The sky above the Jiuzhou Continent didn’t simply clear. It opened like a golden temple gate swinging wide.
The leftover wisps of the 100,000-mile sky-trial clouds dissolved into fine, rainbow-bright stardust that sparkled in the afternoon sun.
Through the clear troposphere, five huge beams of pure, crystal-hardened world-size power dropped from the apex of the high sky, lighting up Tongtian Apex with bright glare that outshone ten midday suns.
Five hundred thousand fighters sat in breathless, numbed silence.
Royal envoys from all seven mortal dynasties dropped to their knees. Their foreheads were pressed against the flat stone slabs.
Sect patriarchs who had lived for two thousand years—men who had never bowed to any mortal being—cried openly. It trembled as they felt the very fabric of the Jiuzhou Plane shifting under their feet.
The Heavenly Dao Avatar rose from its cloud bench.
Its eight-foot frame of golden firmware runes pulsed with total, final consensus.
