At that critical moment, the Two Sages Jieyin and Zhunti, who had been meditating with their eyes closed atop the Lotus Thrones at the rear of the Great Hall, snapped their eyes open. Two beams of golden light surged skyward and instantly enveloped every disciple in distress.
Zhunti's face was grave as he shouted, "Junior Brother, purify the corrupted Great Dao, quickly!"
Before his words had faded, Zhunti drove his saintly law of extinction to its limit. Boundless golden Buddha Light became fine Dao Patterns that wrapped layer upon layer around each disciple undergoing transformation.
The patterns forced their way into the disciples' disordered seas of consciousness and meridians, slowly peeling away and expelling the sinister laws corrupting their souls, stabilizing their Dao Foundations on the verge of collapse.
Beside him, Jieyin stepped forward and raised the Top-grade Innate Spiritual Treasure, the Six Roots Pure Bamboo, in his palm. Its six emerald branches spread in the wind, sending a torrent of purifying laws crashing down upon the sinister Buddha statue at the center of the Great Hall.
But the instant the two forces collided, they clashed violently. Buddhism's purifying golden light and the statue's black radiance corroded and dissolved each other. Both streams of Dao Resonance turned to motes of light and vanished into the Great Hall's void, leaving the statue entirely unharmed.
Jieyin's heart sank. His gaze pierced the statue, and he saw an invisible thread of law extending from its back, beyond what the naked eye could perceive. Like a bridge spanning the heavens, it broke through the barrier of Primordial Heaven and Earth and stretched into the Chaos Depths, its far end connected to some unknown place.
In the vast Chaos, gray Turbid Qi currents churned. Folds in space crisscrossed, and countless fragments of shattered Dao Realms