Dead silence.
The stone chamber for secluded cultivation, filled only a moment earlier with the howling of spiritual energy and agonized cries, now held not the slightest stray sound.
No, even the faint sound of breathing had vanished.
That milky-white stone had swallowed every sound and every trace of agitation through sheer power, stabilizing the situation with an utterly gentle approach.
Every Taia elder in the hall, including Qian Zhao, who had been so insufferably arrogant earlier, stood frozen with eyes wide.
Their gazes darted between the stone in Zhou Xuan's hand and the girl inside the formation, their faces blank with shock. Good grief, this was downright uncanny.
It had happened too fast.
Only a few breaths had passed between his taking out the stone and Shangguan Ning's condition stabilizing.
In those few breaths, the cultivator on the verge of Spirit Transformation, who had been about to explode from the backflow of spiritual energy, had not only recovered her aura and reassembled her divine soul, but had already sat cross-legged of her own accord and begun circulating her energy to consolidate her breakthrough.
Her face, previously twisted with pain, had regained its calm, even revealing a lucid serenity after escaping the crisis.
Qian Zhao's face went from sallow to green, then from green to white, until not a trace of blood remained.
His mouth hung wide open, his throat constricted. Fuck, he could not squeeze out so much as half a word.
His earlier posture of contempt and provocation now looked utterly ridiculous. He had thoroughly disgraced himself before every cultivator of the Taia immortal vein.
Shangguan Lie was the first to recover from his shock.
Without even looking at anyone else, he flashed over to his granddaughter.
The old man did not look at the stone at all.