In the instant that gold-veined black saber took the Glazed Azure Phoenix's head off without hesitating—

the whole Water-Scale Cave Heaven fell into a silence in which not a crow or a sparrow made a sound.

A great demon as formidable as that: the mere backwash of the heart-flame it raised had sent a good many White Jade Capital cultivators fleeing in disorder, and the Dao-sons of several great immortal sects had all found it distinctly thorny. Had it gone abroad in the world for any length of time, it would certainly have made an enormous name across the whole of Hongze.

And now it had died easily, in Shen Yi's hands.

A demon whose strength matched a three-city stage, and which with the help of that noble bloodline could be called first-rate even within that stage, had been cut down by a cultivator who had opened only two cities.

That alone was very hard to understand.

All the more so when this Glazed Azure Phoenix had a background of the most terrible kind on top of that — it was the youngest son of a Dao-merging great demon.

On any ordinary day this would have been an event to shake all of Xihong.

But now everyone's mind was on the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Palace up in the sky.

The Mountain-Moving Sect's personally transmitted disciples and elders — those especially who had seen Shen Yi put three personally transmitted disciples down earlier — had thought this young man somewhat arrogant, unable to rein himself in even inside another sect's grounds.

It was only that he had happened to show an astonishing body-tempering talent; otherwise that business might not have ended so simply.

But now they only felt their earlier judgment had not been accurate enough.

How could a word like "arrogant" cover this?

It was lawlessness that defied heaven and earth!

The young friend Shen had not merely disregarded the Glazed Azure Phoenix's background. While putting the phoenix demon down by sheer strength, he had done a still more appalling thing in passing.

Which was to ignore the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Sect's…