Death Marshland, Thirty-Six Epochs

As for why he did not clean up the main battlefield?

Naturally, it was because there was no need.

The main battlefield of the three clans had been the most brutal and widespread, reducing nearly half of the Eastern Continent and Central Continent to ruins.

Yet after the great war ended, supreme beings such as the Ancestral Dragon and the Primordial Qilin had used their Dao bodies and Primordial Spirits to mend heaven and earth. Most of those who had fallen in that battle had also returned to heaven and earth, nourishing the scorched land and restoring much of what they had destroyed. There was simply no need for him to repair it.

As for the small number who had not returned to heaven and earth, they had been taken away by the surviving powerhouses of the three clans or the myriad races. They would not have remained where they fell, so there was no need for him to clean them up. Even if he went, he would gain nothing.

"Good." Yuan Jie, Yuan Lun, and Yuan Ling nodded slightly.

Without wasting words, the three linked their auras with Yuan Yan's. Four Dao auras, sharing the same root and origin, intertwined as they communicated with heaven and earth together, jointly deducing the heavenly secrets.

In less than a hundred years, the threads of heavenly fate had clearly unfolded before them. Every battlefield where dense bloodshed, Sha Qi, and resentment lingered, where the earth veins had shattered and required cleansing and restoration, was deduced in full. Naturally, this included battlefields that had seen the participation of Great Luo Golden Immortals and needed to be cleansed and restored.

Without the slightest pause, Yuan Yan tore open space and crossed through it with Yuan Jie, Yuan Lun, and Yuan Ling, heading for the nearest location.

In only a few breaths, ripples spread through the void. The four stepped out from empty space and descended directly upon the edge of a battlefield of the three clans where Great Luo Golden Immortals had fought and which required cleansing.

Yuan Yan raised his eyes, and his gaze shifted slightly. What entered his sight was not shattered mountains and rivers, but an endless Death Marshland.

A vast expanse of water stretched between heaven and earth. Even as a Great Luo Golden Immortal, he could not see its end. The water was black as ink, carrying a pungent stench of blood. Bloodshed and Sha Qi filled the sky, condensed into near-solid dark clouds that blotted out sun, moon, and stars, leaving not a shred of light in heaven and earth.

Yuan Yan's Primordial Spirit communicated with heaven and earth, and in an instant, he grasped this place's past.

This had originally been a region of famed mountains and great rivers in the east of the prehistoric world. A mighty river had surged endlessly through it, running east to west before flowing into the East Sea, nourishing countless living beings along both banks. But one earth-shaking battle had utterly destroyed this land.

The force of that battle had shattered the heavens and split the earth, overturned Qiankun, collapsed the land, and crushed the mountain ranges. The once-raging river had been forced completely off course. Endless river water poured forth, flooding a territory spanning countless millions of miles and turning it into a boundless marshland.

Moreover, countless living beings had perished in the battle. Their towering resentment before death merged with the battlefield's bloodshed and Sha Qi, lingering without dispersing. The bloodshed and Sha Qi that filled the skies blocked out the light, the rivers and waterways became completely clogged, and innumerable broken corpses sank to the bottom, blending with the marsh waters. In the end, they gave rise to this deathly sea where not even a blade of grass grew, its Sha Qi pressing down upon all things.

The scope of this deathly sea was more than a hundred thousand times greater than the battlefields of the three clans Yuan Yan had cleansed before.

Furthermore, the main force in this battle seemingly had not been the dragon, phoenix, and qilin clans. There were very few corpses of those three clans in the sea. Nearly all the scattered remains belonged to the countless affiliated races under the three clans—birds and beasts, plant spirits and monsters, sea creatures—of bewilderingly diverse kinds.

Although the overall level of power in this battlefield was far inferior to the high-level battlefields he had previously cleansed, with even Earth Immortals who had yet to emerge among the dead, its numbers were terrifying. They exceeded those previous battlefields by more than a hundred million times. Countless corpses lay submerged beneath the waters, their resentments woven together into an exceptionally troublesome force of tribulation and Sha Qi.

Gazing at the deathly sea that stretched beyond sight, its Sha Qi soaring into the heavens, Yuan Yan fell briefly silent.

He had originally thought that cleansing the battlefields of the three clans that required cleansing would be a great opportunity. It was indeed a great opportunity, but it would not be so easily obtained.

After a moment of silence, Yuan Yan and the other three joined hands in deduction, working out a method to cleanse and restore it.

Only after several hundred years of deduction did the four derive a feasible plan.

The first step was to use supreme divine abilities to purify or refine away the endless bloodshed, Sha Qi, resentment, and the remains of countless living beings within the sea. They had to completely uproot the source of filth and restore the black waters of death to clarity.

The second step was to reshape the mountains, rivers, and terrain, open up river channels, and guide the great river that had changed course amid the heaven-shattering battle back into its original waterway. This would prevent the waters of the deathly sea from flowing everywhere and contaminating further waterways, avoid affecting the myriad races of the prehistoric world, and stop more slaughter from breeding boundless calamity.

With the plan decided, Yuan Yan and the other three acted at once, each displaying their methods as they began purifying and cleansing the deathly sea.

For example, Yuan Yan first used the Yin-Yang Furnace. Later, finding its efficiency too low, he deployed the Yin-Yang Myriad Transformation Divine Light, which transformed all things away. Afterward, he used it to create a formation capable of transforming all things, all laws, and all Daos, converting everything into Yin-Yang source power.

As for Yuan Jie, every movement he made accorded with heaven and earth. He drew upon the rules of heaven and earth, becoming like a world himself as he transformed everything into the power of the world.

Because this marshland was simply too vast, even with the four working together, it took a full fifty thousand years to cleanse it completely.

After that, however, opening river channels and returning the great river, which had changed course when heaven and earth collapsed in battle, to its proper path became far easier.

In less than ten thousand years, Yuan Yan and the other three had opened the river channels and repaired the water veins, guiding the marshland waters into the river region. The marshland receded, and their work was complete.

Time flew, years turned, and thirty-six epochs passed in the blink of an eye.

On this day, above a relatively small battlefield of the three clans, faint bloodshed and Sha Qi permeated heaven and earth. The earth veins were covered in cracks, vegetation had withered, and all was desolate.

"Boom!" Yuan Jie raised his hand and threw out the World Cauldron and the innate Four Symbols Formation Flags.

The World Cauldron floated in midair, its body blooming with boundless world-glow. The innate Four Symbols Formation Flags stood in the four directions as the sun, lesser yin, lesser yang, and lunar yin evolved, forming a vast and boundless Four Symbols World-Refining Formation.

Practice made perfect. In less than a hundred years, Yuan Jie refined the bloodshed, Sha Qi, resentment, and corpses of this small battlefield of the three clans into pure world power.

Afterward, Yuan Jie proceeded with practiced ease. He purified the earth-vein fragments corroded by bloodshed, Sha Qi, and resentment, moved and reconnected them, then used the world power obtained from refining the bloodshed, Sha Qi, resentment, and corpses to repair the earth veins riddled with cracks and fissures.

As the final earth-vein crack was restored, this small battlefield of the three clans recovered more than half its former state. Innate spiritual qi, Dao rhythms, and spiritual vitality emerged, and life returned to the mountains and rivers. A beam of golden merit light descended from the heavens and entered Yuan Jie's sea of consciousness.

In that instant, deep within Yuan Jie's sea of consciousness, the Golden Wheel of Merit, already incomparably profound and condensed over a long time, silently expanded by another fraction. The merit glow upon it became increasingly dense, while its aura of the Great Dao grew ever more stable.

Sensing the Golden Wheel of Merit slowly turning deep within his sea of consciousness and feeling his cultivation realm grow increasingly profound, Yuan Jie's lips curved upward slightly, and a trace of gratified delight appeared in his eyes.

Thirty-six epochs had passed. Throughout those long years, he, Yuan Lun, Yuan Ling, and their true self, Yuan Yan, had not rested for even a moment.

They had first joined forces to cleanse every battlefield of the three clans where Great Luo Golden Immortals had fought and which required cleansing, reconnecting and repairing the earth veins shattered by the great war. Then they had split apart to cleanse the smaller battlefields of the three clans where Great Luo Golden Immortals had not participated but which likewise required cleansing.