Origins of a Past Life

The bell tolling deep within my consciousness still echoes.

Yoriichi's consciousness slowly drifted within that crimson-gold light, feeling an unprecedented sense of wonder.

In the past, whenever I heard this sound, all I heard was its grandeur, vastness, and desolation.

But now, the sound of the bell clearly contains a distinct emotion.

It was a joy that came after a long and arduous reunion.

Beneath the lingering joy lay an urgent desire to express oneself.

It's like a dear relative who has been lost for millions of years finally finding their way home at the end of the void.

Yoriichi did not resist this strange resonance.

He slowly calmed his mind and began to accept the call from the deepest part of his soul, gradually deepening his understanding.

As perception penetrates deeper, the layers of mist that were originally hidden deep within consciousness are gradually dispelled.

Yoriichi emptied his mind, letting his consciousness sink into that boundless golden spring.

In an instant, an ancient memory that originally did not belong to the World of the Living, or even to this world, surged forth like a tidal wave.

In the beginning, it all came from a void Chaos.

Before heaven and earth were separated, the ten directions were empty, and the entire Great Thousand World was merely a turbid and dark Chaos.

There is no trace of the passage of time, nor any scale for measuring space.

In that eternal nothingness, the first creations were born.

They called themselves innate demon gods.

From the moment of their birth, each god and demon wields a supreme and unparalleled Dao of Heaven and Earth.

Some are in charge of Yin and Yang, some are in charge of the Five Elements, and some are in charge of cause and effect and destiny.

Among these majestic beings, there is a very special figure who wields the purest and most violent Great Dao of Force in the world.

The giant's name was Pangu.

In order to break free from the shackles of the Great Dao and to attain true eternity, the giant made a decision that terrified all living beings.

He wielded his giant axe and launched a campaign against the entire Chaos.

It was a battle so long that it could not be described in words.

Two thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight powerful innate gods and demons fell one after another under the giant axe, the Great Dao collapsed, and blood stained the Chaos.

After vanquishing all his powerful enemies, the giant ascended to the pinnacle of the Great Dao, using his last remaining strength to cleave open the endless darkness before him.

The pure air rises to become the sky, while the turbid air sinks to become the earth.

A magnificent and vast new world rose from the Chaos, and that world was called the Primordial World.

The giant, who supported the backbone of heaven and earth, eventually collapsed due to exhaustion.

His body merged into the earth and rivers, and his acupoints transformed into the stars in the sky.

His brightest and clearest eyes transformed into the Sun Star and Moon Star, hanging high in the sky.

As the sun rises, its pure, True Sun Fire spreads life across the earth.

Countless long years have quietly slipped by.

At the vast core of the Sun Star, two enormous primordial Source are tempered and refined day and night by creation.

Through countless changes of time, two nascent souls of the same origin gradually emerged from the flames.

They accompanied each other deep within the Great Sun, together resisting the harsh cold of the void, and at the same moment, they broke free from their shells and took on new form.

Born from the same Source, possessing identical bloodlines and marks, they are the closest brothers in the world from the moment of their birth.

My elder brother's name is Di Jun.

As the youngest brother, he was called Eastern Emperor Taiyi.

In the beginning of time, countless races existed in the Primordial World world, living by hunting and fighting endlessly.

The two brothers stepped out of the Sun Temple, commanding thousands of strange beasts and birds, setting rules, and establishing themselves as demons.

They built towering temples that reached into the clouds, establishing the Ancient Heavenly Court that governed the order of the heavens.

Trillions of demons bowed their heads in obedience, and the Demon Master Fuxi and the Ten Great Demon Generals all submitted to the throne of God.

In those years, the bells tolled throughout the heavens, and all corners of the earth paid homage.

However, due to the inevitable course of events and the workings of Heaven, calamity was ultimately unavoidable.

The twelve ancestral witches, formed from the essence of Pangu's blood, multiplied and thrived on the earth, possessing powerful physical bodies and an innate love of war.

Under the covert manipulation and instigation of the Heavenly Sage, the friction and hatred between the Witch and Demon races intensified, eventually evolving into an unprecedented calamity that swept across the entire Primordial World world.

Heaven and earth collapsed, mountains and rivers shattered, and two invincible and colossal races engaged in their final battle at the Mount Buzhou.

The Cosmic Star Formation and the Twelve Heavenly Gods and Fiends Formation collided head-on, causing stars to fall like rain and the earth to crack open into deep ravines.

When the battle reached its dead end, all the gods and Buddhas watched coldly from the sidelines, and the defeat of the Demon Court was inevitable.

In order to leave a glimmer of hope for the demon race, and in order for his elder brother Di Jun to lead the remaining forces into the Zhou Tian Stars, Taiyi made his final decision.

"Brother, take them away."

Without the slightest hesitation, he reached out and pushed Di Jun out of the very core of the battle.

He remained alone on the front lines, amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood, confronting the overwhelming aura of those ancestral witches.

That was a final, all-consuming swan song.

At the moment the great bell tolled its final mournful cry, he decisively detonated his true form—the Great Sun Golden Crow— which had been tempered for countless eons.

The destructive radiance engulfed the entire world, and the void collapsed on a large scale under the impact.

Several ancestral witches were annihilated in this indiscriminate torrent of destruction, and Ikkaku of the Primordial World land was torn apart as a result.

The self-destruction unleashed an extremely violent spatial-temporal turbulence, with the chaotic storm tearing apart all matter and soul.

Taiyi's originally indestructible primordial spirit was shattered into pieces during this riot.

The most crucial, faint fragment was thus swept into the chaotic spatial rift, drifting aimlessly away from that Primordial World world.

I don't know how many years I drifted in the dark and endless void.

This fragment, which had been completely erased of all memories and supernatural powers, accidentally pierced through an unknown dimensional barrier.

It landed in a mundane world devoid of gods and demons, devoid of spiritual energy, filled only with steel and lamplight.

The fragment was reincarnated and became a baby boy in an ordinary family.

In that life, he was ordinary and unremarkable, spending his days busy with making a living and trivial matters.

Finally, on an ordinary night, due to long-term exhaustion and staying up late, the mortal body suddenly stopped beating, and the soul died abruptly and left the body.

The fragments, stripped of their physical form, returned to nothingness, continuing their wandering through the cracks of time and space.

Just as this wisp of remnant soul was about to completely dissipate into the void, a faint yet incredibly familiar call came from the depths of the dimension.

That's Di Jun.

Even though Taiyi dead and only a wisp of his spirit remained, Di Jun still traversed endless space and time, finding his brother's fragments in the boundless Chaos storm.

Di Jun carefully enveloped the fragile true spirit with his own Source power.

With the protection and guidance of magic, the fragment broke through the barrier of a completely new world.

It was a unique world constructed from Reishi, divided into the World of the Living, the Soul Society, and Hueco Mundo.

As a supreme divine soul entirely from another world, the fragment immediately aroused the vigilance of the local world's rules the moment it stepped into this world.

The Heavenly Laws established by the Soul King surged forth like a tidal wave, attempting to completely obliterate and reject this foreign heresy.

At the same time, on this land during the Warring States period, a pure warrior, born with Demon Slayer Mark and possessing extraordinary swordsmanship, was slowly approaching the end of his life in the mortal world.

The man named Yoriichi Tsugikuni spent his entire life wielding his sword to protect mortals; his heart was as clear as a mirror, and his soul was pure and flawless.

At the critical moment when the rules were against them, the fragment of Taiyi's true spirit collided with the pure sword soul that was unwilling to succumb to its fate.

There was no conflict or confrontation between the two.

The sun's radiance and the Source of the Sun Breathing resonated perfectly at this moment.

The two souls merged completely, becoming an inseparable whole. Through the causal imprint left by Yoriichi Tsugikuni in the world, they successfully avoided being expelled by the rules of Heaven.

They merged and were born from this point on, and in this world of Soul Reaper and Hollows, they began anew the curtain of their lives.

With the influx of a large amount of memories, Yoriichi... no, it should be said that Eastern Emperor Taiyi finally understood his origin. It turned out that the source of his power was the Golden Crow, and that was the reason why the remnant soul of Di Jun had arrived in the Soul King Palace.