What had happened in Forgotten River City was happening in every city, and even within the Immortal Dao sects, across millions of miles centered on Desolate Ridge.
All of it, every last bit, was merely the aftermath of the Dao Rhyme unleashed by the struggle for authority between the Devouring Desolation Demon Sage and the Supreme Saint of Heaven Stabilizing.
Every gesture a Sage made could bring an unimaginable catastrophe upon the mortal world.
And the battle between the Southern Bright Sage and the Heaven-Stabilizing Sage in the Central Region all those years ago had been worse still.
Radiant Heavenly Fire had reduced the countless trillions of living beings throughout the Central Region to scorched earth.
Inside the City Lord's Manor, the man in the crimson-and-purple brocade robe still sat on the courtyard's blue bricks, holding a body that had only just died.
Far above, in the distant heavens, the seven-colored pillar of light had long since appeared, while nearly a hundred rainbows of Dao Rhyme shone against one another across the sky.
As a Wanhua Realm cultivator, Wei Yang should have died long ago.
The only reason he could still sit there alive was that the great demon's core within his sea of qi was straining to sustain his life.
After all, that demon core had already become completely assimilated with Wei Yang.
If Wei Yang died, the demon core would cease to exist as well.
Or rather, Wei Yang remained alive solely because the demon core was saving itself.
Just then.
Ripples suddenly emerged across the sky, circle after circle.
They were fluctuations of Dao Rhyme.
Then a gentle breeze swept past, enveloping all of Forgotten River City like an overturned bowl.
A man who looked to be only in his forties slowly entered the courtyard of the