Far away, the turbulent, wavering spatial barrier of the Secret Realm on the twelfth floor of the Tomb of the Gods finally stabilized completely.
The folds in space slowly smoothed out, and the agitated Spatial Turbulence subsided entirely, forming a stable Secret Realm barrier that shut out every impact from beyond. This was the final signal that Emperor Star and the surviving members of his clan had fully withdrawn from their desperate predicament and entered an absolutely safe area.
No one knew that the confrontation over those few brief breaths had been a contest played on the very brink of life and death.
With his frail Lowgod body alone, Shiheng had stood against Di Lige, a top-tier death Highgod. He had stubbornly held on against the odds, desperately buying time and withstanding several rounds of devastating attacks of essence. It was precisely this desperate resistance, which had all but wagered his life, that had secured a rare opportunity for everyone behind him to retreat, allowing the entire group to escape unharmed.
Now that he had nothing left to worry about behind him, he no longer needed to fight a pointless battle to the death or use his battered body to endure Highgod pressure capable of crushing countless gods.
Deep within Shiheng's pitch-black pupils, the resolve to stand his ground unto death flickered and quietly vanished. His violent fighting spirit, which had soared into the heavens without fear of death, suddenly withdrew entirely into his body like thunder gathering back into the sky. Every tightly strained inch of his three-system divine power, stretched almost to the point of shattering, also completed an abrupt and absolute shift.
One moment, he had been poised for a head-on battle, staking his life on the fight; the next, he completely abandoned forceful attacks in favor