life to integrate into the Star Empress, who did not originally belong to the Great World's civilization system.

Similarly, Xu Yang had another plan: to integrate the power of the stars into the Great World's civilization system as well, instead of allowing them to wantonly threaten Yingzhou Continent's native civilization as they did now.

They needed to willingly integrate as subordinates and subjects into the civilization system of this world; this was, in Xu Yang's eyes, the best way to solve the problem.

After solidifying this resolve, Xu Yang immediately focused his thoughts and quickly contacted Xiaohua.

"How is it? Any new discoveries?" Xu Yang asked. "I must find the Star Empress's exact seclusion location as quickly as possible. If we delay further, the consequences could be disastrous. Because I don't know what level of power boost these specters will gain once the power of the Seed of Life and the most primal Star Power lineage perfectly merge. They might be able to create a new world that completely overwhelms the Great World's civilization system, and such an outcome is certainly not something we can handle now."

Hearing Xu Yang's words, Xiaohua immediately reported her current findings.

"I can only roughly determine that this area should not be too far from the Star Empress's specific seclusion location. I can't help you with the rest, because her power has likely exceeded my current limits. Only you, Boss, can find the answers that follow."

Xu Yang immediately reassembled his main body and illusory body. With his true form, he then bid farewell to the Supreme Venerable Long Kun and arrived at Xiaohua's current location.

"Ayang, have you found anything?"

Upon arriving next to Xiaohua, Xu Yang immediately released his incredibly powerful spiritual energy, allowing it to spread rapidly around him, attempting to capture any special energy traces.

"Just as I expected," Xu Yang said. "It's not easy to find her seclusion place at all. To solve this problem now, we need to consider the Star Empress's motive for doing this. Within the entire Treasure Mountain, which place would be the most difficult to find!"

Xu Yang posed this question, and Xiaohua, after pondering for a moment, provided her answer.

"As the saying goes, the most dangerous place is the safest place," Xiaohua began. "I searched the entire interior of Treasure Mountain earlier and found no special energy shortcuts. This means the Star Empress clearly understands the principle that trying to hide something only exposes it. If she were to apply a sufficiently powerful seal around her seclusion spot, it would, on the contrary, expose her."

Given Xu Yang's intelligence, three particularly sensitive and unique locations immediately came to his mind. Because when Xu Yang had previously overseen the battlefield, he had also conducted exceptionally detailed spiritual exploration of these three specific targets. Although he had not been able to detect the Star Empress's energy fluctuations in any of them, these three locations, for the entire Treasure Land, were special spots where the spiritual energy of heaven and earth gathered most densely.

Unfortunately, Xu Yang and Xiaohua immediately took action, meticulously investigating each of these three special locations, but ultimately failed to discover the Star Empress's whereabouts.

"Damn it," Xu Yang cursed. "We've already searched these three most obvious places and found no trace at all. Could it be that the Star Empress is playing the 'empty fort strategy' on us? She isn't in Treasure Mountain at all, but instead used the so-called Twelve Star Venerables to deliberately release a smokescreen, delaying all of us here so she could gain enough time to complete the absorption of the Seed of Life?"

Xu Yang pondered seriously for a moment, then gave Xiaohua the answer he had conceived.

"Initially, I also had this suspicion," Xu Yang explained. "But after I engaged in close combat with those Great Star Venerables, I noticed that whether it was the Star Venerable-level powerhouses or the tens of millions of ordinary specter warriors, the deepest part of their specter bodies' life force contained a special resonance. It was precisely the existence of this resonance that allowed them to immediately sense commands from the Star Empress, as well as the battle status among their surrounding comrades. This resonance was like an invisible, core guidance that linked these special life forms, which originally lacked independent souls, together. According to my judgment, this guiding force must have been established by the Star Empress on these specter warriors through special cultivation methods. Once the Star Empress leaves the Treasure Mountain area, it's highly likely that this guiding force system, used to control these soul-body warriors, will fall out of the Star Empress's control. Therefore, my judgment is that this woman is definitely still within our observational range; we just haven't been able to find her true location yet."

After such thoughts emerged in his mind, Xu Yang had no intention of continuing to hesitate. He decisively decided to completely re-evaluate and re-organize his search strategy, hoping to find clues he might have previously overlooked.

One should know that Xu Yang's soul world was like a vast, boundless universe, though it was filled with deathly silence and dimness. Yet, every corner possessed endless untapped potential. At this moment, Xu Yang was like a high-speed tape recorder, frantically re-reading every detail he had experienced before. From these fragmented memories, he searched for any clues that might lead him to the Star Empress's hidden location.

Suddenly, as Xu Yang was filtering his memories, his thoughts paused at the moment he obtained the aura of the moon's silhouette from the ancient tree. It was there that Xu Yang finally discovered a fleeting flaw.

The ancient tree, as the nurturer of the Seed of Life, was also the most potent source of life essence on Yingzhou Continent.