The instant the second vertical pupil shattered, the shock wave tore away every remaining section of the Palace of Heavenly Purity's roof.
Glazed tiles crumbled to dust in the morning light and rained down, mingling with the gray-gold mist filling the hall, making the ruins look as though someone had splashed them with a layer of cheap gold powder.
Blood still seeped from Fang Mo's seven orifices.
The tip of the God Slaying Saber rested against the ground. Its dragon patterns slowly settled from their boiling churn, and the six-colored light lingering on its blade went out, one color after another.
He did not sheathe the saber, because it was not yet time.
Although the bony shell on the Dragon Throne, which had completely lost its human shape, had shrunk back to roughly thirty feet in size, the gray-gold mist had not dispersed.
Mist kept seeping from the gaps in that thing's bones. It was much thinner than before, yet now carried an indescribable clinging quality.
Fang Mo wiped the blood from his nostrils and stared at the writhing mass of bone.
"Nian Nu'er, it isn't dead."
"I know."
Nian Nu'er's voice emerged from Fang Mo's Soul Depth, carrying a rare note of gravity.
"Those two vertical pupils were the anchors through which the split spirit projected itself onto this body. You shattered the anchors, my lord, so the split spirit can no longer wield consciousness law steadily through the Old Emperor's body."
"But the split spirit itself is still there."
Fang Mo's gaze fell on the center of the bony mass, where a fist-sized gray-gold Light Orb slowly rotated.
The Light Orb was much dimmer than before, and fragments constantly peeled from its edges, but its core still radiated scalp-prickling law fluctuations.
"It's contracting, compressing all its remaining power