"Luohu."
"You should have ceased to exist in this world long ago."
Those words carried no added force, no deliberate might.
They simply fell, calm and unremarkable.
Yet that very calm was more terrifying than any thunderous display of power.
Because the meaning of those words was simple.
You should be dead.
You should have died long ago.
On Golden Ao Island, the breathing of a million disciples faltered almost simultaneously.
Farther away, the entire world had already boiled over.
The Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, all the heavens and the vast universe.
Countless cultivators, mighty experts, and even Ordinary Living Beings in the mortal world sensed the collision of those two peerless presences at that moment.
The East Sea Shore.
An independent cultivator sat cross-legged beside a cliff, regulating his breathing.
Suddenly, the spiritual qi around him fell into chaos, and the magic power within his dantian nearly spun out of control.
His eyes snapped open, and he looked west.
In that direction lay Golden Ao Island.
Two auras, one righteous and one wicked, one of the Dao and one of the Devil Dao, twisted together, tearing the sky apart.
"This..."
His lips trembled twice.
The fellow Daoist traveling with him had already risen, every hair on his body standing on end.
"The Demon Ancestor. That's Demon Ancestor Luohu's aura."
"Impossible! Didn't the Dao Ancestor kill him long ago?"
"Sense it yourself! Who else could that aura belong to but Demon Ancestor Luohu?"
Silence.
A long silence.
Then the independent cultivator's legs buckled, and he dropped back onto the ground.
"We're finished."
He forced those words out of his throat.
"If the Dao and the Devil Dao clash again... this world may..."
He did not finish.
He dared not finish.
Similar scenes played out simultaneously in countless corners of