In the space at the very top of the divine temple, the old man sitting upright inside the coffin, though pale-faced, had not lain down. Instead, he had kept one hand braced against the coffin as he sat within it.
His expression was slightly anxious. His eyes, which had originally held little spirit, were now flashing with intense radiance.
By judging the passage of time, he could tell that the one-day deadline was about to arrive.
If, within this day, the cultivators participating in the opening of the divine temple still failed to exterminate all ten thousand demon beasts as required, it would mean that the divine temple's appearance this time had ended in failure.
Moreover, because the old man himself had expended a vast amount of his origin energy this time, making the divine temple appear again would require many more years to accumulate enough energy.
That would take several thousand, or even ten thousand years. Without sufficient vital essence power, although the old man had the Soul Gathering Coffin by his side, the era was simply too distant. The vital essence within his soul had already been exhausted as he fought with all his might to open the divine temple.
If not for the Soul Gathering Coffin, that wondrous treasure refined from rare heavenly materials, protecting him, the old man's soul would have dissipated long ago.
Although the Soul Gathering Coffin possessed the effect of absorbing Yin soul energy, it was nowhere near as wondrous as that divine tree, the Nourishing Yin Wood. It could not cause the soul to condense and solidify anew. It could only infuse the extremely limited Yin soul energy it absorbed once every hundred years into the origin of the soul.
Thus, it kept the old man's soul from dispersing, allowing him to