A sea of clouds churned, and immortal winds blew bleak.
Jiang Ziya bid farewell to Kunlun Mountain's Jade Void Palace and trod the clouds westward with slow, heavy steps.
The scene from just now—Shen Gongbao betraying the sect and launching a murderous attack, shattering the bond between fellow disciples—kept lingering in his heart, impossible to dispel.
He held the supreme Investiture treasure bestowed by Primordial Heavenly Venerate and bore the great duty of the Investiture. From this moment on, he was no longer an idle cultivator of Kunlun Mountain, but the one who would preside over the life mandates of heaven and earth and adjudicate the divine posts of the Three Realms.
Storms would rise on the road ahead. The flames of war between Shang and Zhou were about to ignite. The destinies of countless cultivators and ordinary mortals were all tied to him alone. The weighty burden of the Heavenly Dao pressed upon his shoulders, making his expression grow all the more solemn and calm.
He traveled west all the way. The clouds and mist gradually thinned, and he left behind the Immortal Realm's ethereal sea of clouds, descending into the mountains and rivers of the human world.
Halfway there, he suddenly saw Black Qi rising and sinking over the earth below, a dark, murky abyssal marsh, and a blood-colored chasm stretching across the mountains and rivers.
At the bottom of the abyss, yin winds howled and Killing Intent permeated the air, yet there was not the slightest vicious madness that harmed people. There was only a heavy, gloomy power of remnant soul that had not dispersed for countless years, entrenched in this place.
Jiang Ziya sensed something in his heart, lowered his cloud, and landed beside the Blood Abyss.
The abyssal water was dark red, like congealed blood.