The night sky was shrouded in deep, pitch-black clouds. The dragon shadow that had once circled overhead had not appeared for some time.
The mist rapidly thinned.
The sounds around them gradually seeped back in.
Xie Zhenqing slowly opened his eyes, a faint gold glint flashing through them.
The ritual altar stood in the distance, but Liu Zhan had vanished, leaving behind only several somewhat panicked Daoists.
"At last, it's settled."
Whether Liu Zhan was dead, trapped in the Dragon Palace, or rescued by someone else, as long as he was not here, it no longer mattered.
"The Yin Temple Dao Realm is not large, and I shattered it besides. The Dragon Palace should be enough to deal with it."
"That saves me quite a bit of trouble."
"Even so, the remnants must all be killed without mercy. Leave not a single Yin Temple Sect member alive!"
Killing intent surfaced on Xie Zhenqing's handsome face.
The Yin Temple Sect was a major Dao Realm sect, invested by two dynasties. Its alchemy and medicine-refining had greatly pleased many nobles and dignitaries, so it had been revered through the generations.
Xie Zhenqing had known about their hunting of the Demon Race under the banner of "humans and demons cannot coexist." He had merely assumed it was petty business and, for the sake of greater matters, had not specifically targeted them—after all, the Yin Temple Sect was no weak force, implicated even broader interests, and was not easy to provoke.
But who could have thought that the Yin Temple Sect did not merely hunt the Demon Race? They had imprisoned a Dao Realm, tortured Demon Souls to refine them, and cultivated the Dao Realm's spiritual aura.
In an age starved of spiritual aura, they had actually raised a fledgling minor Dao Realm.
This