When Zheng Qing tore open the exit of the spatial passage, suppressed the spell-light coursing around his body, and returned to the Black Prison, a thunderous roar happened to roll in from beyond the world's crystal wall above him. It sounded like rumbling thunder, yet there were no dense storm clouds in sight.
He steadied himself slightly, spread out his spiritual sense like a net, confirmed his position in an instant, then turned and shot straight beyond the heavens.
Outside the crystal wall, Professor Yao had already revealed his true form as the Three-Headed Eight-Armed Giant Ape. He sat cross-legged where the breach in the crystal wall had originally been, like an ancient Buddha displaying a compassionate face to the outside. His enormous body resembled an ancient planet; compared to him, the invaders looked as tiny as ants.
Zheng Qing had assumed the invading Outer Realm Demons would be no different from the demon armies he had once seen in the Black Prison—nothing more than bones, skeletons, aberrations with broken horns, blue-faced creatures with fangs, lazy lumps of flesh waving tentacles everywhere, and eyeballs growing haphazardly across their bodies.
But only after reaching the outer heavens did he discover, to his surprise, that their appearances were even more "abstract" than he had imagined.
Some resembled worms, their mouthparts opening and blooming like petals as they writhed through the void. Some looked like shattered stellar debris, with countless wailing faces surfacing across their bodies. Others were simply shadows of twisted laws, devouring even light wherever they passed.
When Zheng Qing arrived,
the invaders were surging toward the giant ape like a tidal wave. On one side, they hurled their flesh-and-blood demonic bodies directly at him; on the other, they split off countless bizarre branches, trying to bypass the massive Dharma form