Killing the Chicken to Warn the Monkeys, and Consoling Taotie

"This—"

"This is—"

Perhaps using Bing Fire to imitate the mysteries of Wu Earth Dao arts had inherently come with some compromise.

Thus, although the black robe formed from forty-nine layers of Taiqing Demonic Fire had, like the Immortal-Sealing Treasure Restriction, sealed away the loss of vitality during the instant Clear Cosmos Grand Script Dao Lord's life and death transformed,

it ultimately could not lock down all five senses of his Dao Lord Primordial Spirit.

As a result, Old Dao Lord, who had been swept into the three-thousand-mile blessed land domain, beheld the stars filling the heavens—the twenty-eight stellar diagrams of the Four Symbols and Seven Lodges—

and displayed an intensely fierce reaction, one that forgot life and death alike!

Or perhaps,

for Zhang Qiwei, who had likewise come from the Southern Border, likewise come from Departure Peak, likewise mastered the Dao art of Seven Emotions Enter the Flame, and had once truly been Liu Dongqing's fellow disciple,

such a heart-piercing, soul-killing measure was precisely the sort of thing she, in her essence as a demon sect enchantress, was far more pleased to see than the instant that decided life and death!

At this moment,

beneath the ethereal, desire-extinguishing contours of Zhang Qiwei's brows and features, a faint smile lingered at the corners of her cold lips, there and not there.

Then,

she watched every change in Old Dao Lord's expression with an icy, indifferent gaze.

At first, there was the utmost astonishment in the sounds he made alongside that fierce reaction which forgot life and death.

Yet perhaps he had been too astonished.

It left him almost completely speechless.

The sounds spilling from his mouth did not form words or sentences at all.

Immediately afterward,

he began to gasp violently.

Within those heavy, ragged breaths was a release, as