"What is there to fear?"

"A Dao Palace with no Palace-Anchoring Object — with no more breath of heaven and earth than there is inside this Spirit-Plant Garden, can he work a Dao-method a second time?"

"Hold the Den gate!"

The Gold-Winged Demon Emperor roared it out again and again, and it worked on the rest like a dose of steadying medicine; the other demon emperors all grew calm.

A Dao Palace was, after all, a means that belonged to Return-to-Void cultivators.

Even if a Spirit-Transformation cultivator were freakishly gifted and grasped one ahead of time, it came with a fatal flaw.

Namely, the lack of a Palace-Anchoring Object.

To anchor a palace meant to pin down that embryonic Dao Palace — rootless as duckweed cut loose, insubstantial as a mirage — and turn its emptiness into something real.

In short, until that step was complete, every unfurling of a Dao Palace was in fact re-condensed out of the surrounding spiritual qi.

Out in the wider world, that limitation might not amount to much.

But within the comparatively cramped Spirit-Plant Garden, the heaven-and-earth spiritual qi he could draw upon was next to nothing.

"That gave This Emperor a fright."

The deer-headed demon emperor managed a strained smile. Perhaps Nie Jun had left too deep an impression on it, all those years ago; it had genuinely come close to being cowed.

The dharma-robes on their bodies belonged to a Nanyang elder, no less. A mere Spirit-Transformation cultivator, stripped of that uncanny Dao-method — how was he going to harm them?

"I nearly forgot that the Lion Emperor is a master of deception. Careless of This Emperor."

With that, they gathered once more before the light-curtain.

Just as the Gold-Winged Demon Emperor had said, this was his only road out alive.

"……"

Shen Yi watched the demons quietly.

Overhead, the Dao Palace was growing thin and insubstantial.

He was silent a moment, then rolled back his sleeves, a cold edge coming to the corner of his mouth.

Without the Dao Palace, with all those miscellaneous arts cast aside… this was the kind…