Elder Yi: Hehehe, Eastern Emperor Bell, I'm coming for you!

Night had fallen quietly, and Shrek Academy, which had been bustling with noise throughout the day, faded into the hush of a tranquil silence.

Cold moonlight pierced through the gaps in the window, casting mottled patches of light onto the neat wooden floor of the single dormitory.

Inside the room, Xiao Yan sat cross-legged in the center of his hardwood bed.

He wore only a thin, pure white undershirt, his eyes slightly closed, his breathing long and steady.

As the circulation of the Art of the Fuxi Emperor deepened, he seemed to merge completely with the surrounding night.

The three primordial forces of essence, energy, and spirit converged within his body, surging ceaselessly along specific meridian pathways and forming a profound and mysterious aura around him.

The heaven and earth energy drifting in the air no longer scattered in disorder; instead, drawn by an invisible force centered on him, it spiraled slowly along the trajectory of the Taiji Yin-Yang, eventually refining into pure energy that flowed into every part of his body.

Just as he was immersed in this state of communion between heaven and man, where all things were at peace, Xiao Yan's handsome brows suddenly furrowed.

He keenly sensed a dull thud echoing from the edge of his vast, boundless sea of consciousness.

The sound held no aggression or hostility; it was more like some heavy object having flown backward uncontrollably, slamming hard against the boundary wall of his mental space and sending a faint ripple through the entire area.

Xiao Yan stopped guiding his internal energy and shook his head helplessly.

He didn't even need to guess to know what had caused the commotion.

Calming the soul power within him, his consciousness sank, entering directly into his sea of consciousness.

Xiao Yan's conscious form coalesced within the mental space.

This was not the foggy, cramped mental world of an ordinary soul master, but a vast, boundless star map as deep as the universe itself.

Beneath Xiao Yan's feet lay a massive Fuxi Bagua Formation Map that spanned the entire space of his sea of consciousness.

The trigrams of Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen, and Dui were formed from the light of countless brilliant stars, rotating slowly according to the laws of the Heavenly Dao, ceaselessly constructing the most indestructible foundation of this mental realm.

And in the very center of the Bagua Formation Map stood a magnificent, colossal object.

It was Xiao Yan's second martial soul, the Eastern Emperor Bell.

Even though Xiao Yan had stared at it countless times within this sea of consciousness, he still felt awe in his heart for this supreme divine artifact.

The giant bell possessed a mysterious yellow-gold luster, as if cast from the purest gold from when the world first opened, with chaotic golden light flowing across its surface.

It hung silently in the center of the formation, rotating slowly.

Without any superfluous movement, it radiated a vast pressure capable of crushing the laws of heaven, earth, time, and space alike—majestic and impossible to look upon directly, as if it had stood there since the era before the primordial chaos had even divided.

As his gaze drew closer, one could see the incredibly complex, all-encompassing patterns engraved upon the bell.

At the top, the trajectories of the sun, moon, and stars moved of their own accord; at the bottom, the origins of earth, water, fire, and wind intertwined; in the middle of the bell, phantoms of mountains, rivers, and all living things flickered in and out of existence, with countless runes of ancient gods and demons appearing within.

Every line was archaic and vigorous, revealing the weight of having been scoured by the long river of time.

The Eastern Emperor Bell, also known as the Chaos Bell, was ranked alongside the Fuxi Zither as one of the ten great ancient divine artifacts.

Yet, within this sea of consciousness, the status of these two artifacts was clearly defined.

The Fuxi Zither had shrunk its form, turning into a streak of light like a loyal satellite, following a fixed orbit as it slowly revolved around the Eastern Emperor Bell.

In the presence of the Eastern Emperor Bell, which suppressed all things, even the Fuxi Zither could only occupy a subordinate position, daring not to overstep in the slightest.

Xiao Yan's gaze did not linger on the Eastern Emperor Bell for long.

He turned his head, his eyes sweeping across the vast Bagua Formation Map in search of the "culprit" who had broken his meditative peace.

The regions of the Kan, Gen, and Zhen trigrams were empty, the starlight calm.

Finally, Xiao Yan's gaze settled on the edge of the Qian trigram region, which represented "Heaven."

There, someone was squatting.

It was a gaunt, withered old man.

He was not a physical entity, but a phantom condensed from a strand of incredibly refined divine sense.

The old man had white hair and a white beard, his face aged with deep, sharp-featured contours that differed significantly from the people of the Douluo Continent.

He wore a black robe inside, covered in golden magic runes that shimmered with flowing light, and a pure white cloak draped over the outside.

The extreme black and extreme white formed a sharp visual contrast on him, symbolizing the perfect fusion of the two diametrically opposed powers of light and necromancy within his body.

This person was none other than the once-feared Necromancer Sage, the Undead Disaster, Electrolux.

Electrolux usually carried an aura of majesty and compassion, but this image of an unfathomable expert was currently ruined by an anomaly on his forehead.

A purple-blue lump the size of a fist had swollen prominently above the old man's temple.

He was baring his teeth and grimacing as he reached up to rub the bump, muttering complaints to himself in a manner that made it hard not to chuckle.

Sensing Xiao Yan's conscious form approaching, the old man's movements stiffened abruptly.

He reacted with lightning speed, his withered fingers quickly drawing an arcane light magic symbol in the air.

Golden light flashed, and the comical bump on his forehead was instantly concealed by a glamour spell, the skin becoming smooth and clear once more.

Having done this, Electrolux stood up straight, hands behind his back, deliberately stiffening his face to restore his majestic, compassionate appearance.

He paced slowly toward Xiao Yan, his expression so natural that it was as if the person who had been squatting on the ground rubbing his head a moment ago was not him at all.

"Little Yan, why have you suddenly come to the sea of consciousness?" Electrolux spoke first, his tone steady and gentle, seizing the initiative in the conversation.

Xiao Yan's eye twitched as he looked at the old God of Magic before him, whose attempt to conceal his actions was as obvious as a neon sign.

He took a deep breath, tucking his hands into his sleeves, and struggled to keep his lips from curling upwards, fighting the urge to laugh out loud.

"It's because you've been making too much of a commotion, Elder Yi."

Xiao Yan tilted his chin up slightly, gesturing towards the giant bell slowly rotating at the center of the formation, then shifted his gaze back to Electrolux's magically concealed forehead.

"Did you, by any chance, annoy the Eastern Emperor Bell again?"

His words had pierced the veil of secrecy, and Electrolux's dignified old face flushed with embarrassment.

He let out a soft hmph and turned his head away, avoiding Xiao Yan's all-seeing gaze.

"You know the answer, so why ask?"

The old man retorted stiffly, but his hand, hidden behind his back, unconsciously came out to touch the spot covered by magic, clearly showing that the physical pain had not vanished with the illusion.

Watching the somewhat stubborn old man before him, Xiao Yan felt no disrespect, but rather a sense of lively amusement.

The process of Elder Yi settling into his sea of consciousness had been nothing short of dramatic.

When Xiao Yan had first awakened the Eastern Emperor Bell martial spirit, a trace of the terrifying power unique to the chaotic artifact had inadvertently torn open a void rift.

As fate would have it, a wisp of Electrolux's soul, drifting in the turbulent currents of space-time and on the verge of dissipation, was drawn by this spatial fluctuation. It followed the rift directly into Xiao Yan's sea of consciousness.

Xiao Yan still clearly remembered the scene.

The moment the old man, who called himself the God of Death and Holy Magic, appeared, he erupted with soul-stirring power of light and death, intending to announce his arrival in the most awe-inspiring way.

"Holding the sun and moon, plucking stars from the sky, I am invincible in this world..."

This domineering chant, capable of shaking all beings, had barely begun, and the momentum hadn't even fully unfurled.

The Eastern Emperor Bell, which had been silently suspended at the center of the Fuxi Bagua Formation Map, suddenly trembled.

Just once.

There was no earth-shattering bell chime, no dazzling light, only a ripple of invisible chaotic waves spreading outwards.

The majestic harbinger of death, before he could even utter the next syllable, was directly slammed to the very bottom of the sea of consciousness by that unreasonable, ancient pressure.

Electrolux was suppressed, unable to move, his barely condensed wisp of a soul nearly crushed into dust on the spot.

It was only when Xiao Yan, at the cost of overexerting his mental energy, forcefully severed a trace of the Eastern Emperor Bell's lock on Electrolux that he managed to pull the old God of Magic out of that state of absolute suppression.

However, it could be considered a blessing in disguise.

The chaotic power of the Eastern Emperor Bell, with its dual temporal and spatial sealing properties, not only suppressed him but also stabilized his dissipating soul.

Coupled with the Fuxi Bagua Formation Map in Xiao Yan's sea of consciousness, which constantly absorbed the creation of heaven and earth to nourish and replenish him.

In this perfect "greenhouse," Electrolux's current spiritual state was better than ever.

Logically speaking, after suffering such a great loss, the God of Death and Holy Magic should have kept his distance from the giant bell, avoiding it as much as possible.

But the reality was the complete opposite.

Ever since he understood his surroundings, Electrolux had become completely obsessed with the Eastern Emperor Bell.

As a God of Magic who had reached the pinnacle of magic and law, upon sensing the ancient divine and demonic runes depicting the sun, moon, stars, earth, water, fire, and wind on the Eastern Emperor Bell, he fell into a state of utter fascination.

The Eastern Emperor Bell encompassed everything, containing the most fundamental laws of the primordial universe.

Electrolux discovered that merely gazing at those profound textures could provide him with countless inspirations regarding light magic, death magic, and even the transition between life and death.

Every trace on it was worth more than decades of his own research in magic scrolls.

Thus, the once formidable harbinger of death now found his greatest joy in approaching the center of the formation every day, extending his withered hand to caress and study the divine patterns on the surface of the Eastern Emperor Bell.

He was completely immersed in the fervor of deciphering these heavenly codes.

The problem was, the Eastern Emperor Bell possessed a spirit.

Its tolerance for this old man who constantly touched it like a fanatical devotee was quite low.

Most of the time, it would haughtily ignore him, but if it was annoyed by his touch, or if Electrolux's divine sense brushed against certain forbidden patterns, the bell would release a repulsive force.

This repulsive force was merely a negligible tremor to the Eastern Emperor Bell, but to Electrolux, it was no different from a heavy hammer blow.

The impact Xiao Yan had just felt was clearly Electrolux "researching too much" again, being directly repelled by the impatient Eastern Emperor Bell and crashing into the Qian trigram's barrier, thus resulting in such a large bump on his head.

"Elder Yi," Xiao Yan's smile faded, his expression turning serious as he looked at Electrolux still rubbing his head, "The laws on the Eastern Emperor Bell are too overbearing. While your divine sense is stable now, it can't withstand its frequent repulsions. You must proceed with caution when studying the divine patterns; do not be overly eager for success."

Electrolux lowered his hand and sighed deeply.

His eyes, filled with the vicissitudes of time, flickered with fervor and reverence for the unknown laws.

"Little Yanzi, you don't cultivate magic, so you don't understand that pursuit of 'hearing the Dao in the morning and dying in the evening is acceptable'."

Electrolux looked towards the distant Eastern Emperor Bell, his voice filled with emotion, "Every rune on it points directly to the origin of the Great Dao. If I could comprehend even one percent of its mysteries, all the magical problems that have plagued me would be easily solved. What is this minor physical pain of repulsion compared to that?"