The Bell of Empty Escape, Inviting You Into the Jar

Yet where Donghua looked, the clouds still rolled and unfurled, with not the slightest sign of movement.

"Hiding your head and skulking your tail—show yourself!"

Donghua's eyes blazed with violet-gold divine light, and the Jingyang Bell hidden in his sleeve rang out with a thunderous boom as he struck the very stretch of void he had first fixed his gaze upon.

The bell's toll transformed into visible golden ripples, and wherever they passed, space shattered inch by inch, spreading like a spider's web.

Just as this space-shattering attack was about to annihilate that stretch of void, a hazy figure abruptly materialized.

"Daoist friend, why such anger? This treasure has no fate with either of you." The voice was illusory and unfixed, as if it came from another time and space.

With a light flick of his sleeve, a Bronze Ancient Door materialized out of thin air.

The door was carved with countless arcane runes, and the space within its frame twisted, as if connecting to an endless void.

The golden ripples blasted out by the Jingyang Bell poured into the ancient door like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, not even stirring a single ripple.

Donghua's expression shifted to surprise: "An Innate Spiritual Treasure imbued with the Space Law—interesting!"

The mysterious figure chuckled without replying. The void within the Bronze Ancient Door rippled with eerie fluctuations, redirecting the devoured power elsewhere, and through the portal, the faint image of countless stars being annihilated by the bell's toll flickered into view.

At that moment, beside the Four Symbols Banana Tree, a pitch-black spatial rift split open without a sound.

A phantom hand reached out from within, making straight for the already-ripe Wind and Fire Leaves!

"Forbidden."

Just as the great hand was about to succeed, Taizhen's clear, cold voice rang out. Her jade hand lightly raised the Kunlun Mirror, which suddenly blazed with pure radiance.

As the mirror's surface turned, the Time Law spread outward like ripples, precisely enveloping the ethereal hand reaching for the banana tree.

In an instant, the drifting trajectory of the Wind and Fire Banana Leaves froze midair, the surging spatial rift stopped contracting, and that phantom hand, still reaching for the treasure, was completely frozen in place.

The owner of that hand had clearly not anticipated Taizhen possessing such a Supernatural Ability.

"Since you've reached out, leave it behind," Donghua said with a light laugh.

The moment the phantom hand was frozen in time, Donghua and Taizhen exchanged a glance. No words were needed; perfect understanding had already been reached.

"Yang Yuan Dao Jie."

Donghua pointed a finger, and a divine radiance, blazing like the great sun descending upon the world, fully unfolded from his fingertip!

Just as Donghua's devastating attack was about to touch the hand, Taizhen's jade finger lifted slightly, and the time-stasis force enveloping the phantom hand receded with surgical precision, like a tide retreating.

"Release."

Time resumed its flow.

The hand had barely broken free from time's imprisonment, with no chance to react, when Donghua's fully charged, lethal strike was already upon it!

Where the divine light passed, the Daluo body—transcending the River of Time and impervious to countless calamities—began to be directly erased, like lingering snow thrown into a blazing furnace!

This was no ordinary destruction, but a far more fundamental dissolution.

The essence of life that constituted the Daluo Immortal Body's life force, under the illumination of this supremely yang and pure divine light, silently decomposed and dissipated like spring ice meeting the sun.

"Ugh—ah!"

From the depths of the void, a muffled groan filled with extreme pain and fury suddenly rang out. Clearly, the complete erasure of the hand had inflicted far greater damage on its owner than imagined.

"Daoist friend, you win. This treasure is yours. The two of you had best not separate."

The voice carried a faint, barely perceptible note of anger and urgency. The figure flickered between solid and void, and the surrounding space began to twist, clearly intending to flee using a secret technique.

"Come when you wish, leave when you wish—quite the imposing manner, Daoist friend. It seems the lesson just now was not deep enough. How about leaving your Dao Body behind for This Seat to examine closely!"

Donghua's gaze was like lightning. Before his words had even faded, the Jingyang Bell in his sleeve rang out once more. The vast bell toll transformed into countless golden Dao patterns, surging toward his opponent.

The illusory figure did not reply but rapidly faded, as if about to merge completely into nothingness and escape this place.

Donghua's gaze was as icy as ten-thousand-year-old profound ice. Since this karmic bond had been forged, how could he allow the other to come and go as he pleased?

First, he had snatched at the treasure, then spoken arrogantly, and now, seeing the situation turn unfavorable, he wanted to slip away and flee. Did he think the Primordial Wilderness had such cheap karma?

"Think you can escape?!"

Donghua took a single step, executing Sunlight Without Trace, sticking like a shadow to the illusory figure that kept flickering through the void in an attempt to flee far away. In an instant, he tore through layers of space and chased for an immeasurable distance.

The fleeing figure ahead seemed panicked, yet its trajectory carried an indescribable subtlety.

Donghua's killing intent was already set. Divine light surged around his body, the Jingyang Bell hung high above his head, cascading down ten thousand beams of golden light to protect him. Locking onto the other's aura, he was determined to leave him behind and settle the karma.

"Clang!"

A short, crisp bell tone rang out. The Jingyang Bell emitted a condensed ring of dark-golden ripples, not aimed at the figure's current location, but precisely sinking into the spacetime node the other was bound to pass through on his next spatial jump.

"Hum!"

The bell's sound cut through the silence of Buzhou Mountain like a sharp blade.

"Pfft!"

The illusory figure had just forcibly squeezed out of the void when it slammed into an invisible divine-iron barrier. The protective divine light around his body flickered violently and dimmed sharply. His form was sent flying backward, and his aura instantly fell into chaos.

Shocked and enraged, he dared not pause for even a moment.

He could only push the Space Law to its absolute limit, his form flickering ceaselessly between reality and illusion.

At times he transformed into a streak of flowing light that tore across the Sea of Stars, traversing the starry expanse; at others, his form collapsed, merging into the fabric of space like a fish slipping into water, riding the currents to flee ten thousand li away.

In an instant, he split into a thousand figures, each radiating an identical aura, shooting off in different directions in an attempt to confuse perception.

Yet Donghua, with the Jingyang Bell suspended above his head, remained unhurried and unperturbed.

The bell's tolls sometimes turned into invisible shackles, weaving a net that spanned heaven and earth across the void.

The figure that had merged into the spatial currents suddenly found himself trapped in a quagmire; every shift and leap became unbearably sluggish, until at last, amid ripples in space, he was forced to reveal his true form.

"Daoist friend, where else do you think you can go?"

Donghua stood before him with his hands clasped behind his back, the Pure Yang Daoist Robe flapping loudly in the fierce wind. With each step he took, the mountain rock beneath his feet turned into the texture of Lapis Lazuli, and the surrounding space solidified.

The illusory figure was compelled to show his true body—a pale-faced Daoist.

He looked at Donghua advancing step by step, then glanced back at the retreat sealed by Dao patterns, and finally despair crept onto his face.

"Daoist friend, do you truly mean to show no mercy?"

"Since you dared to reach out," Donghua said, as Pure Yang Purple Qi swirled at his fingertips, tracing arcane trajectories in the void, "you should have foreseen the consequences."

"If that is your last words, Daoist friend, you may die now."

The moment Donghua finished speaking, the pale-faced Daoist suddenly flashed a sinister smile, waved his hands, and rasped:

"Heaven and Earth reversed, stars and constellations shifted."

A Taiji Diagram spanning heaven and earth flashed across the air, and the surrounding space shattered and reassembled like a broken mirror.

"You think a mere shift of form and place..."

In the next instant, the ground beneath Donghua shook violently, and a dazzling divine light burst forth, trapping him within.

At the same time, patterns emerged all around, interlinking to form arcane light lines that wove together into a bizarre and mysterious formation.

"What happened today, I shall repay a hundredfold in days to come."

The Daoist laughed hoarsely, his form turning ethereal as he prepared to vanish deep into Buzhou Mountain.

"Seal!"