"How could this be!"
Like a thunderclap, those words struck Elder Fang the instant he heard them. Shock filled his mind, his scalp prickled, and he stood rooted to the spot like a wooden chicken.
Clues to Li Chen, the aura of a Great Monster, the status of a Grand Confucian-these utterly unrelated things had mysteriously melded into one. He felt as though he had suddenly understood everything, yet also as though he understood nothing.
He smelled the strong scent of conspiracy, but without enough clues, he had no way to untangle it.
It felt like a hunter who had painstakingly tracked a tiger over mountains, across ravines and pools, only to find, just when he thought he was approaching its den, a bustling city abruptly appearing before him. It was enough to make him wonder whether he had encountered something supernatural.
Li Chen no longer had attention to spare for him. The instant those words left his mouth, the quantitative changes accumulated over so long finally triggered a qualitative transformation, drawing his mind toward it.
The status of a Grand Confucian was finally attained!
As literary fortune washed over him, the literary qi that had soared into the heavens and arrayed itself among the stars surged down like a celestial river pouring from the sky. Within moments, it condensed into a majestic palace inside this Minor Grotto-Heaven, wreathed in purple qi and floating with an immortal's ethereal grace.
This was a Literary Palace. It shared the same underlying marvel as the Dharma Forms cultivated through the Spell Dao: both were images of the Dao manifested through communion with the laws of Heaven and Earth once one's cultivation and magic power reached a certain depth, and both inherently contained extraordinary power.
Sensing the manifestation of this Literary Palace, Li Chen