Chaos Bell

After sensing an embryonic supreme weapon underground, Li Wangxian's face lit up with delight. He raised his hand, and heaven and earth wailed. The void opened, and he drew an immortal material out of a small world thirty thousand li beneath the ground.

It was a pitch-black divine stone, eighteen feet long and twelve feet wide. Despite its modest size, it weighed over ten thousand jun, far heavier than a mountain. Streaks of auspicious radiance cascaded from its entire surface, crushing the void into collapse. That was actually surging chaos qi, manifesting a chaotic force field that suppressed heaven, earth, and space.

Li Wangxian was ecstatic. It really was chaos stone! Though he had sensed as much earlier, he had not dared be certain before confirming it. After all, there were other things capable of releasing chaos qi.

"I follow the Yin-Yang Harmonization Path, and one day I'll evolve chaos. Now that I've obtained this chaos stone marrow, the material best suited to me, I can forge a Chaos Bell to carry my Dao Fruit.

"And there's chaos immortal marrow flowing inside this chaos stone. This stone can keep growing alongside me. It's every bit as good as Ye Fan's source of Xuanhuang Mother Qi."

Thrilled, Li Wangxian immediately raised his hand and pointed, driving the myriad paths to turn into dao fire that engulfed the chaos stone marrow. He intended to melt him into liquid and fuse him with the Dao Bell he had refined inside his body using Divine Patterns.

Boom, boom, boom!

The myriad paths of heaven and earth descended like fire, engulfing the chaos stone marrow. Yet he was hard and imperishable, wreathed in chaos qi that seemed impervious to all arts. Even the flames of the myriad paths could do nothing to him for the moment.

Li Wangxian sucked in a breath. Though he had prepared himself, seeing how difficult the chaos stone marrow was to refine still left him shaken.

"There isn't much time left. In another quarter of an hour, I'll fall out of this strange state. Fortunately, he hasn't been refined yet and has no Great Dao laws reinforcing him. I should be able to melt him down before then."

Though startled, he did not panic. He could see that under the tempering flames of the myriad paths, the chaos stone marrow had already begun to deform and was about to melt.

Sure enough, as the dao fire burned, the chaos stone slowly warped and melted, soon becoming a great mass of black liquid tinged with gray light.

The luminous substance flowing through the gray was the immortal marrow within the stone. It was far more precious than the chaos stone forming the outer shell, and it was the foundation that would allow this chaos stone to keep growing. Though that would not be easy, Li Wangxian believed that in his hands, the stone would find it difficult not to grow.

"It's time to fuse the little bell I refined with Divine Patterns with the stone marrow."

Li Wangxian summoned a fist-sized golden bell wreathed entirely in sun saint power. The bell was extraordinary. A closer look would reveal supremely powerful sun divine laws inscribed on its body, an astonishing sight. It was easy to imagine that even though this bell had only been refined from Divine Patterns, the sun divine laws engraved upon it would allow it to shatter hordes of Spirit Treasures and slaughter swathes of Four Extremes cultivators.

The little golden bell was only the size of a fist, undoubtedly tiny beside the liquid formed from the chaos stone marrow. But that did not matter. The purpose of Divine Patterns was to inscribe Dao laws, allowing a vessel to meld with a cultivator's life and Great Dao. Size was irrelevant.

"I follow the path of harmonizing Taiyin and Taiyang. Having only sun divine laws inscribed on my vessel certainly won't do."

Li Wangxian raised his hand and activated the Yin and Yang Immortal Seed within him, sending out streams of black Taiyin saint power. Once that power surged forth, a single impulse of his divine sense made it interweave into Taiyin divine laws that rushed into the chaos stone marrow.

"I've obtained the Human Emperor's lifetime of insights into the Taiyin divine laws. Even though I've only comprehended a tiny fraction, my understanding of the Great Dao of Taiyin is already far deeper than the understanding I gained from years of cultivating the Great Dao of the Sun."

As the divine laws of the Sun and Taiyin entered one after another, the chaos stone marrow rapidly began to reshape and take form under the hammering of Li Wangxian's divine sense.

Finally, after countless rounds of hammering and tempering, the chaos immortal marrow gradually solidified into a small, dull-gray bell the color of chaos.

"Mm, gray really does suit a Chaos Bell better than black!"

Li Wangxian held the Chaos Bell, reduced to the size of a fist through space laws, in his palm. The more he looked, the more pleased he became. Then he could not resist raising his hand to flick its body lightly.

Clang!

A vast, boundless peal instantly rang out. A gray ripple of sound could clearly be seen spreading from the Chaos Bell, accompanied by chaos qi.

Without a sound, everything inside the cavern turned to dust. The forest of hanging stone before him vanished completely. The cavern expanded to dozens of times its former size, while the ground sank dozens of yards in an instant.

"Chaos stone marrow forged into a bell-truly terrifying."

After retrieving the Chaos Bell, Li Wangxian could not contain his delight. He turned it over and over, examining it from every angle. The more he looked, the less he could bear to put it down.

"Today really is my lucky day!"

Holding the Chaos Bell, he looked at the two precious weapons in the air, already radiating dense saint might, then at Uncle Jiang, whose entire body was shining with Dao light. He could not resist sensing the Taiyin Human Emperor's scripture and insights sealed within his Primordial Spirit as well. The corners of Li Wangxian's mouth nearly stretched to his ears. His joy was impossible to hide.

"But come to think of it, the chaos stone marrow was shaped a lot like a bed! Did the Human Emperor use chaos stone as a bed, just like Great Emperor Wushi? And the marrow inside this chaos stone hadn't dried up yet. It was a genuine embryonic supreme weapon! Did he have to be that extravagant?"

Li Wangxian clicked his tongue. Was this the world of a Great Emperor?

"I'll be that extravagant someday too!" Drooling with envy, he made that resolution in his heart.

But before he could continue his high-spirited ambition to stand shoulder to shoulder with an Ancient Great Emperor, reality taught Li Wangxian a lesson the very next second after he made his "Great Vow."

"Mm, this state is about to fade."

In a single instant, the strange power within Li Wangxian dispersed. His Primordial Spirit plummeted from immeasurable heights, and the divine might around him that seemed capable of crushing eternity vanished. The terrifying divine light in his eyes, which could pierce through heaven, earth, and the myriad paths, also disappeared without a sound. From an immortal standing among the Immortal Ranks, a divine being, he suddenly became an ordinary minor cultivator again.

It was an immense gulf. One second, he had been a supreme deity who trod upon the myriad paths, whose every gesture made heaven and earth tremble and the myriad paths wail. The next, he was an ordinary minor cultivator in the Dao Palace Realm, capable of destroying only a few mountain ranges even with all his strength. The difference defied measurement.

Such an enormous psychological gulf could probably drive a cultivator stark raving mad. Even Li Wangxian, who firmly believed he could attain this supreme divine might through his own cultivation one day, could not help feeling a profound sense of loss.

Soon, however, he composed himself. After all, he had expected this, and he was confident enough that in the near future, he would be able to remain in this supreme realm permanently and become stronger still. What was there to feel dejected about?

"Oh, the Saint Weapons are almost complete!"

Li Wangxian was delighted at first, then frowned.

"I no longer have the power to suppress the manifestations. They'll probably draw a lot of people here in a moment!"

I read everyone's comments, and not many guessed correctly. Actually, when I refined a Dao Bell in chapter six, I'd already decided that I would eventually refine a Chaos Bell. Choosing the material was the difficult part. The original only featured one piece of chaos stone, Great Emperor Wushi's bed, and never said it could keep growing. I also saw that immortal materials could be extracted from chaos immortal marrow, but I don't think it specified what those materials were? So I simply made it so that chaos stone contains stone marrow and can continue growing. That should be plausible, right? After all, stones come in different sizes too.