The moment Shen Yi called out the golden dharma form, the balance in the room had already shifted.

Even at only seven feet tall, even short of a complete Spirit-Transformation realm.

He was still the only "functioning" golden-body cultivator the War Temple currently had.

Until the Ancestor's injuries healed.

Saying Shen Yi was the helmsman of the War Temple's rotting little skiff was not an overstatement.

That was the source of Zhu Jue's surprise.

The moment the junior brother revealed his true cultivation, it meant he had formally decided to step forward and take responsibility.

For a Spirit-Transformation cultivator, before their realm had fully stabilized, the most important thing was always to protect themselves.

Everything else could be tolerated and set aside for a time.

Including the lives of those Mixed Origin Grandmasters.

"..."

With that thought, Zhu Jue looked over at the young man beside him, something like deep feeling rising in his eyes.

Prodigious talent beyond what anyone could imagine — and alongside it, this much sense of responsibility.

The junior brother hadn't merely lived up to Xiao Wu's trust. He was considerably more reliable than anyone had anticipated.

Though.

Xiao Wu's instinct had been to tell the junior brother to put the golden body away — a gesture that was clearly an attempt not to accept the offer, hoping the junior brother would keep cultivating until he became a genuine titan capable of overawing the world in all four directions.

"Go on back. I'd like a moment to myself."

Wu Dao'an looked somewhat adrift, urging Shen Yi out of the War Temple.

Perhaps it was because Zhu Jue had shown his golden light first, giving him something of a cushion, that when the golden dharma form appeared afterward he'd somehow remained conscious.

Now that he thought about it clearly, what he felt in his chest was less wonder than outright terror.

Every last person in the War Temple, including himself, eating through vast reserves of accumulated faith, spending age after age — what exactly had any of them accomplished?

If they'd handed all of this to Shen…