A gaping mouth opened onto endless nothingness.
The old Daoist swallowed the old emperor whole and let out a long breath.
Numinous Obscurity represented a person's purest Numinous Nature. Yet as a Devil Sect cultivator, the old Daoist's own Numinous Obscurity was flawed.
Of the Nine Heavenly Human Arts, Grand Void, Motion and Stillness, and Creation belonged to heaven; Numinous Obscurity, Dao and Virtue, and Life and Death belonged to humanity. Transcendence, Yin-Yang, and True Illusion belonged to both.
Numinous Obscurity was, in essence, the "I" that existed between Life and Death, beneath Dao and Virtue and human feeling.
Of the nine arts, what Devil Sect cultivators lacked most was this "I."
Even a fiend like the "old Daoist" was no exception. Every Devil Sect cultivator erased the Numinous Obscurity of others to achieve their own Transcendence.
When a mighty figure of the Celestial Master Sect had sealed him here, Numinous Obscurity had been the crux of the seal.
Over the long years, who knew how much of his self had already been ground away?
Let the fiend who had enslaved millions of cultivators lose his self bit by bit to time, become a walking corpse, then die in despair with the power of Transcendence still within him.
That was the end the immortal had devised for him.
But as a mighty Devil Lord, he would never sit still and wait for death. He had prepared a contingency.
The moment the seal loosened would be his chance to emerge again.
To that end, the Devil Lord had spared none of his remaining Numinous Obscurity, splitting off several Demonic Thoughts to scatter the instant the seal loosened.
He would wait for each to grow strong and establish itself outside, then have them release him.
Unfortunately, as the years passed beyond counting,