Amid billions of gazes interwoven with shock, wild joy, doubt, and fear, a figure slowly stepped forth from within the endless radiant red-gold divine light.
His figure was tall and straight, his black hair falling like a waterfall, his face handsome yet marked by an ancient vicissitude.
When his eyes opened, his left eye seemed to contain a blazing great sun, illuminating all things; his right eye seemed to harbor a primordial chaos egg, nurturing heaven and earth.
Around him coiled tangible True Solar Fire and currents of chaos, evolving strange phenomena of starry skies being born and universes reincarnating.
He was Lu Xuan.
Originally a transmigrator from Earth, he had crossed over into the Golden Crow clan of the Immortal Domain. Yet in this world, he had fused with the inheritance imprint left behind by the ancient Demon Race sovereign—Eastern Emperor Taiyi—and had even received the recognition of the Chaos Bell.
At the Golden Crow clan’s most perilous moment, in the deepest reaches of this ancient solar cavern, he had absorbed the source essence Taiyi had left behind. After surviving nine deaths and one life, he had finally broken through his shackles, condensed his own Great Dao, and stepped into the realm of Immortal King!
At this moment, he was no longer that weak transmigrator. He was Lu Xuan, the new-generation Golden Crow Immortal King who had inherited Eastern Emperor Taiyi’s mantle!
His gaze calmly swept over the bloodstained ancestral land below, passing over the faces of his clansmen, who were so excited they trembled.
In the end, like two invisible heavenly blades, it cleaved through the void and landed upon the three Immortal Kings—Ao Sheng, Taishi, and Yuanchu.
There was no anger in that gaze, no hatred. There was only an icy coldness that looked down upon ants, and an absolute indifference that held life and death in its hands.
“The kings of the Immortal Domain stood by and watched coldly…”
Lu Xuan spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it clearly entered every corner of the Immortal Domain, entering the ears of every Immortal King spying on this place. “Very well.”
He slowly raised his right hand. That ancient and simple Chaos Bell, black-yellow in hue and seemingly bearing the weight of the universe, naturally emerged, slowly revolving in his palm and letting fall billions of strands of chaotic energy.
“Since no one will uphold justice,”
Lu Xuan’s gaze finally locked onto Immortal King Ao Sheng, whose expression had turned ugly. His tone remained calm. “Then I shall personally take it.”
“The first debt—you will repay.”
Before his words had fully faded, he bent a finger and lightly flicked the Chaos Bell.
“Dong—!”
The bell rang again!
This time, it was no longer a proclamation, but a judgment!
It was annihilation!
Invisible bell waves surged like tides of destruction. Wherever they passed, space turned into the most fundamental particles, timelines fell into chaos and snapped apart, and the laws of the Great Dao wailed as they retreated!
Immortal King Ao Sheng’s pupils abruptly contracted. He felt an unprecedented threat of death!
With a furious roar, the Immortal King magic power within his body erupted without the slightest reservation. Dragon-shaped immortal radiance shot into the heavens, and one protective immortal treasure after another rose into the air, attempting to resist.
However, before the mighty power of the Chaos Bell, all resistance seemed so pale and laughable.
The bell waves swept past. The immortal treasures wailed and shattered, and the dragon-shaped immortal radiance was annihilated inch by inch!
“No—!!!”
Immortal King Ao Sheng let out a roar of shock, fury, and despair. His body rapidly dissolved, and together with his unwilling primordial spirit, he was ground into nothingness!
An Immortal King who had awed the Immortal Domain for countless epochs, one who had just been holding the lives and deaths of others in his hands, was thus destroyed in both body and spirit!
Silence!
Deathly silence!
Not only in the Golden Crow ancestral land—the entire Immortal Domain, every Immortal King who had spied upon this scene through divine sense, lost their voices at this moment!
Immortal Kings Taishi and Yuanchu instantly lost all color in their faces. Their eyes were filled with boundless fear and horror!
They watched Ao Sheng be crushed to death like an ant. They looked at that ancient bronze bell suspended in Lu Xuan’s palm, as if it could stabilize the primordial cosmos, and a chill surged from the soles of their feet straight to the crowns of their heads!
Just what kind of supreme treasure was that?!
And this newly ascended Golden Crow Immortal King—what terrifying existence was he?!
With a casual beckon, Lu Xuan drew over the mass of purest source essence and Great Dao fragments left behind by Immortal King Ao Sheng, then backhandedly sent it into the shattered ancestral land below.
Upon the scorched earth, new divine grasses immediately sprouted. Even the broken ancient Fusang tree began to seep drops of golden liquid brimming with vitality.
He slowly turned around, and those eyes once again fell upon Taishi and Yuanchu.
The Chaos Bell trembled slightly, emitting a low Dao hum, as if it thirsted for more sacrifices.
Lu Xuan’s voice, like the final death knell, echoed through the deathly still Immortal Domain:
“Now, it is your turn.”
Lu Xuan’s icy gaze was like two tangible shackles, firmly pinning Immortal King Taishi and Immortal King Yuanchu in the void.
The Chaos Bell hung high, letting fall billions of strands of black-yellow energy, suppressing the primordial cosmos and stabilizing earth, water, fire, and wind.
This stretch of spacetime seemed to have been severed from the Immortal Domain, becoming an absolute domain that belonged solely to Lu Xuan.
Immortal King Taishi’s face was ashen, and none of his previous ethereal transcendence remained.
He could clearly sense that his connection to the Great Dao of the Immortal Domain had become unbearably obscure. The Immortal King laws he had prided himself on circulated sluggishly within his body, as if they had sunk into a boundless mire.
That bell, merely by floating there, made him tremble from the depths of his soul.
It was absolute suppression on the level of existence itself!
The chaotic energy around Immortal King Yuanchu churned violently as he tried to break through the restraints with the most fundamental power of chaos within himself. Yet to his horror, he discovered that when his power of chaos came into contact with the aura falling from that bell, it was like a stream flowing into the sea, unable to stir the slightest ripple!
This bell actually far surpassed him even on the level of chaos!
“Fellow Daoist! Show mercy!”
Immortal King Taishi could no longer care about his dignity and cried out urgently.
“There may be some misunderstanding in this matter! We are willing to compensate the Golden Crow clan for all its losses!”
“Misunderstanding?” Lu Xuan laughed, but that smile was bone-chillingly cold, without the slightest warmth.
His gaze swept over the scorched earth and bloodstains below. “You slaughtered my clansmen, destroyed my ancestral land, and forced my clan to the brink of extinction. And you think a flimsy word like ‘misunderstanding’ can brush it all aside?”
He raised his hand and pointed at the shattered divine Fusang tree, at those clansmen whose auras were feeble and whose eyes were filled with tears.
“Their blood, their lives—what will you use to compensate them?”
Immortal King Taishi was left speechless, his expression growing even uglier.
Immortal King Yuanchu took a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm.
“Fellow Daoist Lu Xuan, though you have only just entered the Immortal King realm, your battle strength shocks the world, and you possess a supreme treasure besides. We admire you. However, the balance of the Immortal Domain is of utmost importance. Ao Sheng has already fallen. If you slay the two of us as well, the structure of the Immortal Domain will surely be thrown into chaos, and it may trigger an unpredictable calamity! Why not stop here? The two of us are willing to swear Great Dao oaths never to offend the Golden Crow clan again, and we will present heavy treasures as apology!”
He tried to pressure him with the greater situation of the Immortal Domain, hoping to make the other party hesitate.
“The balance of the Immortal Domain? A calamity?”
The mockery in Lu Xuan’s tone grew even stronger.
“When my clan was on the verge of extinction, where was the balance of the Immortal Domain? When all of you joined hands to force us into a corner, did you ever think of calamity? Now you speak to me of the greater situation… Too late!”
He said no more. With a thought—
“Dong!”
The Chaos Bell gave another soft chime. This time, the bell’s sound did not spread outward, but transformed into two black-yellow ripples visible to the naked eye, coiling toward Taishi and Yuanchu!
“No!”
The two Immortal Kings were terrified to the extreme. They madly burned their source essence and brought out their strongest protective immortal treasures.
Above Immortal King Taishi’s head appeared a nine-story jade pagoda, letting fall countless immortal Dao runes.
Immortal King Yuanchu manifested a hazy primordial chaos realm, attempting to hide himself within the beginning of all laws.