Chapter 244 The Kunlun Bell Tolls to Calm the Storm

The bell's ringing was not loud; in fact, it sounded somewhat faint amidst the raging blizzard and the mournful roars of the demonic beasts. It didn't produce deafening physical sound waves; instead, it disregarded spatial distance, reverberating simultaneously within the souls of the five million soldiers and civilians of Fengtian City, as well as the Nascent Soul stage tiger king outside the city.

Time seemed to have been paused at that moment.

Above Fengtian City, the icy blue tiger claw, about half the size of the city and carrying an extreme, destructive spiritual pressure, abruptly stopped less than a hundred meters from the tallest building in the city's defenses.

It wasn't blocked by some kind of shield, but rather forcibly locked down by a higher-dimensional force.

High in the clouds, the once arrogant Tiger King suddenly widened its icy blue vertical pupils. Its massive, mountain-like body began to tremble violently uncontrollably. As a Nascent Soul stage demon, it had already touched a trace of the laws of this world, and because of this, it felt the terrifying power descending upon it more clearly than the mortals below.

It was an absolute dominance, a great will that could hold the entire planet in the palm of one's hand and knead it at will.

"Who?" The Tiger King let out a low growl of fear, its icy fur bristling. It desperately tried to activate its nascent soul, attempting to break free from this invisible constraint, even at the cost of backlash, to pulverize the human city below that had angered it.

But in the next second, its struggle turned into a complete joke.

In the sky outside Fengtian City, the three mushroom clouds of nuclear explosions, which had not yet completely dissipated and carried tens of millions of degrees of high temperature and deadly radiation, suddenly seemed to be drawn by some inexplicable force.

The massive nuclear dust and violent heat vortex began to collapse inward at a visible speed. In just a few breaths, the nuclear remnants that had polluted the entire Northeast Plain for centuries and turned it into a dead zone were forcibly compressed into an ultra-high-density energy ball the size of a fist, emitting a dark red light.

A pale, slender human hand, seemingly devoid of any human warmth, emerged from nothingness and gently grasped the nuclear sphere capable of destroying a city.

Immediately afterwards, a figure in green robes materialized from an illusion at an altitude of ten thousand meters.

Gu Qing.

He didn't display any earth-shattering, gigantic Dharma form; he simply stood calmly in the wind and snow, wearing his signature blue Taoist robe. But as soon as he stood there, the blizzard within a radius of hundreds of miles instantly subsided, and even the turbulent spiritual energy molecules in the air became as obedient as subjects before a king.

Inside the Fengtian City command post, the commander stared intently at the figure high in the sky, his legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the control panel.

"The Dao Lord...it's the Dao Lord of Kunlun..." The chief of staff lay on the ground, so excited he was incoherent. "We're saved! Five million people are saved!"

On the entire city wall of Fengtian, countless hunters and soldiers who had closed their eyes in despair raised their heads and looked up at the living god with an almost fanatical and awe-inspiring gaze.

But high in the sky, Gu Qing's eyes showed no compassion after saving the world.

He glanced down at the compressed nuclear sphere in his hand, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly.

In everyone's eyes, he was a savior high above all others. But in Gu Qing's own heart, he knew very well that just now, the spiritual vein foundation he had painstakingly cultivated was almost blown apart by this group of irrational mortals.

Deep within his mind, that cold and mechanical "system" continued to operate secretly. Gu Qing knew that in the depths of space, those terrifying void fleets had long since locked onto Earth's coordinates. Everything he was doing now—promoting human cultivation of immortality, indulging in the enlightenment patches that fostered the birth of demon races—was all for the purpose of cultivating a sufficient quantity and quality of sharp swords for the true interstellar war of the future.

Earth is his super arsenal and training ground for resisting the invasion of the void.

Now, two groups of workers in the arsenal are actually trying to blow up the factory's foundation in order to seize territory.

Gu Qing slowly raised his eyes and looked at the huge tiger king in front of him.

"You mere beast that has just formed its Nascent Soul stage, who gave you the audacity to overturn the table and slaughter the entire city in my very dojo?"

As Gu Qing stared at the Tiger King, it felt a chill penetrate to the very depths of its soul. But it was, after all, a newly established king of the demon kingdom, and its inherent wildness and extreme ambition for power caused it to erupt in a hysterical roar in extreme fear.

"I am the ruler of the Demon Kingdom. Humans use such filthy forbidden weapons to kill my fellow countrymen and destroy my mountains and forests. Why can't I slaughter the entire city? Why should the spiritual energy of heaven and earth be determined solely by you humans?"

The Tiger King opened its blood-red maw, and the nascent soul within its body erupted with dazzling icy blue divine light. It actually withstood Gu Qing's pressure and forcibly burned its accumulated life essence blood to press down the extremely cold giant claw that was suspended in mid-air once again, attempting to forcefully establish its authority in front of the Dao Lord.

"Stubborn and obstinate."

Gu Qing didn't even draw his sword.

He simply raised his right hand casually, his index and middle fingers joined together, and made a light swipe in the air towards the tiger king, whose body was as large as a mountain.

There was no earth-shattering burst of sword energy, nor any roar of spiritual energy colliding.

Suddenly, a thin, almost imperceptible black line appeared in the space surrounding the Tiger King's massive body. Immediately afterward, its enormous, ice-blue claw, which contained all its power and was powerful enough to flatten Fengtian City, vanished without a trace, along with the surrounding space, as if it had been cut off from a drawing by an invisible pair of scissors.

"ah."

The Tiger King let out a bloodcurdling scream. It was horrified to discover that its connection with that part of the spiritual energy had been completely severed. Even more terrifying, the invisible sword intent cleaved directly into its dantian along its meridians.

A crisp snapping sound.

The newly formed, arrogant nascent soul within the Tiger King was cleaved by this force of rules, leaving a deep, bone-revealing crack. Its cultivation level plummeted from the early Nascent Soul stage to the peak Golden Core stage in an instant, and it continues to dissipate.

The massive tiger's body, like a shooting star, plummeted straight down from the sky, crashing heavily onto the frozen wasteland more than ten kilometers outside Fengtian City, creating a huge crater.

silence.

A deathly silence.

The human soldiers who had been cheering on the city wall just moments before were now like ducks with their necks choked, unable to utter a sound. As they watched the once invincible demon king being casually swatted down like a dead dog, the feeling that welled up in their hearts was not the joy of surviving a calamity, but rather an endless fear of the overwhelming, awe-inspiring power of the Heavenly Dao that regarded all things as mere straw dogs.

Gu Qing withdrew his finger and slowly turned his gaze to Fengtian City below, finally locking onto Commander Li Ming in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of the command post.

Li Ming was jolted. He did not back down, but instead gave a bitter laugh. He then pushed open the door of the command post and strode to the highest point of the snow-covered city wall.

"General Li Ming has been guilty of unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. We beg the Dao Lord to punish him, but we only ask for your mercy on the five million innocent people in the city."

Li Ming drew the pistol from his waist and, without hesitation, pointed it directly at his temple. He knew he had broken a taboo, but sacrificing his life to appease the immortal's wrath in exchange for the city's survival was worth it.

Just a second before he was about to pull the trigger, the steel barrel of the pistol suddenly turned to dust like rotten wood.

"You want to die so easily, leaving your mess for someone else?"

Gu Qing's icy voice echoed in the commander's mind.

"Humans, relying on their industrial capacity, treat the demon race as a mine for extracting elixir. The demon race, having gained intelligence, treats you as blood-nourishing tonics from which their pseudo-spiritual roots are extracted. This is fair; it's normal competition among species."

Gu Qing's gaze swept across the entire tattered Jianghuai and Northeast defense lines, looking at the ordinary hunters struggling in the mud and the mountains of corpses.

"But using nuclear weapons is tantamount to overdrawing this planet's reserves to withstand future cosmic catastrophes. Today, I will absorb this radiation for you, but while I may be spared the death penalty, I will not escape punishment."

With a flick of his finger, Gu Qing sent the nuclear energy sphere he had compressed in his hand instantly transforming into a beam of red light that precisely entered his body.

Li Ming let out a muffled groan. He suddenly tore open the front of his clothes and saw a strange rune emitting a dark red glow over his heart.

"This seal contains one percent of the frenzied spiritual power from those three nuclear bombs. From today onward, it will burn your meridians day and night. You want to defend the city? Then take this crippled body and kill a thousand second-tier demonic beasts for me in the front-line trenches to atone for your sins."

Gu Qing ignored the commander who was slumped on the ground. He turned around and faced the vast, boundless icy wilderness, facing the entire planet.

His voice transformed into the supreme laws and decrees of heaven and earth, resounding throughout the minds of all Golden Core cultivators and above, and third-tier and above demon kings worldwide.

"From this day forward, we hereby establish a pact to sever all communication between heaven and earth."

"First, the Earth's spiritual veins are the foundation for resisting the void. Anyone who uses nuclear weapons or other forbidden artifacts of equal destructive power, regardless of whether they are human or demon, will have their entire clan wiped out, their body and soul scattered."

"Secondly, cultivators at the Golden Core stage and above, and demon kings at the Commander level and above, are strictly prohibited from interfering in mortal battlefields on the surface. Violators will be punished by divine lightning and instantly annihilated."

"Third, there are no limits to the war at the bottom, and no questions are raised about the means. This planet has humans and demons. You will survive and evolve in this quagmire by using swords, teeth, and the most cruel methods you can think of."

Gu Qing's figure began to fade slowly in the wind and snow, rising into the air towards the space elevator. High above in the clouds, it seemed as if an unseen eye of the void was coldly watching this planet.

"If you can't even kill each other, when those things from the depths of space descend, you won't even qualify as cannon fodder."

With Gu Qing's complete departure, the extreme cold pressure that had enveloped Fengtian City finally dissipated.

In the deep pit, the Tiger King, whose strength had plummeted, crawled up in utter humiliation. It stared intently at the sky, then at the distant steel behemoth, and finally let out a low, unwilling roar before leading the remaining beast tide back into the depths of Changbai Mountain.

On the city wall, Old Ding, Little Stone, and countless other surviving low-level hunters gripped their blood-stained swords, gazing at the wilderness that had once again plunged into darkness.

The power of the higher-level players was completely locked down, and the big shots were driven off the table.

They finally understood that from that night onward, Earth had completely transformed into a massive, bottomless breeding ground for carnage. The all-out blood war between humanity and the demon race had no shortcuts; it could only be won by sacrificing lives, bit by bit.

A new order in the wasteland was formally established amidst bloodshed and thunder.