Chime!

*Chime!* Every seal binding the exterior of the Soul-Calling Bell was completely undone. Immediately after, the reserve spiritus reservoir activated. The fuel depot of the Doomsday Express linked up, pouring a massive deluge of spiritus inside. The eerie silver bell turned scorching red, vibrating violently. A crimson ripple, visible to the naked eye, bloomed from Ji Jue's hand and rippled outward. Dazzling crimson danced across the mountains. Wherever it passed, specks of phosphorescence rose like an inverted downpour from the dirt, the pools of blood, and the scattered bones. Soaring toward the sky! Countless remnant spirits brushed past the rain of blood, each heading toward a place the other could never reach. Between heaven and earth, thousands of gossamer strands suddenly intertwined, binding everything into a unified whole. It was the convergence of blood and spirit. Supported by the Mirror of Contained Forms, Ji Jue's perception expanded madly. Rising from his physical shell, it took in everything within a radius of over a hundred kilometers in an instant. Then further, expanding even more, stretching out a thousand li, bringing into his sight the entire domain blanketed by the Calamity of Blood Rain. The first toll of the bell! Within his perception, every dormant remnant spirit awoke. *Crack!* An illusory sound of shattering echoed by Ji Jue's ears—the reverberation of turbulence in his own soul. Yet to his surprise, unleashing the full power of the Soul-Calling Bell this time did not leave him struggling under an unbearable burden, on the verge of being crushed at any moment, as it had in the past... Within the blazing Crucible Blood, countless points of light surfaced. It was the nearly completed Unquenched Fuel! Unlike other blessings, as a passive, gradual transformation, it began to take effect even before its completion. Right now, boundless embers of fuel circulated between his flesh and soul like a suit of armor, shouldering more than seventy percent of the terrifying pressure for him! And then, the second toll of the bell! *Chime!* Amidst the blood rain and black clouds, innumerable eerie phosphorescent lights surged violently. A shrill, phantom-like screech erupted from within, drowning heaven and earth like a tsunami. Everyone froze in shock and disbelief. With the second toll, the Soul-Calling Bell forcefully stimulated the spiritual nature of every remnant spirit, driving them all into a state of feral frenzy! It was unimaginable how many bones lay buried beneath the blood rain and the verdant peaks. Calamity beasts, calamity beasts, calamity beasts, calamity beasts... Over hundreds of years, amidst the mountains of the Kunwu Plateau, who knew how many calamity beasts had slaughtered and devoured one another? Accumulated across the years to this day, the remnant spirits left behind were vast as an ocean, boundless and unending! A magnificent, surging tide of remnant spirits rushed back and forth across the vault of heaven, turning into a vortex that filled every corner of sight! And within that vortex, one emblem of a Great Sin after another lit up, activated, awakened—suffusing the natural disaster, encompassing the rain of blood. The Pride of Stagnant Rot, the Nihility of Abyssal Void, the Frenzy of Frenzied Slaughter, the Harshness of Youshuang, the Distortion of the Tower, the Hunger of the Wolf, the Desolation of the Vortex, the Chaos of the Shadow Sun... This was a ritual directed toward the Vortex, a sacrifice offered to the Great Sins, and a magnificent remaking and smelting performed by the artisan Ji Jue! At this moment, everything flowed like smooth water, effortless and natural, without the slightest hesitation or friction. Flawless as if crafted by the heavens! Back then, Ji Jue had received the Formula of Illumination from Kanemoto, which ushered in the revelation of Heaven's Mandate and the Rite of Embers. Regrettably, the alignment of that ritual had drifted slightly off course, inadvertently hooking into Embers' next-door neighbor. But that was fine. In the unauthorized broadcasts the authorities frowned upon, Ji Jue had picked up plenty of neat tricks and forbidden knowledge. Besides, even if he hadn't tasted pork, he had certainly seen the pig run. He had personally smashed so many of the Evil Transmutation Cult's operations, and under All-Domain Circulation Control, he had mapped every spiritus flow and abomination ritual track in all of Quancheng down to the bare roots. Now that the menace Lu Changsheng was dead, how many people in the entire mortal realm understood this sort of thing better than him?! In this bracket, anyone trying to play the Great Sin game against him was practically begging for a quick death. If Ji Jue had prepared numerous contingencies before, then the moment the torrential rain of blood poured from the heavens, he had already won half the battle. And from the instant Gao Cheng died, the tally shattered, the Calamity of Blood Rain spun completely out of control, and no one was left to contest Ji Jue's dominance, the other half of victory had fallen firmly into his grasp. All his probing and feigned weakness had been for one purpose: to flush out every last lurker hiding in the shadows, and then... Catch them all in one fell swoop! And so, for the third time, using his left hand that was gradually going numb from the burning, Ji Jue rang the Soul-Calling Bell! What echoed from his palm was not a clear, soft chime, but a roaring torrent, as if the entire Kunwu mountain range had erupted in fury. Under the endless infusion of spiritus and the staggering pressure, the crack-riddled Soul-Calling Bell disintegrated completely, exploding into fragments. *BOOM!* Before that explosion could settle, a furious deluge of destruction had already descended from the sky. The instant he sensed Ji Jue, Yue Chen, several kilometers away, had already leaped into the air and slammed down, trampling the earth. Matrix: Giant ran in overload, sending a torrent of spiritus surging upward like an erupting volcano, converging directly into his hands. Mountains cracked, the earth shuddered, and a terrifying shockwave rippled out in all directions. He had not hesitated because of any feigned retreat, nor had he been shaken by the spectacle unfolding before him. Without a second thought, he threw his full strength into the blow—even surpassing his former limits. Ridges twisted, cloud layers tore apart, and boundless matter converged toward his raised hands. Soil, stone, mud, rainwater, corpses— Every physical element within the material realm was dragged by an unseen force into the vortex, condensing into a never-before-seen state of hyper-dense matter. Compress, compress, compress, and compress further! At last, amid rumbling booms, it collapsed into a pitch-black spear. Aiming directly at Ji Jue past the mountains, he hurled it with brutal force! Pure matter forged pure destruction; absolute stasis wrought absolute eternity. The divine essence of the Desolate Ruins manifested within, turning into an edge of ruin destined to shatter all tangible forms! It tore effortlessly through ridge after ridge, hurtling forward through howling winds and torrential rain! Yet arriving even earlier was the toxic breath spewed by the Bashe's nine heads—lightning, flames, frost streams, white mist, molten lava... Its serpentine necks elongated, tangling together into a bizarre posture. When the savage features of the nine heads melded together, they formed an unforeseen, rotting face—like a gruesome patchwork of human and fish, its shifting traits squirming endlessly in eternal hunger and boundless greed. Then, the rotting fish-man's face opened its mouth and sucked violently. In a single instant, it devoured every wisp of spiritus and corruption within a thousand li, aiming to sever the entire ritual track. Beneath Ji Jue's feet, the intricate spiritus circuits and ritual collapsed. When the final reverberation of the bell faded, every anomaly vanished without a trace. Even the emblems and projections of the Great Sins, along with the savage remnant spirits and lingering wills of the calamity beasts circling the sky, disappeared abruptly, as if they had merely been an illusion. It was as though they had been wiped clean from existence! It was over. Atop the Bashe's colossal body, the Wolf Sin bared its teeth in wild laughter. Yet before the grin could fully spread across its face, it was strangled in the cradle. It could not breathe. Heaven and earth fell deathly silent. Everything in the world came to an abrupt halt once more. It was just like when Bitter Day left its sheath... but this time, there was none of the resplendent, vibrant beauty of light embracing myriad forms. There was only a suffocating oppression so dense it made every soul shudder. The world stood suspended here, as if locked inside amber. All hatred and fury froze in eternal despair, devoid of further change. Yet in that very instant, crimson flames surged from Ji Jue's soul and flesh, erupting with furious abandon, illuminating the dark vault of heaven and the fractured world. Taking this disaster blanketing all of Kunwu as the furnace, the Calamity of Blood Rain as the foundation, and the boundless pollution and mutations of the Great Sins as the flame, the final cruel touch of creation that the embers lacked was completed here. The Unquenched Fuel manifested from the artisan's soul. Within the invisible spiritus flames, the essences of Embers and Stagnant Rot overlapped and intertwined, coiling together like a double helix of creation and destruction. When Ji Jue lifted his gaze once more, he saw the hyper-dense spear hovering suspended before his eyes. His numb left hand rose stiffly, and he slowly extended a single finger. He tapped lightly against the spear capable of shattering all matter— *Crack!* A crisp sound echoed in everyone's ears. Cracks surfaced across the spear, and then it shattered, scattering into pieces without the anticipated blast of high-speed jets. Only a shower of pale gray dust drifted down like fleeting foam. Before that palm, the Bashe's breath disintegrated inch by inch, as if it had never existed at all. And within this frozen, stagnant world, alongside the eerie convergence and circulation of the blood rain, torrents resembling blood vessels gradually took shape across heaven and earth, interwoven and coiling. Countless mutations and calamities turned into internal organs and muscle, filling them out. At last, high in the heavens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of colossal bloodshot eyes slowly opened, glaring down upon everything in the mortal realm. An invisible, formless monstrosity that permeated the entire world finally revealed its presence. "Next, allow me to introduce a friend." A raspy voice carried through the darkness. Relying on corruption alchemy and rituals of the Great Sins to push beyond his own limits and capabilities, Ji Jue followed his teacher's example and completed his very first creation of pure spiritus! "—Its name is the Nether Sea Worm!" *BOOM!* The frozen world shattered. Beneath the cracked sky, amidst the unending rain of blood, a disaster long wiped from the face of this world was reborn! Using the fractured Calamity of Blood Rain as its body, the terrifying calamity beast that had once forged the Calamity of Lightlessness rose anew from the dark. In the next instant, the Bashe was sent flying backward! A bizarre giant hand formed from the blood rain materialized without warning, delivering a savage slap right across that rotting face of fish and man— Caught completely off guard, the mountain-sized beast froze where it stood, its famished mind unable to react before its body was hurled uncontrollably into the air, crashing hard into the earth. Immediately after, as Ji Jue lifted his finger once more, another hand condensed out of thin air from the blood rain, clamping firmly around one of the Bashe's necks. Then a third hand reached down from the heavens, pressing down to seize another neck. A fourth hand, a fifth hand... Giant hands materialized in rapid succession, pinning down the furious, thrashing Bashe as though wringing a chicken's neck, forcefully restraining each head and tail. When a giant hand rose once more, its fingers splayed, and the surrounding pollution gathered out of thin air, condensing into an enormous iron spike—Solid Alchemy! It drove straight into the skull! *So you're the big, bad Bashe, huh?!*