Space twisted like a rag wrung dry.
Across the dome, countless motes of divine soul light went out at once.
The instant darkness descended, a black fissure split the void directly above the altar. There was no light within it, no wind, only pure nothingness spreading outward.
The fissure tore wider and wider until it became a black rift over ten feet tall.
A man stepped out of it.
A black robe patterned with stars, three long strands of beard, a face as flawless as polished jade.
It was Murong Xuan...
The Pavilion Master of the Stars Pavilion, the Black-Robed Elder White Snow had seen outside the Listening to the Tides Pavilion.
But he was no longer human.
Dense black fog shrouded his entire body. Rather than drifting away, it burrowed into him, like countless tiny black serpents slithering beneath his skin.
His eyes... where his two eyeballs should have been... were pitch-black hollows, bottomless, seemingly capable of swallowing every trace of light.
Most terrifying of all was his voice.
"Star Phoenix... bloodline..." That voice did not come from one person. Hundreds, thousands of people spoke at once, men and women, young and old, overlapping as though ten thousand throats shared a single mouth. "The nourishment... I have awaited... for ten thousand years..."
White Snow felt an unprecedented, terrifying pressure descend from above.
It was not the pressure of the Spirit Transformation Stage, nor Void Refinement, nor Body Integration...
This was a being beyond the comprehension of every cultivator in this world.
Her knees weakened against her will. Every feather on her body trembled, and every bone groaned beneath a weight it could not bear.
Tie Xiaoqi's scream came from the direction of the stone gate, its pitch distorted by the pressure. The Bearded Man roared and swung the Giant