Heavenly Fox Venerable was so captivated by the lotus pod before him that he ignored everything around him. He had no idea that, amid the dust into which Daoist Hunyuan's head had crumbled, there was a nearly invisible phantom compass. Carried by the wind, it had slipped free of the entire formation.
This phantom compass was the Eight Trigrams Compass. Now, a massive diagram of the Five Elements in rotation covered the entire compass, replacing its original Eight Trigrams pattern. Countless circular lines were engraved around it—marks left by the power of laws. They had formed when Daoist Hunyuan's Law Altar fused with the compass.
At the center of the compass was a mass of Chaos Origin Qi, the source of Daoist Hunyuan's energy. It was the origin from which any kind of spiritual energy between heaven and earth could evolve. Daoist Hunyuan's nurtured soul rested within the Chaos Origin Qi.
Daoist Hunyuan had been helpless. A strange formation had trapped his body, preventing him from channeling power through it. Then the strange vortex began tearing apart and devouring his sea of consciousness, bit by bit. Just as it started pulling at the soul he had nurtured, the compass hidden deep within his sea of consciousness suddenly appeared and swallowed both his soul and the Soul Liquid.
Daoist Hunyuan still felt shaken. If the compass hadn't protected his soul at the last moment, he would have become nourishment for his enemy.
Daoist Hunyuan manifested his true form within the compass: a stern-looking Daoist, his entire body radiating an indescribable aura, both ancient and imbued with the Dao. This was the quality he had attained after purging the other Soul Thoughts from his body—a quality unlike any other, free of sorrow or joy, desire or want.
Daoist Hunyuan was also deeply