The moment the Thatched Cottage's roof was torn away, golden daylight poured down from above and fell upon the Ghost Immortal Emperor, bathing his faded coarse-cloth robe in gold.
His white hair flowed through the light like a silver waterfall, every strand gleaming with a gentle luster.
His aura continued to climb.
Mid-Seventh-Turn Immortal Emperor.
He slowly rose from the bed, steady as a mountain rising from the earth, without the slightest sway.
His feet pressed into the dirt, leaving shallow footprints. The pressure within them compressed the soil for three inches around until it was dense and smooth, like fine porcelain tempered by a thousand blows.
The bottleneck of the Late-Seventh-Turn Immortal Emperor shattered like porcelain. His aura climbed to the Peak Seventh-Turn Immortal Emperor, leaving only a thin barrier between him and the Eighth-Revolution Immortal Emperor.
That barrier trembled within him like a bronze gate struck again and again by a Giant Hammer, giving off a deep hum.
Power surged through his Meridians like an army suppressed for too long, battering the barrier. Each impact spread finer cracks across it.
Suddenly!
Buzz!
An indescribably terrifying pressure erupted from the Ghost Immortal Emperor like a sleeping beast of Primordial Antiquity jolting awake, blasting outward in all directions!
The pressure swept through the Thatched Cottage like a solid tidal wave, rattling its walls and roof; it swept across the Valley's sea of flowers, bending every strange bloom and herb as though crushed beneath a Giant's palm; it swept over the green Hills, setting the entire Valley trembling.
Then it broke through the Ghost Realm's boundary.
In the Land of Ending's dark-red sky, an invisible force slammed upward into the low-hanging clouds, thick as clotted blood.
The clouds churned like a lake struck by a Giant Stone, sending rings of ripples