On the shadowed side of God-Severing Peak, before the Sacrificial Altar where the Five Phases Inversion Formation had just forcibly torn open a breach.
The cheers still caught in Zuo Qiu's throat. The wild joy that had surged through him at breaking the formation froze into an ice sculpture of despair in an instant.
Because dawn had come.
Amid the utter darkness of Heavenly Dog Devours the Sun, this sudden light came not from the swallowed sun, but from overhead—from the Demon-Suppressing Altar, which had hung silent and lifeless upon God-Severing Peak's sheer cliff like an eye of heaven.
A violet lamp lit up there.
It was an ancient bronze Eternal Flame Lamp. Its wick burned not lamp oil, but ten-thousand-year thunder essence drawn from the earth vein.
Then a terrifying divine sense, vast as an ocean and imposing as a prison, poured down without restraint, carrying the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty's unmistakable aura of rigid law and destruction.
So powerful was this presence that even the Five Phases seal below, which had just opened a narrow crack and was spewing spiritual energy, gave a fearful tremor, as though it had encountered its natural enemy.
"Such gall."
Two words.
Two simple words, yet they fell like a heavy hammer from the Nine Heavens, smashing into everyone's chest.
Zuo Qiu's ears rang, and agony tore through his sea of consciousness. The protective spiritual radiance he had just summoned to break the formation instantly filled with cracks under that cold snort, as though it would shatter in the next moment.
He looked up in horror. Through the swirling embers of thunder and fire, he saw a figure sitting cross-legged atop the hundred-zhang-high Demon-Suppressing Altar, having appeared at some unknown moment.
The man wore a Violet Thunder Cloud-Robe specially made by Great Zhou's