A thousand voices echoed through his mind at once. Some were crying, some shouting, some laughing, and some silent.
"..." "This game of chess will never be finished." "I refuse to admit defeat." "Can I really catch up to her?"
"What if he's gone?" That was Fu Xiaoxiao's voice.
Gu Chengming did not stop.
Sorrow was devouring emotions, while he was gathering them. The threads of emotion that had been flowing toward sorrow began to turn, surging toward Gu Chengming.
Sorrow sensed it. It felt the emptiness of having its "food" stolen away.
For the first time, the gray figure moved within the Formation's cage. It turned its head, its eternally grief-stricken face toward Quiet Contemplation Courtyard.
"It's taking physical form!" Xu Huaiyi's voice came through the Jade Slip, urgency barely contained. "Fellow Daoist Gu, now!"
Gu Chengming opened his eyes. The emotions of more than a thousand people surged, collided, and melded within his sea of consciousness, so vast they nearly drowned his awareness.
These emotions were too chaotic. Sorrow and joy were mixed together, fear and courage knotted into one, loneliness and affection hopelessly entangled. They contradicted, clashed with, and canceled one another out. They could not form any effective power.
Emotions themselves had no offensive power.
Unless—you gave them a vessel.
Gu Chengming raised his right hand.
[Hundred Bones Ming laughed heartily, his killing intent boiling over: Heavenly Emperor Gu, I've been waiting for this!]
Dense golden lines appeared across Gu Chengming's right arm. They were the manifestation of Hundred Bones Ming operating at full power, each line twitching wildly as if alive.
And at last, the emotions surging through his sea of consciousness found an outlet.
The sorrow, fear, loneliness, indignation, affection, and yearning of more than a thousand people—all their emotions surged with