Although it was only a skeleton, Zhang Shuai knew that it was unlike any ordinary set of bones.
This dark golden skeleton was not a motionless dead thing. Its rib cage was actually rising and falling ever so slightly in an extremely slow, prolonged rhythm, as though it were breathing.
With this strange rhythm, the thin spiritual energy within the underground cavern was drawn into the skeleton. A moment later, it exhaled an even purer aura, yet one carrying bone-piercing cold.
With every inhale and exhale, a faint, nearly imperceptible ice-blue spiritual halo formed and dispersed in an endless cycle.
This skeleton was actually absorbing and expelling spiritual energy, preserving its own spirituality as it waited through the river of time for an opportunity to recover!
At the junction of its breastbone and pelvis, there was a startlingly enormous penetrating wound!
The bones around the wound were irregularly torn, their color much dimmer than the dark golden bones elsewhere. Even after countless years, the wound showed no sign of healing. Instead, it continuously emanated an utterly pure and terrifying aura, as though it could extinguish all life and return all things to eternal deathly silence!
"This is... the aura of the Heaven-Opening Axe..." Zhang Shuai's pupils contracted.
He possessed the Heaven-Opening Axe, so there was no way he could mistake its aura. This skeleton's wound had been inflicted by the Heaven-Opening Axe. The axe's lingering Dao intent of slaughter and deathly stillness had remained entrenched even after endless ages, preventing the wound from healing and life from reviving.
With Divine Venerable Shanzhi's strength, even the nine-tribulation Chaos supreme treasure, the Heaven-Opening Axe, could not have injured him easily—unless... unless it had been the Heaven-Opening Axe in its complete state!
That was, the form created after the Heaven-Opening Axe merged with