Lake-Isle Firmament True Lord

"No!!!"

That roar exploded from the direction of the well platform, ancient and hoarse, as though someone had compressed forty years of waiting and endurance, followed by all the deception and self-consolation, into that single cry and spat it out in one breath.

Chen An raised his eyes and looked over.

Beside the ancient well, the cloud keeper knelt by the rim, both hands braced against the ground, his entire body shaking violently. His eyes were fixed on the direction where the Mist Flood Dragon had disintegrated. There, only the last cluster of unsettled light motes remained, slowly spinning three feet above the ground like a lamp about to go out.

The Mist Flood Dragon had possessed no flesh and blood. Its "flesh and blood" had been the Cloud Essence it devoured... and later, living souls—the "substance" forcibly kneaded together through Demonic Arts. Now that it had lost the core governing it, that "substance" could no longer remain condensed and began leaking from the gaps between its scales.

Countless tiny fragments swirled within the mist. They were the remnant souls of the living beings it had devoured: old farmers, young children, traveling merchants, even martial artists and cultivators. In the blink of an eye, they all turned into clusters of cloud-light and mist motes, filling the entire sky.

The old man stretched out a hand, trembling as he clawed at that cluster of light motes. His fingers spread uselessly as he drove the cloud qi accumulated within him over forty years, trying to gather them back into his palm.

Above his palm, a small cluster of grayish-white mist briefly condensed, no larger than a fist, hanging in the air for an instant.

The old man's eyes brightened for an instant, as brightly as those of the young cloud keeper who