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The Primordial Yang Divine Lamp went out. Tang Changsheng opened his eyes and felt the dampness on his back. The fright just now had left him drenched in cold sweat.
Wisps of smoke still rose from the lamp, but Tang Changsheng had lost all desire to cultivate. He sat in a daze for a while.
Then he went before the Deity Statue, lit a stick of incense, and bowed again and again. "Thank you, Founding Patriarch Protector, for protecting this disciple and seeing him through this great calamity!"
As the Qing smoke curled upward, the statue's face seemed to move. Red light flashed, and a ray of light entered the space between Tang Changsheng's brows.
Crack! Thunderbolt flashed through his Sea of Consciousness once more, and a Divine General wreathed in light appeared within it.
Unlike the somewhat bedraggled figure Tang Changsheng had first seen in the Ghost Domain, the Protector King Divine General had grown orderly and imposing after receiving Incense Offerings.
"Incense Offerings are poisonous. They are formed from the gathered wishes of living beings. Though they contain unimaginable power, they also carry those beings' powerful desires and stray thoughts. Even immortals and Buddhas take only their purest essence and fulfill the wishes behind them; they dare not use them recklessly.
"If that is true for immortals and Buddhas, it is all the more true for cultivators. Take heed!"
"Yes!" Tang Changsheng understood now. The Demon that had arisen so suddenly had not appeared without cause. The desires and stray thoughts within the Incense Offerings had stirred the Demon in his own heart.
Even looking back on it now left him in a cold sweat. When his mind was clear and the Heavenly Heart shone upon it, the Demon should not have been able to deceive