The nine-tiered black tower spun with a thunderous roar.
The gate to the eighth level opened.
A thunder phoenix, purple-black from head to toe, burst from the tower.
Its wings spread across ten thousand miles.
Every single feather
was formed from the purest lightning.
It did not charge at the Taiyi Ancient Immortal.
Instead, it slammed headlong into the Blood Luo Immortal Lord’s nine blood spears.
Boom!
The sea of blood and the lightning exploded at once.
A rising crimson mist blanketed vast stretches of the immortal domain.
“New Emperor Sword!”
“It’s here!”
The silver-haired youth transformed into a streak of silver sword-light.
He shot straight toward Xuanming’s twelve wings.
He had only made it halfway
when he suddenly realized something was wrong.
“Master!”
“That thing is covered in mouths!”
“I can’t beat it!”
Wang Hao struck him in the back with one palm.
“That’s exactly why you have to fight it.”
“If you could beat it, would I still need you?”
“Why don’t you go yourself?”
“I have more important matters to attend to.”
The silver-haired youth burst into curses.
But Wang Hao’s palm had already sent him flying.
The silver light crashed into the Immortal Aberration’s wings.
The countless eyes embedded in Xuanming’s feathers opened simultaneously.
Mouth after mouth bit down upon the sword.
The New Emperor Sword threw off showers of sparks as it was gnawed at.
“Stop biting me!”
“I’m the one who eats things!”
The silver blade suddenly twisted.
Rather than clash head-on with Xuanming’s immortal feathers,
it opened a tiny crack.
Then it bit down on one of the feathers in return.
Crack!
A small piece of the feather was torn away.
The New Emperor Sword froze for a moment.
“I can eat this?”
The next instant, the silver blade let out an excited hum.
“Master!”
“This thing is edible!”
Wang Hao did not answer.
Because the Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s golden immortal bell had already arrived.
Wang Hao raised both hands.
Heaven-Imprisoning, Earth-Overturning Palm!
First palm.
The void trembled.
Second palm.
A river of imperial destiny surged into the heavens.
Third palm.
A dragon of providence coiled around his arm.
Fourth palm.
The flesh of Wang Hao’s palms split apart.
Fifth palm.
A faint dent appeared in the golden bell-wave.
Sixth palm.
The bones in Wang Hao’s arms cracked explosively.
Seventh palm.
The bell-wave was stopped three feet before him.
Eighth palm.
Wang Hao slid backward for ten thousand miles.
His feet plowed two black ravines through the shattered immortal domain.
Ninth palm!
“Overturn the Earth!”
Boom!
The force of all nine palms stacked atop one another.
A gigantic golden palm collided head-on with the immortal bell.
The corpse-path markings within Wang Hao’s body were jolted to the point of instantly nearing his heart.
Blood sprayed from his mouth and nose.
The massive golden palm exploded.
Yet the Taiyi Immortal Bell was forcibly pushed back half a zhang.
Half a zhang.
That was all the distance Wang Hao needed.
He reached into his robes with his right hand.
And took out the fragment of the Incense-Faith Immortal Ring.
The Myriad Contracts, One Origin Seal lit up.
Dark contract runes instantly spread over the fragment.
“Taiyi.”
“Your property.”
“I’m returning it to you.”
Wang Hao tossed the Immortal Ring fragment toward the golden ancient bell.
The Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s expression changed slightly.
The Incense-Faith Immortal Ring was the foundation of his Great Dao.
Even a mere fragment
could never be allowed to fall into another’s hands.
The Immortal Ring began to turn on its own.
A force of recall enveloped the fragment.
The palm-sized golden shard suddenly accelerated,
flying toward the halo behind Taiyi’s head.
Just as the fragment was about to return to the Immortal Ring,
the Myriad Contracts, One Origin Seal in Wang Hao’s palm suddenly tightened.
The fragment shifted by an inch.
It slammed directly into the surface of the golden ancient bell.
Dong!
The Immortal Ring fragment resonated with the bell, their origins one and the same.
Upon the bell’s surface,
a hairline crack appeared.
The Taiyi Ancient Immortal immediately saw through Wang Hao’s intentions.
“You want to enter the immortal bell?”
Wang Hao wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
“You guessed right.”
“There’s no prize.”
The Taiyi Ancient Immortal violently activated the immortal bell.
He wanted to close the rift.
But Wang Hao had already made his move.
The Imperial Dao River lifted his body.
A golden dragon of fortune roared as it charged toward the bell wall.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal brought down one palm.
The twelve pairs of immortal-ghost wings behind Xuanming also folded inward.
Blood Luo Immortal Lord condensed a blood-sea spear that pierced through the starry skies.
Three immortal-tier killing auras locked onto Wang Hao at the same time.
Yet Wang Hao did not look back.
He flung the black-haired human hide he had just collected behind him.
The Corpse-Transcendence Immortal Skin expanded dramatically in the wind.
Every black hair upon it.
Was suffused with the laws of the Corpse Dao.
Xuanming’s immortal-ghost wings descended first.
Rip!
The black-haired hide was torn open on the spot, leaving behind a massive gash.
Xuanming’s eyes turned cold.
Before he could retract his wings,
Blood Luo Immortal Lord’s spear had already pierced through from behind.
When Wang Hao threw out the hide,
he had used the Myriad Contracts Sharing One Origin Seal to attach the lingering aura of the Corpse-Transcendence Immortal Skin to Xuanming’s wings.
Blood Luo’s target
had originally been Wang Hao.
But after the blood-sea spear sensed even more potent immortal-grade flesh and blood,
the spearhead instinctively veered aside.
Boom!
The spear pierced through three of Xuanming’s wings.
A furious roar came from the giant maw in Xuanming’s right eye.
“Blood Luo!”
Blood Luo Immortal Lord was stunned for a moment as well.
“It wasn’t me.”
From a distance,
Wang Hao took a moment to call out a reminder.
“It was her.”
“I saw it clearly.”
The blood sea beneath Blood Luo Immortal Lord’s feet churned violently.
“Mortal!”
“Shut up!”
Wang Hao had already reached the rift in the bell wall.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s palm seal descended.
At that very moment,
the Dragon-Slayer’s woodcutter’s blade swept in from the side.
He failed to shatter the palm seal,
but he knocked it half a foot off course.
Half of Wang Hao’s body was caught by the force of the palm.
The flesh on his left shoulder vanished on the spot,
revealing pale-golden bones.
But his body
also passed through that half-foot gap and crashed into the rift in the bell wall.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s expression changed drastically.
“You’re courting death!”
The golden bell wall slammed shut.
At the final moment,
Wang Hao turned to look at the Dragon-Slayer.
“Senior.”
“I’ll leave the outside to you.”
The Dragon-Slayer shook apart the countless broken swords with a single slash.
“This old man can only hold them off for ten breaths.”
Wang Hao raised one finger.
“One breath is enough.”
“And the remaining nine?”
“Keep an eye on the goods for Me.”
With those words,
the bell wall closed completely.
Wang Hao vanished inside the golden ancient bell.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal fell briefly silent.
Then,
he suddenly laughed.
The half of his face that remained intact
began to rot little by little amid his laughter.
“Mortal.”
“Outside, you have the Imperial Dao River protecting you.”
“You have the power of all living beings’ faith assisting you.”
“You have the Dragon-Slayer blocking the swords for you.”
“And yet you dared to enter My Immortal Bell of your own accord.”
“Here,”
“I am the only heavenly law.”
Inside the golden ancient bell
was a vast, boundless world of incense offerings.
Countless ancient stars floated in the void.
Upon the surface of every star,
hundreds of millions of soul-shadows knelt.
They bowed their heads.
They prayed.
They worshiped.
Day after day.
Year after year.
From the birth of their civilizations
until their civilizations were destroyed,
they never stopped.
Wang Hao stood among the billions of kneeling soul-shadows.
The wound on his shoulder was still gushing blood.
The New Emperor Sword emerged from beside him.
Its blade was covered in bite marks.
The Demon-Suppressing Thunder Abyss Pagoda had shrunk to three feet in height
and hovered above Wang Hao’s head.
A system notification quietly appeared.
【You have arrived near a special check-in location!】
【The seventy-second bell inscription is located in the deepest part of the incense world!】
Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s enormous face
slowly emerged above the starry sky.
“Now,”
“who can still save you?”
Wang Hao looked up.
He glanced at the sky full of stars.
Then at the countless ancient soul-shadows.
Finally, he took the ledger from his robes.
“Who said I came in here to save my own life?”
“I came to seize assets.”
Inside the Incense Offering Immortal Bell.
There was no true heaven or earth.
Every inch of space
was faith-power compressed to its absolute limit.
Countless ancient beings knelt upon the stars.
Their bodies had long since vanished.
All that remained were their souls, memories, and faith.
Golden threads of incense offerings
extended from between their brows,
eventually converging at the highest point of the starry sky.
There,
seventy-two immense golden immortal sigils floated in the void.
The first seventy-one sigils
each bore an ancient totem from a different sacred land.
There was a nine-headed true dragon.
A three-legged divine bird.
A divine tree stretching across the sea of stars.
And an ancient giant holding up the sun and moon.
Only the seventy-second immortal sigil
bore no image at all.
It was merely a ring.
Incomplete.
Dim.
Covered in cracks.
Yet it was even more ancient than the other seventy-one sigils.
The instant Wang Hao saw it,
the check-in prompt appeared on its own.
【Check-in location reached!】
【Would you like to check in?】
“Check in.”
【Check-in successful!】
【Obtained: World-Crossing Law Seal!】
【World-Crossing Law Seal: Formed from the original rules of the World-Crossing Immortal Bell. With this Law Seal, one may trace all wishes accepted within the bell but never repaid.】
【Warning: The World-Crossing Law Seal is responsible only for pursuing karmic debts. It cannot suppress the target.】
【Intelligence updated!】
【The Taiyi Ancient Immortal feeds upon the incense offerings of seventy-two sacred lands. Every wish he accepts creates a karmic debt.】
【Taiyi has never fulfilled a single wish.】
【Total unpaid karmic debts: Impossible to calculate.】
【The Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s true immortal soul is hidden behind the seventy-second bell inscription.】
【Method of destruction: Awaken the original laws of the bell and make every unfulfilled wish collect its debt at once.】
【Next check-in location updated!】
【Location: The first fragment of the bell’s clapper after the World-Crossing Bell shattered.】
After reading the intelligence,
Wang Hao’s expression became somewhat strange.
The New Emperor Sword transformed into a silver-haired youth.
Covering the arm that Xuanming had bitten full of tooth marks,
he looked up at Taiyi’s face in the starry sky.
“Master.”
“How much does he owe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Even the system can’t calculate it?”
“Mm.”
The silver-haired youth immediately looked disdainful.
“Then he’s even more shameless than you.”
Wang Hao gave him a glance.
“When have I ever owed anyone anything?”
“You owe me.”
“What?”
“Wages.”
“Cursed artifacts don’t need wages.”
“Then what do you call me getting beaten up?”
“Normal equipment wear and tear.”
The silver-haired youth opened his mouth,
wanting to argue further.
But the voice of the Taiyi Ancient Immortal had already resounded from every direction.
“The rules of mortals
cannot bind an immortal.”
“When all beings seek protection from the strong,
and offer up their faith,
that is simply the law of heaven.”
Wang Hao opened the ledger.
“Taking payment means doing the job.”
“That, too, is the law of heaven.”
The Taiyi Ancient Immortal replied coldly,
“What they offered was not money.”
“It was incense offerings.”
“Is there a difference?”
“If you take money, you have to do the job.”
“If you take incense offerings, all you need to do is make them keep kneeling.”
Wang Hao nodded.
“Understood.”
“This is illegal fundraising.”
The Taiyi Ancient Immortal did not understand what “illegal fundraising” meant.
But he understood the mockery in Wang Hao’s tone.
The golden starry sky abruptly contracted.
Countless soul-shadows raised their hands at once.
They were not acting of their own will.
They were controlled by the threads of incense offerings.
Golden spears condensed in the hands of the countless soul-shadows.
Every spear point turned toward Wang Hao.
The vast face of the Taiyi Ancient Immortal, spread across the starry sky, slowly opened its mouth.
“Kill him.”
Billions of spears.
Fell at once.
The sight was like an entire golden sky of stars collapsing.
Every single spear
contained the accumulated power of thousands upon thousands of prayers and offerings.
Even a Martial God realm expert, standing here,
would have their soul obliterated in an instant.
Wang Hao did not dodge.
He raised his right hand.
The World-Saving Law Seal hovered above his palm.
A peal of a bell, more ancient than even the voice of the Taiyi Ancient Immortal,
rang out from the seal.
“Those who receive wishes
must fulfill them.”
Six words.
They were not grand or imposing.
Yet they entered the depths of every ancient soul-shadow’s consciousness.
The billions of spears halted above Wang Hao’s head.
The nearest one
was less than half an inch from his brow.
The one holding it was a young woman.
She wore the robes of a sacred land that had long since been destroyed.
Her eyes had been empty.
But now, a trace of struggle appeared within them.
“My... wish...”
A hoarse voice came from her throat.
“My wish...”
The Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s voice abruptly became stern.
“Kneel!”
The woman’s soul-shadow trembled violently.
Her knees slowly began to bend.
A pale white radiance bloomed from the World-Saving Law Seal in Wang Hao’s palm.
“Speak.”
The woman looked at him.
“I prayed to the Taiyi Ancient Immortal
to save my daughter.”
Wang Hao asked,
“Was she saved?”
Two streams of golden tears ran from the woman’s eyes.
“No.”
“My daughter was chosen by the sacred land.
She became an incense-offering vessel.
She entered the mountain at seven.
She died at eight.
Her soul is here too.”
The woman slowly turned her head
and looked toward the countless densely packed soul-shadows behind her.
She had knelt for far too long.
So long that she had forgotten what her daughter looked like.
But after the World-Saving Law Seal awakened the karmic bond,
that memory
returned.
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...
