The great hall was so silent that not even a crow or sparrow could be heard.
Everyone stared dumbstruck at the girl in the back row.
The Six-Turn Heavenly River dared claim to be the foremost art beneath the Jieqing Spirit Art, nearly its equal. Leaving everything else aside, its entry requirements and the difficulty of practicing it already approached those of a true spirit art.
In the ten thousand years since the Jieqing Sect's founding, countless disciples had squandered their years before this cultivation art.
Yet what were they seeing now?
Though none of the disciples had actually practiced this art, who among them had not visited the library to leaf through that famous copy?
The cultivation manual described the manifestations of each stage in painstaking detail.
At the introductory stage, one's qi would become a trickling stream, with a faint haze of moisture surrounding the body.
At minor mastery, streams converged and undercurrents surged, accompanied by the sound of waves crashing against the shore.
At major mastery, its grandeur began to emerge: a long river beneath a setting sun, with starlight flickering amid the flowing water.
If one could reach the consummate stage, a feat achieved by fewer than one in ten thousand... a river of stars would hang upside down, the Heavenly River would flow, and countless magnificent vistas would unfold.
But the manifestation surrounding this girl...
Was far more than a river of stars hanging upside down!
The vast starlight was almost tangible. A narrow gap had been blasted open in the hall's vaulted roof, and a brilliant river of stars had become a mighty torrent, roaring as it coiled around the white-robed girl.
Every drop of water was a brilliant star.
The vast, profound resonance of the Dao pressed down on the hundreds of inner