Zhi Xuan continued to advance. Each step he took upon the light bridge produced no grand ripples of energy or blinding elemental flashes. He walked with the silence of an assassin traversing eternal snow.

  His stride was so light it was as if the body he carried no longer possessed earthly weight, but was merely a shroud for a bottomless void. As the tip of his boot touched the floating stone stage, which was now half-shattered, the lingering red mists still burning from Yan Fenghuang’s fire instantly grew cold.

  The atmosphere around the bell, once boiling hot, transformed into a bone-chilling gloom. Zhi Xuan stood directly before the Heavenly Night Rain Bell. Compared to Gu Tao’s giant frame or Mu Chen’s dragon-like aura, Zhi Xuan’s figure appeared so small, as if he were about to be swallowed by the shadow of the ancient bronze.

  However, for those with high-level spiritual senses, the sight was terrifying; it was as if a rusted sword were pointing directly at the heart of a giant.

  "So noisy," Zhi Xuan murmured softly, his voice nearly drowned by the whistling mountain wind. His sapphire eyes stared at the faces carved into the bell’s surface. "Are you weeping out of fear, or laughing because of hunger?"

  There was no answer. Zhi Xuan gave a thin smile and did not immediately throw a punch. Instead, he pulled back, retreating two steps with a movement so calm it created the illusion that the space around him shifted with him. This action triggered a wave of confusion and mockery from the spectator stands filling the Square of Holy Light.

  "Look! He’s retreating! Truly a coward from Xing Luo!" shouted a cultivator insultingly, his laughter breaking through the silence. "Perhaps he just realized that the stench of death from that bell is sharper than his boasting!"

  However, the laughter did not last long. On the high platform, Elder Qing He and the Holy Woman of Yao Gu stood up simultaneously. Their pupils contracted as their hearts skipped a beat. They did not see fear; they saw a predator taking distance for a single strike that would shatter the foundations of the world.

  "Silence of Slaughter," Zhi Xuan whispered. He closed his eyes, and immediately, a killing intent forged through acceptance without denial overflowed around him.

  That killing intent was not aimed at slaughtering, but at becoming its own silence—spiritual waves that produced a subtle sweep of wind carrying a heavy burden in every direction, making even the cultivators shiver.

  Such intent was nonsensical to use in the middle of the Square of Holy Light, even if it had been tainted by several failed geniuses. A dense aura of the Heavenly Devil Path wafted out, providing a faint flash that suggested Zhi Xuan was a cruel figure, steeped in slaughter.

  The deathly chill emanating from Zhi Xuan’s body was no longer mere spiritual pressure, but the manifestation of a crystallized Slaughter Karma. The air around the floating stage suddenly froze, not by the ice element, but by the coldness of an existence that had crossed the gates of the afterlife multiple times.

  "Devil Qi! That is the purest Devil Qi!" shouted an elder, his voice shrill with terror. "How could a defier of the Heavenly Dao be allowed to stand upon the Sacred Altar of Yao Gu?!"

  "The Devil Path," Elder Qing He said with a hint of shock. She hadn't known that behind the Law of the Four Seasons this youth carried, there lay hidden a power so sinister.

  "That is a Devil Dao!" one cultivator gasped, clutching his robes tightly. "How could someone following the Devil Path come here?"

  "The rumors are true!" a low roar from another cultivator echoed. "The Xing Luo envoy has a Devil among them!"

  "Betrayal against Heaven! This is an unforgivable insult!" roared an elder, his once dignified face fading into horror and deep-seated hatred. "Yao Gu is a holy land, the place where the light of divine law resides! How dare you Xing Luo rats smuggle a devilish stain before the Heavenly Night Rain Bell?!"

  A wave of protest exploded like a collapsing dam. Hundreds of practitioners who had previously only mocked him now gripped their weapons until their knuckles turned white. The air in the Square of Holy Light, once heavy with competitive tension, now boiled with an exterminating bloodlust.

  "Kill him! Cleanse this square of the remnants of darkness!" voices screamed from the crowd, creating a terrifying echo between the marble pillars.

  Han Shanshan, the Holy Son of the Han Clan, stood with a body trembling not from fear, but from overflowing rage. "Hua Tianming! Zhu Yanghai! So this is the secret you brought? You allied with a Devil just to win a few scraps of dignity? You have dragged the name of the Ancient Clans into the mud of sin!"

  Zhu Yanghai merely snorted coldly, though his eyes remained vigilant. "Sin is merely the perspective of those too weak to control power. Xing Luo does not care about the color of energy; we only care about who is left standing at the end of the storm."

  "Shut up, all of you!" the voice of the Holy Woman of Yao Gu cut through the commotion, so sharp it was deafening. She stepped to the edge of the platform, her veil fluttering in the wind that now carried the metallic scent of blood and the silence of a tomb. "Do you not see? He does not carry only the Devil Path."

  She pointed toward Zhi Xuan’s right hand, which began to emit a pure golden glow, contrasting sharply with the gray mist on his left hand. "Within one frame... he carries both Devilish destruction and Heavenly majesty. He is a double-walker."

  "Impossible!" another elder voiced, his voice raspy. "Two opposing poles cannot inhabit a single meridian without exploding the user's body. That is a feat only achieved by the Ancient Great Emperors!"

  Zhi Xuan, in the midst of the storm of insults and killing intent directed at him, only tilted his head slightly. The voices around him sounded like a drone intended to annihilate him.

  "Devil Path... Heavenly Path..." Zhi Xuan whispered, his voice soft yet strangely audible in every corner of the square, forcibly silencing the screams of the masses. "You are all so busy giving names to power that you forget that in the face of death, those names mean nothing."

  "Incredible arrogance!" hissed a Yao Gu core disciple, tears of rage streaming down his cheeks. "You are but one person! There are tens of thousands of practitioners of righteousness here! You think you can leave alive after showing your true face?!"

  "Enough with your trash talk!" interrupted an elder from the Feng Mie Plains, fire blazing wildly around his body. "The Devil Path is the natural enemy of all laws of life! Look at that aura... that isn't just ordinary devil energy. That is the scent of thousands of souls he has slaughtered! Sage Qing Xuan, why are you silent?! Order us to destroy this devil right now!"

  Sage Qing Xuan remained frozen on his cloud throne. His usually clear eyes were filled with a great ripple of confusion. As the guardian of order in Yao Gu, he should have been the first to eliminate Zhi Xuan. However, his gaze was fixed on the Heavenly Night Rain Bell.

  Sage Qing Xuan clenched his fist until his cloud throne shook. However, before he could issue a decree, the Heavenly Night Rain Bell reacted in a way that had never occurred in three thousand years of history.

  GREEEKK—

  The Nine-Heaven Meteorite Iron chains holding the bell creaked loudly, straining to their absolute limit. The bell no longer emitted red mist or the sound of weeping; it began to vibrate in a very low frequency, a resonance against an existence it perceived as its natural enemy.

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  Zhi Xuan opened his eyes. The sapphire in his eyes was now covered by a shroud of dense darkness, leaving a hollow gaze that seemed capable of erasing the existence of anyone who looked at him. He raised his left hand, wrapped in blue cloth.

  "You hunger for emotion, don't you?" Zhi Xuan whispered, his voice sounding like the scraping of a headstone against graveyard soil. "Then swallow the hole of the Dao Heart that has consumed my soul for thousands of nights under the light of falling stars."

  Zhi Xuan made no complex movements. He simply stepped forward, and with a very slow motion—as if he were parting thick water—he slammed his palm against the surface of the bell.

  TING—

  The sound produced was not a loud, deafening boom, but a subtle chime that vibrated deep into the bone marrow of every creature present. The first strike.

  That first strike, though sounding like a thin chime in the middle of a storm, instantly triggered a catastrophe for Zhi Xuan’s body. The Heavenly Night Rain Bell did not retaliate with projected warriors or echoes of mortal suffering, but with a more terrifying reversal.

  "Ugh—!"

  Fresh blood instantly sprayed across Zhi Xuan’s left arm, soaking the blue cloth until it turned a horrific dark purple. That first strike did not just dissect the soul; it seemed to attempt to twist Zhi Xuan’s very existence from the inside out.

  In just one chime, the bell sent a backlash equivalent to the accumulation of ten of Mu Chen's strikes. Zhi Xuan’s previously flat face now tensed; bluish veins bulged at his temples, and a faint crack echoed from his collarbone.

  "Look! He shattered instantly on the first strike!" shouted a Yao Gu cultivator with a bloodthirsty, satisfied look. "The Devil cannot endure the sanctity of our bell! His soul is being flayed alive!"

  However, amidst pain that could make even a Soul Transformation realm practitioner faint, Zhi Xuan gave a low laugh—a rasping laugh full of controlled madness.

  "This pain... it's still too sweet," Zhi Xuan hissed. He raised his hand, and immediately, the Heavenly Sword, carrying the weight of an Immortal Artifact, appeared in his grip.

  "Cultivating to question the Dao, seeking origins, only to find that I am the storm."

  Zhi Xuan swung the blade of the Heavenly Sword, dark and filled with lightning runes. He seemed to dance in the middle of a Devilish and Heavenly storm, showing that within every Devil Path he attained, there was a glimmer of a Heavenly calling that continued to accompany him.

  "Heaven is so heartless," Zhi Xuan murmured in the midst of his sword swings. He closed his eyes and let a single tear fall. "All living beings weep, fate is so cruel, the heavenly storm devastates everything."

  The aura exploding from Zhi Xuan’s body instantly swallowed the sunlight illuminating the Square of Holy Light. The sky above the arena, once gray, was now split—not by divine light, but by the emergence of six dark clouds vomiting black-gold lightning.

  "Yin-Yang Heavenly Dragon: Cruel Heaven."

  From the rift, six giant dragons shot out with roars that did not sound like animals, but like the thousand-year cries of those betrayed by fate. The dragons' scales flashed between heavenly silver and devilish black, carrying the burden of Extreme Lightning and Fire.

  The presence of this technique choked every cultivator in the square. Their Dao Hearts, for the Five Element cultivators, felt as if they were aging rapidly. It was as if by merely seeing the manifestation of those dragons, their souls were forced to witness an endless and painful cycle of birth and death.

  Yet, the presence of the dragons was not as fierce or wild as it seemed; rather, the dragons coiled and growled lowly, as if the tense atmosphere were paired with the melodic strumming of a melancholic guqin. Zhi Xuan’s single tear fell to the courtyard along with the dragons' roars.

  The six dragons slithered across the horizon now filled with crimson clouds, their massive bodies swallowing the remaining mortal light in the Square of Holy Light. The sound of guqin strings seemed to echo through the whistling wind, carrying a melody of despair so deep it caused lower-level practitioners to kneel, clutching their chests which were tight with a sadness they did not understand.

  "Cruel Heaven..." Elder Qing He murmured, her voice trembling. She saw how time seemed to slow down around those dragons. Ornamental plants around the pavilions suddenly withered and yellowed, as if decades had passed in seconds. "This is no longer just a martial technique... it is a manifested curse!"

  Zhi Xuan raised his Heavenly Sword high. The lightning runes on the blade pulsed in rhythm with his slowing heartbeat. With one cleaving swing, he seemed to issue a death decree.

  The first dragon, scales as black as soot with eyes flashing extreme fire, dove sharply. It did not attack with claws, but slammed its entire existence against the surface of the bell.

  DANG!

  The second strike! The Heavenly Night Rain Bell shook so violently that the Nine-Heaven Meteorite support pillars began to bend. The backlash exploded in a tsunami of gray energy that hit Zhi Xuan, tearing his gray robes to shreds and threatening to collapse the blue cloth on his left hand.

  Yet, Zhi Xuan did not budge. He stood like a headstone planted in the middle of a storm. The second and third dragons, carrying the weight of black lightning, followed with ear-splitting roars.

  DANG! DANG! DANG!

  Four strikes accumulated in the blink of an eye. The entire Square of Holy Light was now filled with a suffocating aura of aging. Lower-level cultivators watching closely began to realize their hair was turning white strand by strand in an illusion; their Dao Hearts vibrated violently, forced to witness the cruelty of a Heaven that grants no mercy to living beings.

  The fourth dragon, carrying the essence of the tomb's frost, glided at a speed surpassing mortal sight. It brought no heat, but a void of temperature that absorbed all warmth on the floating stone stage.

  DANG!

  The fifth strike. The bell’s backlash manifested as thousands of barbed soul chains that instantly wrapped around Zhi Xuan’s body and pulled with force. The sound of tensing muscles and creaking bones was clearly heard amidst the harrowing silence.

  However, Zhi Xuan allowed the chains to slice his flesh, using the pain to trigger the resonance of the fifth dragon. The fifth dragon, with heavenly silver scales yet emitting a dark aura from between the gaps, struck the bell with its tail, carrying the weight of a faded Law of the Four Seasons.

  DANG!

  The sixth strike. The Heavenly Night Rain Bell seemed to lose control over its own frequency. This time, the backlash did not attack physically, but projected an illusion of mass destruction directly into Zhi Xuan’s mind.

  Around the square, Five Element realm cultivators began to feel an extraordinary shortness of breath; they saw their faces in the reflections of their weapons wrinkling and withering—an illusion of aging triggered by the aura of Cruel Heaven.

  Zhi Xuan spat black blood, yet he stepped forward to challenge the echo. "Is this all... that the sanctity you worship can do?"

  The sixth dragon, the final and largest, possessing the same sapphire eyes as its master, roared with a frequency capable of temporarily stopping a heartbeat. It coiled around the Night Rain Bell with its massive body before exploding its entire essence in one hit.

  DANG!

  The seventh strike. The bell emitted an incredibly low sound, like the moan of a splitting earth. The resulting backlash was catastrophic; a pillar of dense gray energy as thick as a human body slammed into Zhi Xuan’s chest. The youth’s body was dragged back, his feet crushing the floating stone, but he drove his Heavenly Sword into the stage floor to stop his momentum.

  Blood flowed from his ears and nose, merging with the tears that had been wetting his cheeks. Seven strikes had been unleashed, and the atmosphere in the square now resembled a mass funeral more than a competition.

  "Seven strikes in one sequence of techniques..." whispered a beginning-stage Soul Transformation practitioner, his voice raspy as he realized the hair at his temples had truly turned white due to the influence of the surrounding aura. "He... he isn't just striking that bell. He is competing in suffering with it."

  Zhi Xuan raised his face. His silver hair fluttered wildly, revealing a deathly pale face with eyes that grew increasingly sharp. He released his grip on the Heavenly Sword, letting the artifact float beside him.

  With his right hand emitting heavenly light and his left hand wrapped in blue cloth now soaked with his own devil blood, he clenched his fists again. He felt that with every dragon hitting the bell, there was a faint pressure of will from the Heavenly Dao.

  "That Heavenly Bell possesses the will of the Heavenly Dao," Zhi Xuan murmured in his mind, gasping and pausing for a moment. "If I can gain a glimmer of that Heavenly Dao's understanding, perhaps I can step firmly into Soul Transformation."

  Zhi Xuan stood frozen in the remnants of his own energy storm, letting the suffocating silence envelop the floating stage, of which only a third remained.

  His breath was heavy; every inhalation felt like breathing in shards of glass that sliced his lungs. Yet, behind that paralyzing pain, his soul vibrated because of a terrifying yet grand discovery.

  He felt the vibration of the Heavenly Night Rain Bell no longer as an attack, but as an ancient whisper originating from the very essence of Heaven itself. There was a pattern, a hidden rhythm that could only be felt by those who dared to stand on the thin line between life and destruction.

  "I see..." Zhi Xuan whispered, his cracked lips forming a thin, bloody smile. "You call this a soul trial, when it is actually the remnants of the Heavenly Dao's arrogance left behind in this bronze."

  Hearing that whisper, the aura around the bell suddenly changed. Its vibration was no longer low, but shrill and high-pitched, as if the relic were enraged because its secret had been uncovered by a devil it loathed.

  "Zhi Xuan! Enough! Retreat now!" Zhu Yanghai shouted from afar, his voice filled with genuine fear. He saw Zhi Xuan’s frame beginning to emit unstable light—a sign that the youth’s mortal vessel could no longer withstand the collision between the two poles of energy he carried.