Shen Yi sat upright in the great hall.

Fed by that vast influx of demon lifespan, the Dao Palace expanded to five hundred and thirty-two zhang — and at last reached its absolute limit.

He went on deriving for another thousand-odd years.

Yet the second Dao-method recorded in the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Palace still refused to convert into a form the Demon-Sovereign Palace could use.

Shen Yi opened his eyes and stopped pouring in lifespan for the moment.

In the past he had always been the one completing broken techniques. This was the first time he had taken a complete technique and, by his own hand, cultivated it into a cripple.

On the panel, Qinghua had already cut down forty-odd lives.

The demon kings who had until recently answered the White Swan's orders had, in that short span, nearly all died at the hands of the golden dharma form.

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 123,000 years · Condensable】

【Demon Anchor-Stone: expend 10,000 years of vitality to condense a graven image; it may absorb the rancorous souls and remnant corpses of demons, and by the Heavenly Demon bloodline, attest to my lord's divine ability】

"Anchor-Stone?"

Shen Yi mused a moment, and then something struck him.

This thing — could it be the Palace-Anchoring Object Lingxi had spoken of?

As it happened, his Dao Palace had only just taken its final shape.

Better still, the Anchor-Stone was far cheaper than he had imagined. He had assumed it would cost a hundred thousand years.

No sooner thought than done.

Ten thousand years of demon lifespan drained swiftly away.

The next moment Shen Yi's vision plunged into blackness, as though he had sunk into a boundless, deathly-still curtain of night.

And there, within that endless night —

A square stone stele stood there, ash-grey from top to bottom.

"That's it?"

Shen Yi waited patiently for a good while, and found it was nothing more than an ordinary rock.

Right — it had to absorb a demon soul.

He reached over, hauled across the Gold-Eyed Lion Emperor — which was beside him, head bobbing as it recited pill…