The scenery around him kept changing. Zhang Yuan was like rootless duckweed, unsure how long he had been "falling" before he finally hit the ground with a thud and felt solid earth beneath him.
"Hiss... it doesn't hurt?"
Zhang Yuan climbed to his feet and first checked his injuries. The Golden-Armored Deity's palm strike had looked terrifying, making the sky collapse and the earth cave in, yet it had not injured him in the slightest. He had not even felt any pain.
"How bizarre. I'm no body cultivator, and my opponent is a mighty cultivator at the level of a True Lord or Great Immortal Lord. Since when did I become so good at taking a beating?"
Zhang Yuan was baffled.
The Golden-Armored Deity had struck so quickly that he had only managed to unleash two divine abilities. He had not even had time to activate the [Sun-Moon Seven-Hue Robe] he wore before that enormous hand descended. Taking it head-on with his Celestial Person dharma body alone should have meant certain death. How could he be completely unharmed?
"Could I already be dead? Is this actually the Nether Bureau?"
Utterly puzzled, Zhang Yuan felt his chest and pulled Ao Xiu out from inside his robes.
Perhaps the earlier chaos had knocked Ao Xiu unconscious. Now, held in Zhang Yuan's hand, Ao Xiu's head lolled back and forth like a dead snake's.
"Still breathing. Looks like we really are fine. How uncanny. Surely that Golden-Armored Deity didn't deliberately hold back?"
Zhang Yuan could be certain that no True Lord or Great Immortal Lord had intervened before the golden hand landed on him. From that, he could deduce that he had emerged unscathed because the Golden-Armored Deity, [Mirror-Holding Armored Lord, Divine Master], had held back.
But Zhang Yuan truly could not understand