Clang!
A deep, ancient, piercing toll rang out without warning.
The bell did not travel through the air. It exploded directly in the depths of the God Kings' souls, carrying a heart-quaking pressure and an urgent warning.
Tang San's hand, holding the fragmentary volume, abruptly stilled. An exceedingly sharp light instantly gathered in his sea-blue eyes.
"Something's happened." He abruptly rose, his voice low. A tolling bell in the Divine Realm was no trivial matter. The crisis it signaled was certainly no small one.
He turned toward Ji Dong beside him, who remained buried in piles of books, seemingly shut off from every disturbance outside. A trace of complexity and hesitation flashed through his eyes.
But as one of those at the Divine Realm's helm, he had a responsibility he could not shirk.
"Ji Dong." Tang San took a deep breath and gave his instructions swiftly and steadily. "Stay here and keep searching on your own. Above all, keep your mind steady. I'll go see what happened."
Before his words had faded, Tang San departed without another moment's delay.
His toes lightly tapped the void. Brilliant blue-gold divine light surged around him, and his figure instantly twisted and blurred, turning into a streak of light that tore straight through the spatial barrier inside the ancient archives and vanished without a trace.
Only a few breaths later, at the other end of the Divine Realm, violent ripples suddenly swept through the void before Sea Dragon's magnificent mansion.
Sea-blue light flashed, and Tang San appeared on the white jade steps outside the mansion's entrance.
He looked up. The normally imposing, solemn mansion now exuded an eerie deathly silence.
Almost the instant he appeared, several sharp whistles tore through the sky in succession.
Three incomparably powerful fluctuations of divine power streaked across the