The Primordial World, Mount Buzhou, Pangu Hall
"Damn Hongjun! We were just a hair's breadth away—just a hair's breadth away—from killing Di Jun and the Eastern Emperor, sweeping aside the entire Demon Race, and ruling over the whole Primordial World once and for all!"
"Hongjun truly deserves to be revered by every living thing in the Primordial World as the Dao Ancestor. I feel his strength is definitely beyond that of an ordinary Sage."
"What good does all this talk do? The problem now is that even after we used our Witch Race's greatest trump card, the Great Array of the Twelve Divine Fiends, and summoned Father God's true form, we still weren't a match for Hongjun. What do we do if he interferes in our war with the Demon Race again?"
"If you ask me, this is all Hongjun's fault. He should've been content being a Sage and the Dao Ancestor. Why meddle in our war with the Demon Race? I say he's deliberately targeting us Ancestral Witches and the Demon Race!"
"All this talk is just bolstering the enemy's morale and undermining our own. No matter how strong Hongjun is, we should fight him to the bitter end. At worst, we'll return to Father God's embrace. Do you think we Ancestral Witches are afraid to die?"
"Zhurong, that's easy for you to say. You make it sound like Gonggong and the rest of our brothers and sisters are afraid to die! We're only angry that Hongjun attacked our Witch Race for no reason!"
"Brothers, stop arguing. Our Witch Race's fate this time was once again foretold by Second Brother. What we should be considering now is whether we'll honor our promise from back then: from this day forward, when the Witch Race makes decisions, Second Brother will have the final say!"
The speaker was Houtu.
At her words, the noisy Pangu Hall fell silent. The eleven Ancestral Witches, Houtu among them, all turned their eyes toward the white-robed young man leaning against a stone pillar, quietly watching everything in the hall. He was one of the Twelve Ancestral Witches: the Time Ancestral Witch, Zhu Jiuyin.
Unlike Dijiang, Zhurong, and the other Ancestral Witches, who looked fierce and brutish and acted impulsively and domineeringly, Zhu Jiuyin simply stood there in silence. He gave off an air of serene detachment, tinged with an ineffable, mysterious quality.
Seeing Zhu Jiuyin like this, Dijiang, Zhurong, and the other Ancestral Witches instinctively furrowed their brows.
If they hadn't felt the kinship and familiarity in Zhu Jiuyin's bloodline, born of their shared origins, Dijiang and the others might have thought he was some true cultivator from the Mystic Sect who had infiltrated the Ancestral Witches and the Witch Race.
But when they recalled how, before this battle, Zhu Jiuyin had earnestly urged them to stop competing with the Demon Race and warned that if they kept fighting, Hongjun would surely intervene—and that all the advantages the Witch Race had gained would be no match for a single palm from Hongjun—they couldn't help feeling both embarrassed and impressed.
The Ancestral Witches exchanged glances. In the end, Dijiang, their leader, stepped forward. "As the eldest, I'll make my position clear. I'll honor the wager. From now on, I, Dijiang, will follow Second Brother's advice without question."
Dijiang was the leader of the Twelve Ancestral Witches and one of their strongest. With him taking a stand, things became much easier.
Sure enough, Zhurong, Gonggong, Jumang, and the other Ancestral Witches soon followed suit, each declaring that they would obey Zhu Jiuyin's advice without question.
Seeing his brothers and sisters now, Zhu Jiuyin couldn't help letting out a sigh deep in his heart.
It had all happened more than a hundred Yuanhui ago.
At the time, Zhu Jiuyin had just brought his comprehension of the Law of Time to ninety percent. Under the Heavenly Dao, within the Primordial World, anyone who comprehended a law to that degree could break through to the Primordial Origin Golden Immortal realm.
Compared to other laws, the Law of Time was special. Because of that, Zhu Jiuyin had been the last of the Twelve Ancestral Witches to break through to the Primordial Origin Golden Immortal realm.
But right at that crucial moment, when his cultivation was on the verge of a breakthrough, Zhu Jiuyin had, by sheer good fortune, traversed the boundless River of Time. He had drifted downstream until he reached an era far beyond the Primordial World.
By a twist of fate, Zhu Jiuyin had glimpsed a fragment of time. Even if the entire experience were measured against the future, it had lasted less than one hundred-millionth of a second. Yet that was long enough for him to see—and read—every book in a library containing over a million volumes of all kinds. As it happened, among them were several excellent novels about the Primordial World.
The moment Zhu Jiuyin returned to the Primordial World, his first thought was that some Sage-level power—or perhaps an even more powerful being—must be playing a joke on him.
But then Zhu Jiuyin understood. As a member of the Orthodox Pangu Lineage, born with Merit of Opening the Heavens, even Chaos Demon Gods would have to face the merit that repelled all evil, rendered him immune to all techniques, and nullified every magical or divine attack beneath the Great Dao. Sages, let alone anyone else, could not simply strike at him.
And as the Time Ancestral Witch, Zhu Jiuyin was confident that, across the entire Primordial World, perhaps only Hongjun could surpass his mastery of the Law of Time.
So Zhu Jiuyin quickly realized that, by sheer coincidence, he had crossed beyond the bounds of time and seen a fragment of the future.
Yet knowing that none of this was the scheme of some transcendent being—and that it might even be a preview of events that would truly come to pass—sent a chill through Zhu Jiuyin.
"How did it come to this? How could it come to this for us Ancestral Witches, for our Witch Race?"
In that moment, Zhu Jiuyin had wanted nothing more than to storm Purple Heaven Palace and demand an answer from the Heavenly Dao and Hongjun: why were they targeting the Ancestral Witches and the Witch Race?
"Others may not know, but do you, Heavenly Dao and Hongjun, really not understand? Our Witch Race is nothing more than the cleaners of the Primordial World!"
"Without our Witch Race purging the Turbid Qi from the earth, the Primordial World would have been swallowed by it long ago, blanketed in black, fog-like clouds. Mountains and rivers would have been corrupted, spiritual veins withered, and any living thing touched by it would have grown violent and slaughtered its own kind!"
"It was us Ancestral Witches, our Witch Race, who bore the greatest karmic debt Father God left behind when he opened the heavens, on behalf of every living thing in the Primordial World! We bore all the bitter consequences, yet gained almost nothing in return. Now the Heavenly Dao and Hongjun are scheming to wipe out nearly our entire race. Is this what it means for the Heavenly Dao to be unkind? Is this your Dao, Hongjun?"
But after shouting all that, Zhu Jiuyin could only let out a bitter laugh.
In the eyes of ordinary living beings—even Daluo Golden Immortals and many Quasi-Sages—he, Zhu Jiuyin, was a mighty powerhouse, strong enough to fill them with despair.
But before the Heavenly Dao, before Hongjun, he was no more than a slightly larger ant.
If he didn't provoke the Heavenly Dao and Hongjun, then out of fear of the Merit of Opening the Heavens he carried, they could only scheme against him.
But if he stormed Purple Heaven Palace, defied his superiors, and challenged the Heavenly Dao and the Sage, the inevitable result would be that the Heavenly Dao and Hongjun seized the opportunity to suppress him in Purple Heaven Palace until the decisive Witch-Demon battle, when they would finally release him.
Beneath the Great Dao, the Heavenly Dao could not be insulted, and neither could a Sage. That was an ironclad law of the Primordial World.
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