"It really worked."
A Daoist wearing a yellow crown and a long beard stood behind a newly withered locust tree, quietly sensing the demonic qi churning inside the stone chamber beyond the wall.
The eerie aura was so dense it was almost tangible. It seeped through the cracks in wisps, pricking his skin like needles, as though it could stir a person's seven emotions and six desires.
He therefore dared not draw too close. After sensing it briefly, he silently retreated a few steps.
Xu Xuan is already drawing closer to becoming a demon of the five thieves. Next, I must employ some means to rein him in. I cannot let him develop without restraint, or in another three to five months, even I may be unable to subdue him.
Jia Hua was weighing his plans and was about to act when an inexplicable unease suddenly welled up within him.
The eyes beneath his yellow crown slowly narrowed.
Rather than forcibly suppressing this unease, he opened his mind, following that faint, subtle sensation back toward its source. As the feeling gradually intensified, the "nature root" deep within his sea of qi suddenly gave a faint twitch.
Jia Hua's eyes flew open. For a fleeting instant, he seemed to see a blurred black figure standing in the shadows beneath an artificial hill not far away.
He could make out neither its face nor its robes. It seemed no more than a dark silhouette of shifting density, utterly silent and motionless.
A thin sheen of sweat began to form on Jia Hua's back. But before he could quell his shock, the black figure—which should only have revealed a trace of its presence through his "nature root"—actually began to move, approaching him step by step.
"How is this possible?!" Jia Hua cried, aghast.