On the fifth day after Kuafu had been beaten flat, the tense atmosphere in the camp had not eased in the slightest. If anything, it had grown even tighter.
Fei Lian ran to Taiyi's tent seven or eight times every day, reporting nothing but trivial matters—which demon soldier had suffered a backlash while cultivating, which scout had returned to say the Witch Race had added several more patrols, and how the birds in the woods west of the camp had stopped chirping lately. Creepy as hell.
Taiyi grew sick of listening and drove Fei Lian out directly at noon on the fifth day.
"Go do whatever you're supposed to do." He sat cross-legged on the blanket without even opening his eyes. "If the Witch Race really comes attacking, reporting it to me a hundred times won't help."
Fei Lian opened his mouth, but finally shut it again and withdrew with a bow.
The tent was finally quiet.
Yet Taiyi had no mind to meditate. He opened his eyes and looked at the cloth overhead, swaying faintly in the wind. His thoughts were filled with the way Xuan Ming had looked at him before she left that day—icy blue, like a frost-covered lake, yet with undercurrents churning beneath.
That woman had definitely grown suspicious.
But suspicious to what extent? Did she merely think his temperament had changed drastically, or had she already begun suspecting possession or impersonation? Taiyi could not tell. Xuan Ming was the Ancestral Witch of Rain, her thoughts finer than a strand of hair. She was nothing like Di Jiang, that one-track-minded brute.
As he pondered, a commotion suddenly broke out beyond the tent.
It was not the panicked kind of commotion. It was more like... muffled cries of alarm and hurried footsteps. Taiyi frowned, rose to his feet, and pulled aside the tent flap.
The sunlight outside was blinding.
In the open space at the center of the camp, the demon soldiers had formed a semicircle, all staring upward. Taiyi followed their gazes—
The sky had split open.
It was not a metaphor. It had truly split open. Like an enormous pane of blue glass, violently torn down the middle. Unstable black light flickered along the edges of the rift, with bottomless void within. Wind poured backward through the opening with an eerie howl, whipping the camp banners into loud flapping.
Then someone stepped out of the rift.
Tall and thin, dressed in coarse hemp robes, with a mess of unkempt hair. He walked upon the void as though it were solid ground, descending step by step. With every step, the surrounding space trembled like ripples spreading across water.
Di Jiang.
He had brought neither Kuafu nor Xuan Ming. He had come alone.
Taiyi narrowed his eyes. The irritation inside him suddenly vanished, replaced by a... long-lost excitement. Like a hunter spotting prey worth risking everything for, or a chess player meeting an evenly matched opponent.
He pushed aside the demon soldiers blocking his path, walked to the center of the open ground, and looked up at Di Jiang, who was still descending.
"Well," Taiyi drawled lazily, "if it isn't the Ancestral Witch of Space. What, didn't get enough last time? Came knocking to deliver yourself today?"
Di Jiang stopped.
He halted thirty zhang above the ground. Looking down at Taiyi, his face showed little expression, but two fires burned in his eyes—not flames of anger, but pure fighting spirit, like a blade honed for countless years, finally waiting for the moment it left its sheath.
"Eastern Emperor Taiyi." Di Jiang's voice was as hoarse and unpleasant as ever. "Change locations."
"Where to?"
"The sky," Di Jiang said. "This place is too small. I can't stretch properly."
Taiyi laughed. "Fine. You're the guest. Wherever you say."
As soon as the words fell, both men moved at once.
Di Jiang's figure flickered, vanishing back into the spatial rift. Taiyi transformed into a golden streak and shot into the heavens after him. The rift rapidly closed once they had entered, and the sky returned to normal as though nothing had happened.
Only the three thousand demon soldiers in the camp remained, staring at one another.
The void.
Not chaos, but the void beyond the Great Wilderness. There was no up, down, left, or right here. No light, no sound—only eternal darkness and dead silence. Occasionally, fragments of space drifted by like shooting stars, trailing faint streaks behind them.
Taiyi steadied himself and surveyed his surroundings. Di Jiang stood opposite him, roughly a hundred zhang away—though distance had little meaning in the void, where there were not even landmarks.
"This place big enough for you?" Taiyi asked.
Di Jiang said nothing. He merely raised his right hand, spread his fingers, then slowly clenched them into a fist.
Boom—
The surrounding space suddenly contracted!
This was not the crushing pressure from last time, but a cruder, more direct collapse of space. Centered on Di Jiang, space within a thousand zhang was seized by an invisible giant hand and madly collapsed inward. Spatial fragments collided and ground against one another, emitting shrill screeches.
Taiyi's expression changed slightly.
That move was more than a level stronger than last time. It seemed Di Jiang had held back that day with Xuan Ming present.
He dared not be careless. With a thought, the phantom of the Chaos Bell fully manifested behind him—not the faint shadow from before, but an almost tangible ancient, weighty bell. Three rings of sun patterns upon its surface shone blindingly bright, while the dark red layer along its edge began flowing like a living thing.
Clang—!
The bell toll exploded through the void.
There was no air, so sound should not have been able to travel. But the toll of the Chaos Bell directly shook space itself. Rings of golden ripples spread outward, and wherever they passed, the collapsing space was forcibly fixed in place and propped open.
The two powers deadlocked in midair.
Di Jiang's collapse against Taiyi's expansion. Under the tearing forces, space groaned beneath the strain. Fine black cracks spread throughout the void like a shattered mirror.
"Interesting." Di Jiang spoke with a trace of excitement in his voice. "Now this is more like it."
He released his fist, and the force of collapse vanished instantly. But the next moment, his figure flickered—
He disappeared.
Not through flight. He truly vanished. He disappeared directly from where he stood, even his aura completely concealed.
Taiyi's heart tightened. His divine sense instantly spread out, covering a thousand li in every direction. Yet the void was empty. Aside from drifting spatial fragments, there was nothing.
Left!
His instincts suddenly sounded the alarm. Without thinking, Taiyi violently shifted a hundred zhang to the right. At nearly the same moment, the space where he had just stood shattered like glass. A hand reached out from the fracture, fingers hooked like claws, grasping at empty air.
Di Jiang stepped out from the shattered space. His expression remained unchanged, but a flash of surprise crossed his eyes. "Fast reaction."
"Obviously." Taiyi steadied himself, his heart still beating a little fast—if that grab had caught him, he would have lost at least a layer of skin. "Sneak attacks? Doesn't your Witch Race brag about being honorable?"
"In the void, there is no light." As Di Jiang spoke, he vanished again.
This time, Taiyi was prepared. The Chaos Bell hovered above his head, its body slowly turning and emitting rings of invisible fluctuations. They were fluctuations of the laws of space-time. Anything that touched them, whether physical matter or spatial movement, would be sensed by him.
Behind me!
Taiyi spun around sharply, his right hand clenched into a fist as Chaos True Sun Fire gathered over it. He threw a punch.
His fist did not strike Di Jiang, but a suddenly appearing spatial barrier. The barrier was like a mirror, reflecting the force of his punch back at him. Taiyi's blood and qi churned as he staggered back three steps.
Di Jiang emerged from behind the barrier and looked at Taiyi with a more serious gaze.
"You've changed," he said.
"Here we go again." Taiyi shook his numb right hand. "Why do all of you keep saying that?"
"Not your personality." Di Jiang shook his head. "Your way of fighting. Before, you only knew how to smash with the Chaos Bell and burn with True Sun Fire. Now you... dodge, deceive, and set traps."
He paused, then added, "Like you've become someone else."
Taiyi's heart skipped a beat, but he smiled outwardly. "What, the Witch Race is allowed to improve, but I'm not?"
"You've improved too quickly," Di Jiang said. "Quickly enough to be abnormal."
As soon as he finished speaking, he stopped wasting words. His hands formed a strange seal before his chest. As the seal took shape, the surrounding space began to twist and fold like a crumpled sheet of paper. Taiyi could feel that the region he occupied was being "cut" out of the void, forming an independent Space Prison.
Spatial Severance.
A space divine ability at the Ancestral Witch level. Once formed, it would completely isolate whoever was trapped within. They would not even be able to sense the laws, and would eventually be worn to death inside.
Taiyi no longer dared to hide his strength.
He drew a deep breath. The mass of Chaos True Sun Fire within his dantian suddenly exploded, transforming into hundreds of millions of fine threads that surged out of his body. The threads intertwined, spun, and condensed in the air into an enormous flaming hand. The hand was entirely golden-red, but its palm was a patch of utter darkness—the Annihilation Characteristic of Chaos True Sun Fire driven to its utmost limit.
The hand struck toward the forming Space Prison.
It did not smash into it. It "pressed" down. The hand pressed against the prison's edge, and the darkness in its palm collided with the laws of space, eroding and grinding against them. Hissing sounds echoed through the void, like cold water poured over red-hot iron.
Di Jiang's expression changed.
He could feel the Space Prison he had set up being rapidly eroded by that strange flame. It was not destruction, but something even more terrifying—erasure. Like rubbing out pencil marks with an eraser until not even a trace remained.
"This fire..." Di Jiang narrowed his eyes. "Something's wrong."
Taiyi did not answer. His entire focus was concentrated on the flaming hand, controlling that annihilating power as it slowly devoured the Space Prison. Fine sweat appeared on his forehead, and his back was soaked—this move consumed too much. At his peak Da Luo cultivation, he could only maintain it for ten breaths at most.
Ten breaths were enough.
Crack—
Like shattering glass. The Space Prison was forcibly torn open with a gap. Taiyi seized the opportunity, flickering out through the opening as the flaming hand dispersed with him.
The two faced each other again.
Di Jiang looked at Taiyi for a long time. Then he suddenly smiled—though his smile looked even uglier than crying.
"Eastern Emperor Taiyi," he said, "I take back what I said earlier. You haven't become someone else. You're still you."
Taiyi froze.
"Only you can cultivate True Sun Fire to such a twisted degree," Di Jiang said. "And only you can make the Chaos Bell acknowledge you as its master so completely that even the laws are distorted."
He paused, his gaze turning complicated. "But you really have changed. The old you was strong, yes, but you always seemed to be... missing something. Now, you have something more."
"What?"
"Scheming," Di Jiang said. "And... fear."
Taiyi's heart jolted.
"What are you afraid of?" Di Jiang pressed. "The Witch Race? The great calamity? Or... something else?"
Taiyi did not answer. He looked at Di Jiang, at this old enemy, and suddenly felt that he might have always underestimated this brute. Di Jiang was straightforward and reckless, but those eyes sometimes saw more clearly than anyone else.
"Everyone is afraid of something," Taiyi finally said. "You aren't?"
"I am," Di Jiang admitted frankly. "I fear the Witch Race being exterminated. I fear the Twelve Ancestral Witches all dying. I fear Buzhou Mountain falling."
He said it directly, so directly that there was no way to refute him.
The two fell silent again.
There was no wind in the void, but the drifting spatial fragments began moving slowly, as though stirred by an invisible hand. In the distance, a massive spatial storm was forming, like a black dragon rolling and roaring through the darkness.
"Let's stop here today," Di Jiang suddenly said.
"Not fighting anymore?" Taiyi raised a brow.
"Not anymore." Di Jiang shook his head. "If we keep going, there still won't be a winner. You can't break my space divine abilities, and I can't do anything to that bell of yours."
As he spoke, he turned to leave, then stopped. "Oh, right. Xuan Ming asked me to pass along a message."
"What message?"
"She said to be careful." Di Jiang glanced back at him. "Not careful of the Witch Race. Careful of... yourself."
With that, he tore open space, stepped inside, and vanished.
Taiyi was left alone in the void.
He stood where he was, staring in the direction Di Jiang had disappeared for a long time. The two sentences echoed repeatedly in his mind—
"What are you afraid of?"
"Be careful of yourself."
Wind poured in through the spatial rift, making his robes snap and flap.
Taiyi slowly exhaled, turned, and flew toward the Great Wilderness. After flying for a while, the system's notification suddenly rang in his mind:
[Detected an increase in the host's compatibility with Eastern Emperor Taiyi] [Current compatibility: 71%] [New permission unlocked: Partial memory fragments unsealed (may be viewed voluntarily)]
Taiyi was stunned.
Compatibility? This thing had a numerical value? And 71%... did that mean he now resembled Eastern Emperor Taiyi by seventy percent?
He tried "thinking" in his mind: View memory fragments.
An image suddenly flashed before his eyes—
The blazing sun hung overhead. At the foot of Buzhou Mountain. He and Di Jiang were both so young it was almost absurd, childishness still lingering on their faces. The two were grappling on the ground, trading punches and kicks as dust flew everywhere. More than a dozen young members of the Witch Race stood nearby, howling and cheering them on.
As they fought, both of them grew exhausted and collapsed onto the ground, panting.
"You... just wait..." Young Di Jiang panted heavily. "When I master space divine abilities, I'll beat your teeth out..."
"Pah!" Young Taiyi shot back. "Once I refine the Chaos Bell, I'll flatten you with one strike..."
The two looked at each other and suddenly laughed.
The image ended there.
Taiyi stopped in the void, somewhat lost in thought.
That was... Taiyi and Di Jiang in their youth? So they really had fought as children, and more than once at that.
The taut string in his heart, tightened by the battle, suddenly loosened a little. Along with it came an indescribable feeling toward Di Jiang, that brute.
Not friendship—what kind of friendship could sworn rivals have?
It was... familiarity. As though they had known each other for a long time, fought countless times, cursed each other's mothers more times than they could count, but in the end, still had to keep fighting on in this damned Great Wilderness.
He shook his head, casting aside the mess of thoughts, and accelerated toward the camp.
It was time to go back.
A mountain of matters still awaited him.
Before you continue