The hand's posture was exactly the same as when Xu Taiping had first seen it.
It hung down from the ceiling of the stone chamber, its long, slender arm swaying back and forth as its enormous palm kept scooping around inside the chamber for something.
For some reason, the instant Xu Taiping saw it, an inexplicable urge welled up in him to prostrate himself on the ground and pray for mercy.
Even though he was facing mortal danger at that very moment.
The instant this feeling arose in Xu Taiping's heart, an eye abruptly appeared on the hand's arm and looked at him with pity.
That gaze reminded Xu Taiping of his grandfather, and of Second Senior Brother and Senior Sister Linglong when he had first met them.
An inexplicable impulse arose in his heart.
He wanted to go with it.
"Urgh!..."
The thought had only just arisen in Xu Taiping's mind when a sharp pain in his neck jolted him awake. He saw that the Otherworldly Heavenly Demon, whose face was pale and whose features he could not make out, had opened his mouth and bitten into his neck.
But at that very moment, the look in the giant hand's eye changed from pity to anger.
It seized the Otherworldly Heavenly Demon in its grasp.
The Otherworldly Heavenly Demon seemed to notice the giant hand's presence only then.
Immediately, the Otherworldly Heavenly Demon turned into a mass of black shadow and broke free of the giant hand.
But instead of fleeing, he took an ancient book inscribed with strange writing from within his pitch-black body and swiftly opened it to a page.
The instant the page opened.
Black chains flew out of the runes that had suddenly appeared around the giant hand, binding it tightly and rendering it immobile.