The pressure of three interwoven laws poured down from overhead.
Old Ancestor Hunyuan's dao fruit trembled violently in his dantian. The sensation was completely different from when the Light Pillar had erupted earlier. The Light Pillar was a distant aftershock; when it struck him, it felt like a dull ache.
Now it was a crushing force at close range, head-on, with nothing to shield him.
His dao fruit was cracking on its own.
It was not being smashed by physical force. The disparity in the rank of their laws was simply too vast. His Peerless Grade dao fruit, condensed under Central Province's incomplete laws, was like a lump of clay meeting a kiln's fire before the other man's system of laws. It collapsed of its own accord.
Old Ancestor Hunyuan desperately circulated his spiritual energy to protect his dao fruit, but the moment it surged out of his meridians, that pressure scattered it before it even reached his dantian. He did not even qualify to gather spiritual energy.
"Do you feel it?"
Zhou Xuan's voice came from overhead, neither loud nor soft.
Old Ancestor Hunyuan opened his mouth to answer, but all his throat squeezed out was an indistinct whimper.
His lips trembled, and his tongue was as stiff as a stone. He could not utter even a single complete word.
"This is the ceiling you've all dreamed of breaking through."
Zhou Xuan took a step, his sole pressing against the loose stones. In Old Ancestor Hunyuan's ears, it sounded like a pounding drum.
"Central Province's laws have been incomplete for who knows how many years. You've cultivated in this dry well for seven thousand years, eight thousand years, thinking the Peerless Grade longevity realm was the end."
He took another step.
"Let me tell you, the Peerless Grade longevity