Shen Yi behaved as though nursing a grudge.

Wherever he saw a bookshelf that had been broken open, he'd reach in, pull something out, take a look, and toss it back.

Listening to the thump after thump, the Spider Emperor's eyes twitched.

These things might be of no use, but every one of them had been won by its own painstaking effort — each shelf it broke open had cost it hundreds or thousands of years.

Handing them over for this lion to look at was like feeding peonies to an ox.

At last, Shen Yi seemed to tire, and put the final jade slip back.

"And here I thought there was something worthwhile, to warrant such vigilance from you. This is it?"

He turned around, the golden light over his eyes very nearly scattering from the churning of his emotions.

【Return-to-Void (Rare) · Boundless Dao-Sovereign Palace: Not Yet Begun】

After leafing through so many jade slips, this was the first technique Shen Yi had seen that required no prerequisites.

Its very first line was a marginal note: acquired by an elder of the sect while traveling abroad, origins unknown.

Perhaps it was precisely because it was so precious that the Technique-Storing Pavilion had catalogued it and shelved it among the other slips.

"Hmph. You are the second being besides This Emperor ever to look upon these things. Don't be ungrateful."

The Nether-Gloom Spider Emperor set the jade slips back in order and delivered a cold rebuke.

It could grant this lion some measure of favor, but that didn't mean it would indulge the creature in disregarding rank and precedence.

"Who was the other?" Shen Yi glanced sidelong.

"The other— what business is that of yours!"

The Nether-Gloom Spider Emperor spoke instinctively, then glared over in irritation.

Yet in its mind there inexplicably surfaced that young figure in the loose azure robe.

At a Spirit-Transformation realm, at that very threshold between life and death, the man had actually succeeded in contemplating the embryonic form of a Dao Palace — not only gravely wounding the Spider Emperor, but fighting his way…