The old sage did not speak much. From start to finish he had barely opened his mouth — except while eating the crocodile meat. Ye Fan had many questions he wanted to ask, but this elder seemed to regard silence as golden.

Splash!

A surge of ink-dark waves rose up from the Demon Sea Eye. The primordial sage washed the divine crocodile hide — it was like black gold cast solid, clanging and resonating with every movement, Dao patterns woven throughout it, divine radiance streaming out in all directions, auspicious energy steaming.

It was a divine material that could move even a sage — suffused with the concentrated essence of a demon sage’s lifetime. No sword could cut it, no water or fire could touch it, and it was incomparably rare throughout the world!

This divine hide, full of the metallic sheen of black, radiated countless Dao lights — naturally attuned to the Great Dao. Even before it had been refined, it already counted as a precious treasure! It gleamed with a chill metallic luster that made it impossible to approach — carrying with it a powerful, sacred might.

At this level of existence, a single drop of blood could kill a great powerful expert — to say nothing of this enormous hide!

Ye Fan’s eyes burned with longing. His mouth was practically watering. Among the divine crocodile clan, the hide was the most precious part. Made into armor, it would be absolutely dream-tier.

Most especially the Ancestral Crocodile — as an ancient divine crocodile, revered as a demon sage, his hide had long since attained an immortal divinity.

Unfortunately, the old sage paid Ye Fan no attention at all. He simply cast aside the beast hide he had been wearing, which was already in tatters, and wrapped the crocodile divine hide around his own waist, driving his formidable vital energy into it and refining it in the blink of an eye into a kind of primitive beast garment. However one looked at it, it was purely functional — something to cover the body.

What a waste of a divine treasure!

Ye Fan genuinely wanted to have it, but the primordial sage had already wrapped it around himself — and he had no face to ask for something the other man had obtained through his own hunt.

After that, this wild-man elder began extracting the sinews and stripping the bones — truly without the slightest hesitation, pulling out all the good things.

He cleaned them thoroughly with the water drawn up from the Demon Sea Eye, then used the Ancestral Crocodile’s divine tendon as a belt, tying it around his waist — an extravagance so outrageous it made one want to pull all one’s hair out.

Ye Fan stared longingly at the enormous crocodile bones. They were treasured bones — pure white throughout, glowing with sacred light, more brilliant than the stars in the sky.

Their quality went without saying — rarely seen beneath all the heavens. They could absolutely be refined into a sage weapon of the heirloom rank. But this wild-man elder had no intention of going through such a process — he simply pressed his white bone staff directly against them.

A dazzling light blazed out. Ye Fan was forced to retreat. The energy fluctuations were too violent — even as the sacred body of the human race, he could not endure it. The Great Dao resounded and the cosmos was pulverized.

One by one, the crocodile bones lost their luster as the divine radiance left them, and cracked apart with explosive sounds, completely destroyed — the terrifying skeleton of the ancient divine crocodile was reduced to powder, every trace of divinity vanishing.

Yet upon the old sage’s bone staff, an additional rune now appeared — shaped like a dragon and crocodile combined. One could say the concentrated essence of the sacred bone had been refined directly into the bone weapon.

Ye Fan examined the lustrous bone staff carefully, noticing that it bore quite a number of markings from extraordinary birds and savage beasts already inscribed upon it. He could not help but draw a sharp breath. Could all these patterns have been branded on in the same manner as just now?

If that were truly the case, the value of this bone staff was something that could not even be estimated!

Ye Fan watched with longing eyes. The old sage was truly thorough — he had refined everything, leaving not even a fragment of bone behind.

The wild-man elder sensed his gaze, turned to look, and then extended one great hand, splitting that mountain of meat into two portions, passing one portion over to Ye Fan — tens of thousands of jin of it.

Ye Fan hurriedly retreated. At his level, a sage truly stood upon the clouds, as remote and mighty as a divine being.

A single drop of blood, a single bone — even falling from above could kill a great powerful expert. A piece of sacred flesh this large, packed with terrifying laws and power, was absolutely a weapon of mass destruction.

The old sage seemed to understand, thought it over carefully, and once again summoned his Dao flame, beginning to roast once more. He divided the meat into hundreds and thousands of portions, and a fragrance rose from within the flames.

And in the process, this wild-man elder used his great power to draw out strand after strand of divine crocodile essence blood, condensing it into a blazing thread, from which coils of mist rose and drifted.

Ye Fan was alarmed. Each of those essence blood strands possessed a terrifying destructive power. If they were truly unleashed, even a king of the Way-Severing level would meet a bitter end.

Yet the old sage was refining medicine — in the most primitive of ways, directly extracting the concentrated essence from the demon sage’s essence blood. No matter whether it was the blood within the flesh or the blood that had already been shed upon the earth, all of it flowed like rivers and streams into his hands.

To hold Mount Sumeru within a mustard seed!

The blood gathered like a small lake, all of it settling into the old sage’s palms. Through a process of relentless tempering, he expelled the killing energy, stripped away the laws, and kept only the shining light of divinity.

In the end, with a great resonant boom, a vast flood of contaminated blood fell like a waterfall from the old sage’s palms, a boundless expanse of it, crashing into the Demon Sea Eye like a sea of blood.

Within his palms, threads of rosy mist rose upward, wreathed in auspicious energy, until all that remained were six dragon-eye-sized scarlet pills — crystalline and translucent, as clear as red agate.

The old sage passed four of them to Ye Fan. A sweet fragrance hit him immediately, making him feel as though he might ascend into the heavens in a mist of colored clouds — his pores opening wide, as though bathed in immortal light.

Ye Fan understood: these precious pills were incomparably rare throughout the world, and only the old sage could have defied the heavens to refine them. He had no idea what kind of wondrous effects they might carry, and carefully stored them away in a jade jar.

By this time, the tens of thousands of jin of divine crocodile meat had been roasted through, all the murderous energy and laws burned away completely. The old sage handed it over to him. Ye Fan felt as though he were in a dream — this was a demon sage, and now it had become his food. Spread abroad, this story would frighten people half to death!

He had many questions he wanted to ask, but the old sage remained silent, hardly saying anything at all. He walked two circles around the Demon Sea Eye, gazing up at the vault of heaven, lost in thought.

Seeing him like this, Ye Fan truly had no heart to interrupt. It seemed the other man was pondering something of great importance.

Just as noon arrived, the old sage finally stirred — and asked to borrow Ye Fan’s cauldron. He used it with the Dao flame to stew the divine crocodile’s heart and liver and other organs into a pot of broth, beckoning Ye Fan to drink it together with him.

Ye Fan was a little dazed. It was lamentable — a legendary ancient divine crocodile, dead, and reduced to this: truly becoming a fine soup, not a scrap wasted.

This old sage truly knew how to enjoy himself. The things he ate, if spoken of aloud, would absolutely make the eyes of every onlooker drop from their sockets in shock, frightening every religious leader and great powerful expert out of their wits.

His cauldron had become a genuine soup pot in truth and in name — with the mother-energy of all things flowing within it, along with the divine broth’s fragrant vapor rising in wisps. Anyone else who saw it would absolutely be left speechless.

Could one call it the height of extravagance, or could it only be called the extraordinary beyond extraordinary? Any cultivator who witnessed it would likely be rendered completely speechless.

Ye Fan persisted tenaciously, pestering the old sage without stop, wanting to converse with him — but the other man remained as sparing with his words as gold, barely speaking, and would only sometimes gaze blankly at the sky.

At last, Ye Fan had no choice but to bring up what concerned him most: if night fell, this master would certainly transform from divine to demonic. With no one in all the world able to restrain him, that would be a catastrophe without measure!

Ye Fan pointed at the blazing sun in the sky, thinking that the old sage could perhaps rush toward it — at a suitable distance, he would always be in daylight. Perhaps over time, his demonic nature could gradually be dissolved away.

The old sage shook his head and pondered in silence. He had paid little attention to Ye Fan throughout, clearly deep in contemplation of his own situation — worried that once the sun set, he would fall into a frenzy and begin a great slaughter.

Ye Fan understood in a flash. The so-called “divine by day, demonic by night” was not actually related to light at all — it was a question of his divine nature and demonic nature. The phases of the divine and the demonic were equal in duration, and had simply been mistaken as a product of the alternation of day and night.

“I’m leaving.” The old sage stood up, and at last spoke a single sentence.

“Senior, where are you going?” Ye Fan asked after him. They communicated through divine sense, naturally, for the ancient primordial tongue was not the same as the language of the present.

“To the Desolate depths of the cosmos — into a darkness that no one can reach…” The old sage murmured softly.

Ye Fan understood. He was exiling himself for eternity — fearing he might harm others, he chose to cast himself willingly into the depths of the barren and desolate star domain, to walk on alone in solitude, until he became a cold and lifeless corpse drifting somewhere in the cosmos.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound of metal rang out. The shattered fragments of the Scarlet Divine Chain from before all came flying back. The old sage used his great power to reforge them, smelting them into a new divine chain — stronger than before — and carved into it line after line of symbol-runes, then sealed himself within it.

“Senior, you…”

“A self-imposed shackle. When my life is in danger, it will break. But if there is no such urgency, it will suppress my demonic nature.”

Ye Fan sighed softly. He did not know whether they would ever meet again after this parting. The primordial sage was simply far too powerful — and yet, to avoid causing a great slaughter, he was willing to exile himself, to grow old and die alone in a foreign and distant realm.

“Perhaps I will one day find a solution — the Supreme Yin and the Supreme Yang merging as one…” The old sage murmured to himself.

A thought struck Ye Fan. Quickly, he sketched out the Taiji symbol and handed it to the old sage, along with some of the principles of the Taiji’s transformations.

“The several secret realms within you each cultivate different techniques that cannot be unified into one continuous whole — this is a grave hidden danger. If I were to teach you the Supreme Yin and the Supreme Yang, I would only harm you.”

The old sage spoke these words of warning as a final farewell, then cradled his white bone staff and stepped into the void, broke through the bonds of heaven and earth, entered the star domain, and was gone.

Ye Fan stood there in a daze, gazing at the heavens for a long while before coming back to himself. A soft sigh escaped him. He did not know whether he would live to see this peerless powerhouse again in this lifetime — he could only hope this man would not perish in the depths of the cosmos.

He lingered on the ancient Huoying star for half a day, searching carefully — and found no trace of any ruins. Everything had been swallowed into the Demon Sea Eye.

However, he did make certain other discoveries — finding the remains of satellites and space probes, some from recent years, some from long ago.

“Traveler Forty-Eight, Chang’e Nineteen…”

Ye Fan observed closely. These aircraft were all heavily damaged, coming primarily from several great spacefaring nations. He reasoned that on this sealed ancient star, anything sent here would crash and fall.

He took one last look at the ancient Huoying star, then Ye Fan set off — charging toward his homeland, for he truly had no more time to waste.

This crossing of the star domain had not brought him directly back to Earth, but the ancient Huoying star was no longer so far from his destination — relatively speaking, compared to the Northern Dipper star domain. The true distance, of course, was still enough to make one gasp.

The ancient Huoying star, at its closest to Earth during the great opposition, was approximately 55 million kilometers away, and at its farthest, during the superior conjunction, roughly 400 million kilometers away.

To think that Huoying was a planet within the same solar system, right next to Earth’s neighbor — and yet even this produced distances on this astronomical scale. One could not help but marvel at the insignificance of human beings.

Ye Fan set out. He climbed higher and higher, rapidly breaking free from Huoying’s thin atmosphere, and finally escaped its gravity. Then he brought out the Profound Jade Platform and began the long, repeated process of crossing through the void.

If he had to fly there on his own, he would exhaust all the divine power in his body — and there was no telling how many months, or possibly years, a miscalculation might add.

He continuously corrected his coordinates, crossing toward the land that had given him life, and did not know how many Profound Jade Platforms he burned through before he finally, clearly, caught sight of that water-blue star in the distance.

Ye Fan’s eyes nearly filled with tears. How many years had he been away from home? The closer he got, the more uncertain his heart became — he feared that after such a long separation, something terrible might have happened.

In the past, he had faced countless battles of life and death without ever feeling this kind of anxiety — yet now, his heart was filled with an unease that set his entire body trembling.

“Earth — I’m coming home…”

Ye Fan’s eyes brimmed with tears. He pressed forward without stopping, his heart surging with emotion beyond his control. He had left aboard the Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin over twenty years ago, and now he was returning through his own efforts alone. He could not stop himself from trembling.