The third wave of fire-phoenix thunderflame dissipated, and tiny fragments of lightning slowly drifted away across the sky.
Qin He sank into the icy seawater.
His robes had long since turned to ash, and dense, charred fissures covered his once powerfully tempered body.
Wounds of varying depths ran through his limbs and bones, his flesh torn open. In many places, the lightning and fire had burned his sinews and bones black as charcoal, leaving none of their former demonic might or luster.
Blood kept spilling from the corners of his mouth, dripping from his chin onto the sea and spreading into wisps of crimson ripples.
The deadliest damage was not his bodily injuries, but the emptiness and stagnation left by the forcible sealing of his Dao foundation.
The shackles of the world's rules still held him fast.
The Source-Birth Law, his True Demon origin, the Dao resonance of lotus flame—every foundation of cultivation he relied upon had been stripped away and locked down by the Heavenly Dao's tribulation power.
At that moment, stripped of every extraordinary blessing along his Dao path, he had only a grievously wounded body and a soul poised on the brink of annihilation.
This was what made the Locking-Dao Tribulation so terrifying.
It was never merely an onslaught of spiritual power, but the crushing weight of the world's rules taken to their utmost limit.
Under this confinement of the Heavenly Dao, every means of drawing upon external power that a cultivator had cultivated throughout their life became useless. The law-based divine abilities, killing arts, and origin Dao resonances that swept across the Lower Realm were all illusions before the Saint Tribulation.
If a cultivator's Dao heart harbored even a trace of impatience, or their Dao foundation rested on even a sliver of luck, the first bolt