Thump!
The instant the Great Thousand World was successfully created, the True Form of Pangu, condensed by the Twelve Ancestral Witches through the Great Array of the Twelve Divine Fiends, had reached its limit.
The True Form of Pangu took a long look at the Great Thousand World before it. A hint of satisfaction and lingering regret showed at the corners of its eyes. Then it suddenly shuddered, burst apart with a thump, and transformed into twelve streams of light.
When the streams of light landed and the mysterious glow faded, twelve figures appeared. They looked exhausted, their faces slightly pale, but their eyes shone with intense excitement and exhilaration.
Who else could they be but the Ancestral Witches?
The instant the Twelve Ancestral Witches appeared, boundless golden light burst forth from the Nine Heavens.
"This—this is merit! And it's Great Dao Merit!"
At that moment, not only the many mighty figures watching the Witch Race, but even Hongjun, far away in Purple Heaven Palace, couldn't help but rise to his feet.
Great Dao Merit had arrived. How could the Great Dao be far behind?
It was one thing when the Great Dao remained unseen in ordinary times. But now that it had come in person, shouldn't you at least show some respect?
This wasn't how you courted death.
At that moment, everyone—including Hongjun—felt as sour as if they'd swallowed a lemon.
This was Great Dao Merit.
Great Dao Merit!
Since Pangu had created the heavens and the earth, countless ages had passed through the Primordial Era and the Ancient Era, and yet this was the first time countless Primordial World beings had ever seen Great Dao Merit descend.
It stood to reason. The Great Dao was an existence of supreme dignity and status.
In its eyes, even great deeds that would be celebrated throughout the Primordial World by ordinary beings—such as the gods slaying the Beast Emperor Shen Ni, or Dao Ancestor Hongjun defeating Devil Ancestor Luohou—were nothing special.
"Something's not right. Isn't my Purple Heaven Palace also a Great Thousand World? And it's no inferior to the one created by the True Form of Pangu. So why didn't the Great Dao bestow Great Dao Merit on me?"
"And the amount of merit is wrong, too! This is only a lower-grade Great Thousand World. What right does it have to receive so much Great Dao Merit? There's enough merit here to let thirty beings with no cultivation directly attain Hunyuan!"
The more Hongjun looked, the more wrong things seemed, and the more agitated he became. He couldn't help but roar inwardly.
If he hadn't known that the Great Dao might have come in person, and that he absolutely couldn't show the slightest dissatisfaction or disrespect toward it, he might even have shouted, "The Great Dao is unfair!"
Exactly! Why?
Hongjun didn't understand, but Zhu Jiuyin—who had traveled once through the River of Time and read a million books from the modern world—had vaguely begun to see the answer.
In truth, Hongjun's resentment and indignation were justified.
After all, it was only a lower-grade Great Thousand World.
Though the birth of every world could bring the Great Dao a little vitality and fortune, promoting its evolution and perfection, compared with the immeasurable number of worlds beneath the Great Dao, this bit of vitality and fortune was less than a drop in the ocean.
And that ocean was made up of Primordial Divine Oxen, each tens of millions of li tall.
But what Hongjun didn't know was that the Great Dao was impartial—not just in words.
There was only one reason the Great Dao had bestowed so much merit: Pangu.
Just think about how powerful Pangu had been. As a half-step Great Dao Realm expert, how could he possibly have possessed so little merit?
Let's count Pangu's merit. The Three Pure Ones had taken three tenths, the Ancestral Witches another three tenths, and two tenths had become the Heaven and Earth Profound Yellow Exquisite Pagoda and the Grandmist Measuring Heaven Ruler. The last two tenths had been scattered throughout the Primordial World, nourishing it and its innumerable living beings.
But think about it carefully. That simply didn't add up.
The Primordial World was the highest-grade Immeasurable World, and Pangu's cultivation back then had been so formidable. The Great Dao Merit condensed from creating a world of the Primordial World's caliber should have been immense!
Merit wasn't like a supreme treasure or spiritual treasure. Even if divided, it wouldn't lose any of its wondrous effects.
So, in theory, if the Three Pure Ones and the Ancestral Witches had each truly received three tenths of Pangu's Merit of Opening the Heavens, their roots would surely be almost as powerful as those of the Chaos Demon Gods.
Chaos Demon Gods! Every one of them was destined to prove Hunyuan as soon as they were born.
Now that the Great Dao had appeared, Zhu Jiuyin was beginning to understand.
"Could it be that Father God entrusted this Great Dao Merit to the Great Dao back then, and that if we ever perform great meritorious deeds, the Great Dao will return all of it to us in the form of Great Dao Merit?"
At that moment, Zhu Jiuyin could only feel how painstakingly Pangu had cared for them and the Three Pure Ones. Perhaps, the instant the heavens and earth had been created and they and the Three Pure Ones had been born, Pangu had already paved a path for them—a road straight to Hunyuan, one that would inevitably lead them to become experts of the Chaos Realm.
Unfortunately, in the myths, neither the Ancestral Witches nor the Three Pure Ones had managed to walk that road to the end.
No—perhaps one person had: Houtu.
Don't bring up the Three Pure Ones' merit from founding their sects. That had merely drawn out the Merit of Opening the Heavens hidden within them, and most of that merit had been used to draw the Grandmist Violet Qi into connecting them to the Heavenly Dao.
Perhaps when the Three Pure Ones abandoned Pangu and worshiped Hongjun and the Heavenly Dao, they had already severed their ties to Pangu.
When the Three Pure Ones entrusted their true spirits to the Heavenly Dao through the Grandmist Violet Qi, from then on, there were only the Three Pure Ones of the Heavenly Dao—not the Pangu Three Pure Ones.
As for the Ancestral Witches, their situation was even more absurd.
If the Three Pure Ones were ungrateful wretches, the Ancestral Witches were simply hopeless.
In the myths of the Primordial World, Hongjun had truly schemed them to death.
Honestly, just look at the Ancestral Witches and you could see how wise Pangu had been not to bestow the Great Dao Merit directly upon them.
Given what the Ancestral Witches did in the myths, no matter how much Great Dao Merit they received, they would have squandered it all.
After all, toward the end, the Ancestral Witches—or the Witch Race as a whole—either gave up entirely or truly hated the Demon Race to the bone. They had practically set about eating every last demonic beast and member of the Demon Race in the Primordial World.
Most importantly, later on, they even began eating members of the Demon Race with roots as Innate Beings and Innate Demon Gods.
Such large-scale, extermination-level slaughter of living beings was unacceptable not only to the Heavenly Dao, but to the Great Dao as well.
In the end, only Houtu had barely escaped Hongjun's schemes, becoming the most accomplished of the Ancestral Witches and the Three Pure Ones.
By the later stages, even Hongjun could do nothing about Houtu.
You're the Spokesperson of the Heavenly Dao; I, Houtu, am the Spokesperson of the Earthly Dao.
But as a result, Houtu had basically said goodbye to the path of becoming a Chaos Demon God.
All that remained was a sigh.
Of course, now that Zhu Jiuyin was here, many things would naturally be different.
The instant boundless Great Dao Merit poured into the bodies of the Twelve Ancestral Witches, Zhu Jiuyin included, everything about them began to transform at a furious pace.
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