When the true meaning of the talismanic script manifested, it was as though overcast skies had converged from all sides, stretching across ten thousand miles and bearing down upon her, stirring up all the long-suppressed burdens in her heart.
Shen Wan's mind shook violently. It was as if she had been struck by a heavy blow. Through her dizziness, she vaguely saw grotesque demons poking their heads out from the dark clouds, their faces startlingly familiar.
Concubine Tao!
Rong Chang!
Lei Zheng!
The crushing pressure before her and the nearly insurmountable barrier awaiting her in the future appeared at once. Shen Wan let out a groan, suffocating in distress. She wanted to stop everything, yet her entire mind had been drawn in by the True Text Spirit Talisman. She could not retreat even if she wished to.
Concubine Tao was a True Person expert who had attained longevity, Rong Chang's capable subordinate. He represented the ruling power of Suixin Pavilion's "Three Great Surnames."
And Lei Zheng—the Lei clan patriarch who had single-handedly destroyed the Shen Family—hid beneath his seemingly impartial face a venomous heart like a snake waiting to choose its prey. Since the Shen Family's decline at the beginning of this calamity, it was not as though there had been no outstanding figures who wished to accumulate strength and rise again. Yet this man had used every means at his disposal to strike them down one by one, until talent withered away and no successors remained. Otherwise, such a vast Shen Family would never have fallen so low that she, a mere woman, had to shoulder half the sky.
Shen Wan knew only too well that so long as Lei Zheng and the Lei Family remained, the Shen Family's chances of rising again were so slim as to be