At that very moment, even the wind between heaven and earth seemed to freeze.
Half-Venerable Wuming felt a chill erupt from the depths of his soul.
The heartbeat that had previously pounded like war drums came to an abrupt halt, replaced by an icy coldness bordering on deathly stillness.
It was as though an invisible giant hand had seized that heart in a vicious grip. It no longer pounded wildly; instead, it sent forth a wrenching pain on the verge of shattering.
"Ancestor... cannot possibly have fallen! It must be the bewitching words of that old monster, meant to throw my Dao Heart into chaos!"
He forcibly suppressed the surging blood that nearly burst from his throat, crushing the tidal panic back into the depths of his heart.
Without hesitation, the sliver of consciousness he had split off plunged into the Jade Talisman at his waist, which was continuously giving off an uneasy glow, like a drowning man clutching at his last straw.
There was none of the lengthy information he had expected.
Only a single line of cold, exceedingly brief runes—yet heavy as ten thousand mountains—was branded directly upon his soul:
"Ancestor has fallen. Immediately enact the 'Seclusion Plan'!"
Those few words struck his Sea of Consciousness like divine thunder from the ninth heaven.
Half-Venerable Wuming's body swayed almost imperceptibly. In an instant, all light vanished from his eyes as he stared blankly ahead.
The white light on that Jade Talisman seemed, in his eyes at this moment, colder and more piercing than ten thousand years of mystic ice.
An unprecedented terror, like an endless tide of darkness, completely engulfed him.
Even his soul was trembling.
At the side, the two Half-Venerables of the Crystal Horn Race and the Sea Spirit Giant Demon Clan had been closely watching Wuming's