Chapter 162: Quietly Watching the Chaos of Heaven and Earth

The wind was bizarre, howling like a blade. The rain poured down in torrents. The snowflakes were cold and desolate, freezing thousands of miles. Blood, an endless sea of blood, surged and rolled. Five-colored radiances illuminated the heavens and the earth.

The true form of the Ancestral Witch Dijiang had arrived without anyone knowing when, wielding his brush in the void to write myriad prohibitive spells. Each character was like the Great Dao, and every chapter possessed profound and unfathomable mysteries akin to a deep, dark starry sky. Brilliant and magnificent, they sealed and bound all things in the heavens.

The heaven-shaking killing intent that Nan Luo erupted with at the exact moment he pierced through the void chilled countless souls. They felt their bodies stiffen and their thoughts halt, leaving only that icy sword light thrusting toward them in their minds. Of course, by the time they regained their senses, Nan Luo, who had been beneath the Eastern Emperor Bell, was already gone.

The Eastern Emperor had not revealed his true form, but given his realm, even without his true form present, no one dared to casually test his sharpness.

At this moment, Nan Luo had not retreated far. Instead, he stood thousands of miles away, watching... He stood there quietly, merging into one with the mountains, rivers, and the void. The absolute coldness from when he pierced the void with his sword had vanished from his face, and his gaze was as calm as an ancient well without a ripple. He watched the magnificent battle thousands of miles away, feeling as though it were a dream or an illusion.

The tolling of the bell was vast and sublime, piercing straight into the hearts of those who heard it. It shook the void and annihilated all living things.

There were no words exchanged between them. The moment Nan Luo left, the battle had already begun. The boundless sea of blood connected to an otherworldly void, and faintly, countless demonic beasts roared within that void, their evil and malevolent Qi pervading the Primeval World.

The boundless sea of blood descended, engulfing the Eastern Emperor Bell.

The bell rang out, causing the sea of blood to explode. Countless demonic beasts perished, only to transform back into bloody water and merge into the sea of blood.

The wind blew silently into the sea of blood, the rain fell into it, and snowflakes drifted gracefully... The river of blood, which had previously seemed about to churn up and burst apart, rapidly stabilized after the wind, rain, and snow blended into it.

The tolling of the bell grew low, quieter and quieter, until it was practically inaudible. Heaven and earth fell silent, yet Nan Luo felt his heartbeat accelerate, bringing an endless oppression and suffocating heaviness that made him feel as though he were about to burst apart.

"Clang..."

It felt as though countless days and nights had passed, yet also merely a single instant. A bell toll that shook the heavens and the earth resounded across the primordial expanse, startling and blasting apart the boundless world.

Nan Luo's expression shifted slightly before returning to normal instantly. However, countless people between heaven and earth lost their lives in that single chime, dying without even knowing why. Yet, most of these individuals were practitioners; the higher their cultivation, the greater the impact they suffered. Conversely, those who did not practice cultivation merely heard it as a clap of distant thunder...

The sea of blood churned and burst apart once more. The Eastern Emperor Bell within it surged up into the sky, unleashing a mountain-toppling, sea-overwhelming pressure toward all directions.

A magnificent five-colored radiance descended, shrouding the Eastern Emperor Bell. Following that, the sea of blood re-formed as the wind rose, the rain fell, and snowflakes drifted.

Dijiang, draped in a dark golden Dao robe, wrote furiously in the void. Countless intricate and arcane characters spawned from beneath his Reincarnation Brush, merging into the void. At this moment, one half of his body was overflowing with eerie and unfathomable Yin Qi, while the other half manifested the majesty of Yang and righteous awe—both Yin and Yang gathered in a single body.

"Clang... Clang-clang... Clang-clang-clang..."

The tolling of the bell came from within the sea of blood, growing increasingly rapid, dense like raindrops pattering against glass, until the individual strikes finally blurred together into an indistinguishable roar. One could only perceive this endless, continuous bell chime echoing across heaven and earth...

Dijiang wrote with mounting haste, the Reincarnation Brush in his hand having turned into a blur, while he simultaneously chanted syllables of the Dao. With the utterance of each syllable, winds surged and clouds roiled, turning either resplendent with golden light or ethereal and bizarre.

"Clang—"

The endless chimes condensed into a single sound. Within a radius of ten thousand miles, the clouds dispersed, the wind ceased, and the earth shook and mountains quaked.

The sea of blood collapsed and scattered as the Eastern Emperor Bell soared into the sky.

A cyan lotus bowl, as if waiting for a long time above the nine heavens, inverted and cascaded downwards. The cyan lotus bowl seemed capable of melting the sky and containing the earth, diffusing boundless golden light from its surface. Although it failed to capture the Eastern Emperor Bell, it successfully delayed its advance.

The sea of blood reassembled in an instant, engulfing the Eastern Emperor Bell once more. Violent winds raged above the sea of blood, heavy rain poured, and snowflakes fluttered. Furthermore, five-colored splendor blended into it, crowned by the cyan lotus bowl which emanated a gentle golden light that merged into the sea of blood...

At this very moment, Dijiang suddenly let out a loud roar, grabbed the inkstone from his desk, took a step forward, and appeared above the sea of blood. He grew to a height of tens of thousands of feet, and the Reincarnation Brush in his hand grew proportionally. With monstrous momentum, he slowly inscribed two grand characters above the sea of blood.

"—Sealing and Binding—"

These two characters were not ordinary words of this world; one could not see where they began, nor could one tell where they ended. In the eyes of different people, these two characters naturally appeared differently. Some looked upon them and marveled at them as a magnificent painting. Others looked upon them and turned pale with fright, because what appeared before their eyes was a terrifying scene of hell. These perceptions were determined by each person's state of mind; with differing minds and varying realms, what they saw differed vastly.

As Nan Luo watched, what flowed through his mind were precisely the two characters for "Sealing and Binding"... He could confirm that he did not recognize these two characters—they were absent from the *Yellow Court Scriptures*—yet the moment he saw them, he understood them.

"Sealing and binding... Is this meant to seal the Eastern Emperor Bell?" Nan Luo thought to himself. In his view, everything that happened today was merely intended to lure the Eastern Emperor Bell here, and then seal it in order to weaken Eastern Emperor Taiyi's strength.

He naturally remembered that cyan lotus bowl. When he arrived here, a strange person holding a cyan bowl had intercepted him and nearly caused him to lose his composure and shatter his Dao heart. Yet, he never expected that this person was also here to deal with Eastern Emperor Taiyi.

"What manner of person is he? To possess such divine abilities and be capable of halting the departure of the Eastern Emperor Bell, he cannot be a nameless figure." Glancing at the vaguely discernible "Mountain of No Tribulation" suspended above the nine heavens, he thought to himself: "Presumably, she was used as bait to lure the Eastern Emperor here..."

"She once said that the reincarnation of heaven and earth has fallen into disorder, and many people are plotting against her. Has she confirmed that those plotting against her are from the Heavenly Court, or does she believe the Heavenly Court poses the greatest threat to her, which is why she made the first move?"

Looking at that Mountain of No Tribulation, he wondered again what Beiling being suppressed beneath Kunlun Mountain signified, and what role he himself had played throughout all this—was he a plotter, someone being plotted against, or merely a small fish swept into a whirlpool?

Having pondered so much, he let out a long breath, a sudden sensation welling up inside him that the battle before his eyes was so far away. Clearly, he had just been in the thick of the battle, brushing shoulders with death, yet now he felt as though everything were illusory.

Heavenly Court, Wu Clan... grievances and grudges seemed to have been exhausted and dissolved within that single sword strike...

Dijiang finally finished writing the two characters for "Sealing and Binding," which slowly dissolved into the sea of blood. Immediately after, countless characters emerged from the void, streaming into the sea of blood in a flurry.

All the previous suppression seemed to have been merely preparation, waiting for Dijiang to complete this sealing technique. Once the sealing spell was cast, the void fell silent, and heaven and earth itself seemed to have been locked down. At that very moment, a grand and tyrannical voice traveled from hundreds of millions of miles away.

"I was wondering which people were plotting behind the scenes. How is it just the few of you? To think the likes of you wish to seal my Eastern Emperor Bell—what a joke."

This voice came from the distant void, yet it roared as if right beside their ears. The voice was like the tolling of a bell, vast enough to shake heaven and earth.

"Eastern Emperor Taiyi." Upon hearing this voice, Nan Luo thought of him immediately. He could not help but raise his head to look in the direction of Mount Buzhou, pondering inwardly: "If his true form arrives, all their efforts here will likely be in vain..." Then he thought that since he could think of this, those who plotted against the Eastern Emperor and sought to seal his bell would naturally have considered this possibility as well. Thus, if the Eastern Emperor's true form attempted to come, someone would definitely intercept him. Who would that be? The other Ancestral Witches of the Wu Clan? It must be so; only the Ancestral Witches of the Wu Clan could hold Taiyi back.

Sure enough, a short moment later, monstrous malevolent Qi soared into the skies from an extremely distant location, accompanied by chaotic vital energy and flashing bolts of lightning. Taiyi's tyrannical and awe-inspiring voice echoed through the void: "Ha! Just the few of you? Do you really think you can stop me? Ha ha..."

"Taiyi, today is the day of your fall." Amidst Taiyi's laughter, a voice pierced the firmament, spreading across heaven and earth.

The battle erupted. The war between the Primordial Heavenly Court and the Wu Clan commenced, causing countless living beings to be annihilated. Anyone with even a shred of divine ability quickly fled the scene...

Nan Luo sensed the fierce battle raging in the far distance, then looked at the nearby sealing ritual that now seemed to have quieted down. He thought to himself: "If Taiyi cannot merge with the Eastern Emperor Bell, there is a real possibility he might be sealed. If the Eastern Emperor Bell is sealed, Taiyi's strength will inevitably plummet; after all, the assistance of a supreme先天灵宝 (Xiantian spiritual treasure) is immense."

Suddenly, a strange feeling arose in Nan Luo's heart, a sensation that something was amiss. After a brief moment of contemplation, a person flashed into his mind.

"Dijun, the Heavenly Emperor of the Heavenly Court."

It seemed everyone had forgotten that he was the Heavenly Emperor, the true master of this heaven and earth who ruled over billions of living beings. Yet now, all these arrangements seemed to be centered solely around plotting against Taiyi. Did they truly believe that once Taiyi was dead, Dijun could be effortlessly plucked like ripe fruit?

Nan Luo could not help but narrow his eyes. In his heart, Dijun was even more terrifying than Taiyi. Setting aside his ability to calculate the heavens, even his raw power—recalled through the lens of Nan Luo's current vision—still evoked a chill in his heart, exactly as it had when he first witnessed it years ago: unfathomable, like the vast starry sky.

However, thinking back to the Ancestral Witch Hall of the Wu Clan and the legends surrounding the Ancestral Witches and heaven and earth, he relaxed slightly. While Dijun and Taiyi of the Heavenly Court possessed immense power that overwhelmed the contemporary era, the Ancestral Witches of the Wu Clan likewise possessed extraordinary divine abilities. If they truly clashed in a head-on collision, it remained unknown who would emerge victorious.

"They couldn't possibly have forgotten Dijun. Could there be some hidden trump card prepared, yet to be revealed? ...This time, exactly who went to intercept Taiyi?"

As Nan Luo pondered thus, a sudden roar echoed in his ears, immediately followed by Taiyi's hearty laughter.

"It would take all twelve of you gathered together to barely suffice. Just the four of you are not enough to catch this Emperor's eye."

Nan Luo looked toward the source of the sound, five-colored radiance swirling within his pupils as he activated his Heavenly Vision. A streak of golden light approached at extreme speed, the vital energy of heaven and earth parting like a tidal wave to clear a path in its wake.

At that exact moment, a streak of golden light rose from the earth to meet it. Within that golden light, Nan Luo saw everything with absolute clarity. His brow furrowed involuntarily, because in his eyes, the person within that golden light was actually a member of the Human Clan.