The awakening will did not erupt at once. Like an iceberg lurking beneath the deep sea, it revealed only a single corner, yet brought boundless chill and crushing pressure.
The void froze.
Every figure locked in battle, friend and foe alike, froze at the same instant. Their souls seemed gripped by an invisible giant hand, making even thought sluggish and difficult. The shattered continents and stellar wreckage drifting around the Ancestor Root Remnant also stopped their slow rotation, becoming a deathly still tableau.
Only the three largest Divine Tree Heart Fragments, whose connection Neji had severed and drawn into his grasp, still radiated a relatively gentle glow. They became the only things still "moving" within this frozen void.
Deep within the gray, decaying Ancestral Root, that point of living light slowly gathered, forming the phantom of a blurry eye. It had no definite shape, only the pure sensation of being watched.
The eye swept across the void, across every intruder.
Wherever its gaze fell, those with weaker cultivation suffered as though struck by a heavy blow. They groaned, blood spilling from the corners of their mouths. Even Huiyao and the gray-cloaked man turned pale, their breaths thrown into disorder.
At last, that gaze settled upon Neji. More precisely, it settled upon the three fragments in his hand and the Chaos True Essence within him—something utterly incompatible with the Ancestral Root's aura, yet carrying a strange sense of shared origin.
There was no sound, no emotion.
Yet Neji clearly sensed a faint, almost imperceptible trace of "confusion" within that gaze, along with something deeper: an extreme chill... scrutiny and greed.
It was as if it were looking at an alien creature that had intruded into its nest, and also at a... meal that had arrived by surprise.
Cold sweat instantly soaked