Above the heads of Laozi, Yuanshi, and Tongtian, the very air crystallized. Three distinct strands of primordial Qi—Taiqing, Yuqing, and Shangqing—began to churn, weaving together a tapestry of ancient power.
Suddenly, the heavens rang. Not with a sound, but with the vibration of a cosmic bell that resonated through the marrow of every living soul in the Great Desolation. Three bolts of seven-colored lightning ignited above the brothers.
These were the Sanqing Divine Thunders—the inheritance of Pangu's own Heaven-Opening Thunder.
When the Creator first swung his axe to separate the turbid from the clear, the first sound to ever grace the universe was this thunder. It was the manifestation of Pangu's spiritual will, holding the absolute authority to establish order and breathe life into the void.
The thunders exploded.
Chaos was not merely pushed back; it was shattered. In the wake of the blast, thousands of ephemeral Great and Small Worlds flickered into existence and vanished in heartbeats. The spatial prison Di Jiang had constructed dissolved like parchment in a furnace. The Three Pure Ones emerged from the wreckage of the sub-dimension, wreathed in flickering, prismatic lightning.
With a unified roar, they pointed their fingers. A single, concentrated pillar of Divine Thunder pierced the firmament, screaming toward Di Jiang's head.
"Brother, move!"
The Ancestral Witches reacted with the instinct of apex predators. They didn't retreat; they lunged. Eleven titans struck at the pillar simultaneously, their fists tearing the Void asunder as they met the lightning head-on.
The explosion sent a shockwave that flattened mountains for leagues. Though they weren't broken, the Ancestral Witches were left disheveled, their dark skin scorched by the touch of the Creator's spirit.
Di Jiang's expression darkened. For a fleeting second, he had felt the cold touch of the end. If his siblings hadn't intervened, that thunder would have stripped the marrow from his bones.
"No more games," Di Jiang commanded, his voice dripping with a killing intent so potent that a rain of blood-red Baleful Qi began to fall from the sky. "Kill them. Kill them all!"
The real battle erupted. When the Twelve Ancestral Witches committed fully to the slaughter, the scale of violence shifted. In a single exchange of blows, the protective lights of the Three Pure Ones were nearly snuffed out.
The Sun Star.
Ling Xiao was practically vibrating with excitement. His eyes darted from one Ancestral Witch to the next, tracking every ripple in the air.
He wasn't admiring their forms; he was hunting their secrets.
Inside his sea of consciousness, the Chaos Pearl spun wildly. While the pearl contained all three thousand Laws, they were raw and unrefined. But here, the Twelve Ancestral Witches were providing a live, high-speed demonstration of the Laws in their purest, most violent application.
Strange glyphs flickered in Ling Xiao's pupils as he recorded every frame of the carnage. This was a gift from the heavens.
Keep it up, brothers! Ling Xiao cheered silently for the Three Pure Ones. Don't die yet. I've still got three more Laws to map!
To Ling Xiao, this wasn't a tragedy; it was a masterclass. The mastery any single Ancestral Witch had over their specific Law was more profound than any manual could ever describe.
"Wait..." Ling Xiao's eyes narrowed. "The Pure Ones are trying to bolt?"
He watched the Three Pure Ones attempt to weave through the gaps in the Witches' formation, trading blood for distance. Their stamina was failing.
The Void surrounding Mount Buzhou had become a graveyard of stars.
The Three Pure Ones were a mess. Robes that had once been pristine were now soaked in divine blood. They had brushed against the veil of death a dozen times in as many minutes. Only their protective Immortal Light—thinned now to a translucent film—kept them from being pulverized.
Fleeing was a stain on their honor, but staying was a sentence of extinction.
"You shameless wretches!" Zhurong sneered, his body a pillar of roaring flame. "Is this the Great 'Orthodox Lineage'? Running like dogs?"
"So weak. So pathetic," another mocked. "How do you have the nerve to claim Father God's name?"
Di Jiang stepped forward, a cruel, mocking smile on his lips. "I'll give you a choice. Swear an oath to the Heavenly Dao right now. Renounce the title of Pangu's Lineage. Sever your ties to Father God forever. Do that, and we might let you crawl away."
The brothers' auras were flickering, but at those words, their eyes burned with a renewed, furious light.
"In your dreams!" Laozi roared, the sound tearing at his throat. He looked at the Witches with pure loathing. "You pathetic, brainless things who cannot see the path of Destiny... you covet our title? Are you even worthy?"
"Exactly!" Yuanshi spat, his arrogance unyielding even as he bled. "Witch Clan? In my eyes, you are no different from the horned and scaled beasts of the dirt. You are anomalies. Errors of the flesh!"
The watching Great Powers across the world held their breath. The dispute had gone beyond territory or pride—it was now a war of identity.
Can a Heavenly Dao oath even bind the scions of Pangu? some wondered. Pangu created the world that the Dao governs. To use the Dao to bind the Creator's soul... it's madness.
But the Three Pure Ones were too proud to even test the theory. They chose the path of the sword.
"Then seek your own deaths," Di Jiang snarled.
He raised a hand, and it grew until it blotted out the sun, a palm the size of a world descending to crush them. The Three Pure Ones huddled together, their Immortal Light flaring one last time as they charged into the palm, trying to pierce through.
The other Witches fell upon them like wolves. The Three Pure Ones were sent flying, tossed back and forth between the titans like playthings.
"Twelve Ancestral Witches!" Yuanshi screamed as he was launched through a mountain peak. "If we survive this day, I will see every one of your kind wiped from the face of the Great Desolation!"
"Still talking?" Di Jiang appeared before him, his fist glowing like a blood-red sun. He smashed it into Yuanshi's chest, the sound of cracking ribs echoing across the heavens.
"Second Brother!"
Laozi and Tongtian tried to intervene, but they were intercepted and hammered back into the dirt by a barrage of blows.
Yuanshi was sent tumbling through hundreds of millions of miles of space, coughing up golden blood. Before he could stop, Candle Nine Nethers gestured, reversing the local flow of time. Yuanshi's body was jerked backward, flying into the Witches' reach once more.
The onlookers shook their heads. It was a one-sided slaughter.
"After today," one ancient being sighed, "the Three Pure Ones will be a memory. The Witch Clan is unstoppable."
"Next time the Dao Ancestor opens the gates of Zixiao Palace," another whispered, "there will be three empty seats in the front row."
Di Jiang stood over the broken forms of the brothers, his voice booming to every corner of the eight desolate regions. "From this day forth, the Orthodox Lineage of Pangu belongs to the Witches alone! There are no more Three—"
RUMBLE.
An aura of such terrifying, absolute power exploded from the center of the battlefield that the word died in Di Jiang's throat. The world was instantly plunged into a chaotic, blinding white light.
The Twelve Ancestral Witches froze, a primal chill racing down their spines. They pulled back, clearing the energy to see what had happened.
And there, in the center of the crater...